profile updated Sep 11, 2008, 6:46 PM
Itzbig, Inc
In its short life, Itzbig gathered a pretty impressive collection of endorsements. But neither the good reviews nor the $7 million or so it got in venture capital was enough to keep the company afloat.
On Sept. 5, 2008 the company laid off most of its workforce and shut the doors. The website remains, showing signs of life.
It's still pitching to candidates and recruiters, offering the latter candidates matched to job reqs and to the former, jobs that meet both their interests and their skills, as well as a report on how good a match each is.
Itzbig is also offering its search engine to job boards and corporate recruiters to replace or augment the technology already being used.
The website doesn't say who is running the show these days. In fact the About Us section says nothing about the company or the experience; all that's there is a contact form.
The Itzbig of the past made a big splash, hiring stilt walkers at trade shows winning admirers for its job matching prowess.
In 2007, Itzbig raised $6 million from two investors, Sevin Rosen and Rho Capital. After launching, it got a nice thumbs up from venerable recruiting consultant and blogger John Sumser who wrote: "The remarkable thing is that they have managed to build a solid market planning tool while automating the important (yet usually absent) components of the recruiting process… I'm expecting a lot from Itzbig."
Then in January 2008 Itzbig made American Venture magazine’s list of 2008’s Most Promising Startups.
What prompted the notice? Part of it was the business model and the other part was the people behind Itzbig. Founders Jim Hammock and Hank Stringer are well known for launching Hire.com more than a decade ago, building it into a force in recruiting technology before selling it to Authoria.
The other part was the nature of the business: Itzbig matched anonymous candidates to jobs by means of profiles, giving candidates immediate feedback on how well their skills and credentials match the jobs on the site.
Itzbig had plenty of competition in this newly emerging area: JobFox, Climber and Trovix all have -- or had, some are gone, and Trovix was acquired by Monster -- job match sites that try to get beyond the resume to make a better fit. Itzbig's differentiator was its appeal to passive, but curious, workers encouraged to see just how in demand their skills are. Candidates could remain completely anonymous - no names required and the e-mail address collected at the start of a profile's creation wasn't verified.
Alas for Itzbig, the notice didn't convert into sales, forcing the downsizing.
News & Updates 
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Talent Technology Partners With itzbig (PR Web)
Talent Technology Corporation announced its Resume Mirror Extraction Engine has been picked by itzbig to improve the user experience for both job seekers and recruiters on its network. May 29, 2008, 12:18 PM -
Jobfox in the News (Cheezhead)
Start-up Jobfox has received a mini-flood of good news lately. Apr 14, 2008, 8:58 AM -
GetYourselfFired.com by Itzbig (Cheezhead)
Candidate-matching site itzbig has launched Get Yourself Fired.com. The move is an attempt to generate a viral marketing campaign around the idea of, you guessed it, getting yourself fired. Mar 26, 2008, 5:21 PM
Products & Services
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Job posting
A job agent/matching technology that is designed to reach and protect the identity of the passive job seeker, by asking candidates to put in a position, location, and skills that are then matched up with employer requirements. Limited geographies. Postings are currently discounted with a single job costing $316