AllThingsD » HotJobs

JIBE Makes It Easier to Get Referred for the Job You Want

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:00:35 +0000

Everybody knows that when you’re looking for a new job, it helps to know someone who works where you want to work. More often than not, being referred for a job by someone on the inside is a big factor in getting or not getting the job.

Social networks — LinkedIn especially, but also Facebook — are supposed to make it easier for people to see who works where, and maybe do something about it. Once you’ve decided where it is you want to work, your second question is something like: “Do I know anyone who works there?” At which point, you trawl your network of friends. Often the search is unsatisfying for the job-seeker. “People hit a dead end too fast,” says CEO Joe Essenfeld (pictured). “Once you realize you know five people who work at the company you want, the question then becomes, ‘What do I do next?’”

And on the other side of the equation, employers don’t always have it easy, either. There are often hundreds of applicants to sort through. A good referral by an insider who knows the job could make all the difference. Companies often pay their employees a bounty for a successful referral, but it can be too much trouble to collect.

JIBE is a New York-based start-up that aims to turn both sides of that equation on their respective ears, and today it’s launching three products aimed at enterprise companies and the people who want to work for them.

The first is Get Referred. When you’re looking over a company’s Web site and see a job you want, wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly find out who you know who works there? JIBE’s Get Referred Web button will tell you right away. From there, you can ask someone you know to refer you. Already, Accenture, the IT consulting firm, has used the Get Referred tools to help it fill some of the 50,000 or 60,000 jobs it will have open this year.

The second new product is JIBE Apply, which makes it easier for companies to create mobile-ready versions of their job and career sites, by harnessing data from existing ATS — Application Tracking System — software.

Finally, JIBE Post makes it easier than ever to share new job postings on the social networks and job boards you want to send them to, not just the ones your ATS vendor has picked. Want to share a job posting on a weird combination of Monster and Facebook? Done — easily, and for a smaller cost than with other products.

JIBE has been on a bit of a tear in the last year. It has landed $6.9 million in venture capital investments from DFJ Gotham, Polaris Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Thrive Capital and Jason Calacanis’s Launch. That list is impressive in itself, but even more impressive is its list of customers. Aside from Accenture, companies as varied as Amazon, Bank of America, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Lockheed Martin are using it to find and recruit new employees. The plan over the next few quarters, Essenfeld says, is to add more large enterprise customers like these.

To that end, JIBE is adding new muscle to its sales team. Cindy Songne has joined as JIBE’s new VP for agency relations. Her last two jobs were at JobTarget and Monster Worldwide. Cindy Dole, an alum of Yahoo’s HotJobs who stayed on after Monster acquired it, is joining as director of enterprise sales for the West Coast region. She’s also worked at CareerBuilder.com. Tom Strauss will be director of enterprise sales for the Midwest region. Like Dole, he’s a Yahoo veteran.

If the point of helping people get referred for jobs they want seems a little trivial, it’s not. People who apply for a job, having been referred by someone they know, have one chance in 10 of getting that job, according to CareerXroads, a staffing firm. Compare that to applications submitted blindly, where the odds are more like one in 100. And it doesn’t just help the employee. Companies can sift through fewer resumes to find the right person, and are more likely to find someone who works out in the end, saving companies the costs associated with advertising open jobs, and then onboarding those they hire. Is it too corny to call that a “win-win”?

BranchOut Social Jobs Site Grabs a Yahoo Exec

Liz Gannes — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:05:17 +0000

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.”

Yahoo Tops Earnings Expectations, While Revenue Remains Weak (And Outlook Even Worse)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:17:26 +0000

Yahoo turned in a much-needed solid quarter in its third-quarter earnings report, with slightly better-than-expected net income, although still weak revenue.

Wall Street has been watching Yahoo’s performance closely this quarter, due to the swirl around the company over takeover scenarios, departed execs and general management mishegas.

Wall Street consensus was that Yahoo’s net income would rise to 15 cents a share from 13 cents a year ago and that revenue would be a flattish $1.13 billion.

Instead, Yahoo’s net revenue was $1.12 billion–which is with traffic acquisition costs taken out–on earnings of 29 cents a share. But net earnings per diluted share for the third quarter of 2010 included a benefit of 13 cents per diluted share related to the gain on the sale of HotJobs.

The revenue weakness is worrisome, as it indicates a lack of search advertising growth at Yahoo, even as competitors such as Facebook expand rapidly as social networking explodes.

In addition, Google also turned in stellar quarterly results earlier this week, along with Apple.

Even more important is a weaker outlook for the fourth quarter.

In addition, the key metric of page views was down four percent in the quarter, while employee growth was up seven percent.

Here is a link to BoomTown’s liveblogging of the analyst conference call, as well as the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s financial slides.

