Getting Engaged...

Standout Jobs, a recruiting portal aimed at facilitating relationship-building between mid-sized companies and star job candidates, launched at DEMO today. The site borrows heavily from social media portals like Ning, and backs it up with a modern Content Management System (CMS) and candidate tracking system.

Back in early 2007, the company’s founders saw an opportunity to revitalize the recruiting process: Instead of static job descriptions, employers could entertain and engage their prospects. “We started experimenting with video as a way for companies to open up and let a candidate say, ‘Could I see myself working there?’” says founder and CEO Benjamin Yoskovitz (who is also author of the popular startup blog Instigatorblog.)

Standout is the poster child for Web 2.0 tech. It’s built atop Ruby on Rails, and runs entirely on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 platforms. It offers an extensible range of widgets for recruiters to use, from embedded video to RSS feeds. It automates posting to free and paid job boards. It also scours the Net, looking for relevant news and events, then lets the recruiters share it with candidates.

Backed by Innovia Capital and Brudder Ventures, Standout has launched with roughly 30 companies already on board, including Freshbooks, ADS and Xobni. Revenue comes from a $150-a-month subscription price — a fraction of what the larger enterprise portals charge — as well as job submission fees and advanced widgets.

Standout’s real strength may be its ability to make recruiters not just more efficient, but more effective. As it increases its customer base, Standout will learn which postings work best for which kinds of companies. Yoskovitz thinks predictive analytics may enable Standout to learn which job sites tend to be best for certain companies and candidates, leading to better hiring strategies.