BranchOut Social Jobs Site Grabs a Yahoo Exec

BranchOut, the professional social network built on top of Facebook, has hired Chris Merritt from his post as Yahoo’s VP of global advertiser partnerships.

Merritt is an online jobs veteran, and last year helped sell Yahoo HotJobs to Monster Worldwide, where he had worked for five years before joining Yahoo. He is to be BranchOut’s vice president of sales and general manager of enterprise products.

BranchOut has about 500,000 users and is backed with $6 million from Accel Partners and other investors.

Did BranchOut, the company, recruit its new hire on BranchOut, the site? No. A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based start-up said BranchOut CEO Rick Marini “has known [Merritt] for a long time.”