See it all below in the official press release:

YHOO Q310PressRelease Final

Weekend Update 02.06.10–The Winter Ain't Over Edition

Drake Martinet — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:30:42 +0000

Torrential rain in the West and a blizzard of death in the East can mean only one thing: Using a fat rodent to divine the weather is at at least as accurate as $100 million geosynchronous weather satellites. So as AllThingsD battens down the hatches on both coasts, Weekend Update is here to be the perfect accompaniment to hot tea and power-outage candles. So charge up the laptop while you can, and read on for a full week’s tech trends straight from our intrepid team.

Boomtown was in the front row when game exec Dan Rosensweig left the stage at Guitar Hero to take over as CEO of Chegg, the Web’s top textbook renter. Rosensweig had only been strumming along at Guitar Hero since March, so the move was unexpected. Kara did the full-disclosure dance with AOL’s earnings report. Hit her post for all sorts of great source documents from the new republic of Aol. (AOL). She closed out the week with a thinky piece on Facebook and what it could do in the news aggregation biz. With nigh 400 million users, the number of traded links just to Rick Astley music must be staggering. This one is worth the read.

From deep in his snow-covered technology bunker, Walt let fly a Personal Technology column on two tiny new laptops with a lot to offer. Dell’s (DELL) M11x, the latest release from its Alienware line, is a move to pack lots of power into a tiny package. Sony’s (SNE) Vaio X on the other hand, is all about the lightness. The Dell got high marks for performance, even if the battery life wasn’t as killer as the graphics. The Sony, however, received a rare Mossberg superlative. Being the lightest laptop Walt has ever tested does come with some drawbacks, of course. Chief among them was measly battery life. Mossberg’s Mailbox was short but potent this week. Walt gave some quick clarification to an iPad question and reassured readers that YouTube will be available on the device, even if Flash won’t. He then gave some no-nonsense advice about dumping the older IE6 in favor of a newer, safer, and more supported browser. Katie got to do a little online shopping this week in her review of Flit.com, a Web service that allows you to search multiple stores at once and aims to streamline the shopping experience. She liked the novel way Flit deals you out to store’s Web sites but lets you see their offerings before you click over. No word on if whether or not she bought those black heels she was looking for.

John brought some great news to Google Nexus One users with a post early this week about a meaty software upgrade. Just like that, Google (GOOG) flipped the switch on multitouch functionality in the device. We can now add pinch-zoom to the list of Googleable words. It seems that 12 percent of Americans had something in common with Monster.com (MWW) this week; they were both looking for job listings. Monster purchased Yahoo’s HotJobs for $225 million cash. We drove by earlier today, and Carol Bartz still has Yahoo (YHOO) Games and Yahoo Shopping out on the lawn next to the “for sale” sign. John rounded out the week with a little crystal ball-gazing about the future of Apple and TV. The speculation is centered around Apple’s (AAPL) recent moves in the TV space and how the iPad might play a role. We can add TV to the list of things the iPad might be.

MediaMemo always gets to cover those wonderfully chewy stories where the tech sector and the mediascape bump and grind. This week Peter opened up with a post about YouTube’s most recent foray into legitimate movies. The Google-owned video giant offered up paid views of Sundance films and considered the effort an overall success. One of the big what-ifs of 2009 was actually more of a “when,” as in, “when will Hulu start costing money?” Peter reported that a Disney (DIS) exec said the decision hasn’t yet been made. Weekend Update will be stocking up on old episodes of “The A-Team” and “Another World” in case Hulu finally puts up the wall. Peter rounded out the week with the answer to a question that’s been on our minds for some time now; will we live in a world with a publicly traded porn Web site. When investors didn’t seem to be hot for FriendFinder Networks, the company canceled its pending IPO. Weekend Update supposes that porn will just have to remain the Web’s biggest nonindustry.

Put on your rain slickers or snow shoes, depending on where you live, and enjoy the winter weekend. Or, you could stay indoors and play some Guitar Hero, futz with a new laptop, hunt for a job, shop for some shoes online and watch TV at Hulu. That’s what we’ve been doing.

HotJobs Sold to Monster in Yahoo Garage Sale

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:43:45 +0000

Apparently, Yahoo’s efforts to sell off some of its noncore properties are going quite a bit better than previously thought. Moments ago, the company said it will sell Yahoo HotJobs to Monster Worldwide (MWW), proprietor of rival online career site Monster.com. Price: $225 million in cash.

The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, involves a three-year traffic agreement under which Monster will become the provider of career and job content on the Yahoo (YHOO) homepage in the U.S. and Canada.

Obviously a smart move for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who has been trying to narrow the company’s focus to its core portal business–most recently by selling email technology provider Zimbra to VMware (VMW).

Now, if only Bartz can unload Yahoo Games and Yahoo Shopping.

The release, below.

Monster to Acquire HotJobs Business and Enter into Multi-year Traffic Agreement with Yahoo!
NEW YORK & MAYNARD, Mass., Feb 03, 2010 —— Monster Worldwide, Inc. (MWW 16.42, +0.38, +2.37%) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of Yahoo! HotJobs, a leading online recruitment website, from Yahoo! (YHOO 15.46, +0.29, +1.91%) for $225 million in cash. Monster and Yahoo! have also entered into a three year commercial traffic agreement, to take effect upon the closing of the acquisition, in which Monster will become Yahoo!‘s provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada. The traffic agreement calls for performance based annual payments calculated by clicks and expressions of interest, subject to annual floors and ceilings. In addition, the traffic agreement provides Monster with an exclusive right for a period of time following the closing of the acquisition to negotiate similar traffic agreements with Yahoo! properties on a global basis, including countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, subject to certain limitations.

“HotJobs with its significant customer base plus the traffic agreement are an ideal complement to Monster’s innovative recruitment solutions and global reach,” said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Monster Worldwide. “These agreements, combined with Monster’s career Communities and our recently introduced 6Sense(TM) semantic search technology, will bring substantial new benefits for employers seeking more qualified candidates and job seekers searching for more relevant opportunities across a wider range of industries—globally.”

“Bringing together Monster and HotJobs creates even greater access and opportunities for both recruiters and job seekers,” said Hilary Schneider, EVP, Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO). “The transaction with Monster enables us to continue to provide an important service to our users through the traffic agreement. Yahoo! remains focused on its core businesses and delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers.”

Monster believes that the acquisition of HotJobs and the traffic agreement with Yahoo! will provide a number of benefits to jobseekers and employers, who today have more diverse competitive choices than ever before, and a value to all of its stakeholders, including its shareholders. These include:

Anticipated increase in job matches and search efficiencies–By bringing more diverse job and career opportunities, tools and resources together in one place, employers and job seekers will enjoy greater convenience and more precise search results and better matches with Monster’s patented 6Sense(TM) search technology and other innovative products.

Expected expansion of job seeker pool for employers–Monster will be able to offer its employers a significantly larger pool of candidates across diverse geographies and industries. Based on Media Metrix comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) reporting, last year HotJobs averaged 12.6 million unique visitors per month.

Expected expansion of the number of job postings across industries for job seekers–Through the combination of Monster and HotJobs job postings, job seekers will have access to more job opportunities in one place in those industries currently leading job creation, including healthcare, finance and insurance, retail, manufacturing, information and wholesale trade.

Broader reach anticipated for recruitment advertising through additional media alliances and reseller agreement–With the addition of HotJobs’s network of more than 600 daily and weekly newspapers, Monster’s alliances with local papers will grow to a total of approximately 1,000, giving Monster reach in all 50 states. The additional newspaper alliances, through their online and print classified ads, will further Monster’s current strategy of connecting job seekers with smaller, local businesses, particularly in healthcare, education, and skilled and hourly job categories.

Yahoo! will continue to manage its broader Newspaper Consortium (NPC) partnership, including providing both search and display advertising, content distribution, and its ad-serving platform, to newspapers in its NPC.

The transaction is subject to clearance under Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is currently expected to close sometime during the third quarter of 2010, subject to regulatory review. Monster expects to realize operating synergies from the acquisition and currently anticipates the transaction will be breakeven on a pro forma full year earnings in 2010 and accretive thereafter, inclusive of the costs incurred under the traffic agreement.

Stone Key Partners LLC and Bank of America Merrill Lynch acted as financial advisors to Monster in connection with this transaction. Allen & Company LLC provided a fairness opinion to Monster’s Board.

Monster Devours Hotjobs

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:00:46 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Yahoo Hires New M&A Head–But Whither Greg Mrva?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:12:50 +0000

Yahoo has hired a new head of mergers and acquisitions–former General Electric (GE) M&A exec Andrew Siegel, who will now be VP of corporate development.

Yahoo (YHOO) CFO Tim Morse dropped the news with exactly no details about that title in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings.

Another question apparently not answered was what exactly is the status of its current top M&A exec, Greg Mrva–who has had the title Siegel has now posted on his LinkedIn profile–as well as that of VP of mergers and acquisitions more recently.

In other words: Where the heck is Greg?

BoomTown was considering a search party–get it?–if Yahoo hadn’t outsourced that to Microsoft (MSFT). Thus, Plan B: Mrva milk cartons!

On Facebook, Mrva is still listed as being in the Yahoo network, although there was a report floated recently by Silicon Alley Insider that he was asked by Morse to leave his M&A job at Yahoo and find a new one at the company.

Whatever the situation–either Mrva running it with Siegel or being hipchecked out by him–helming M&A at Yahoo can’t be a fun job right now, given that the company has been looking to sell quite a few of its assets, including its Zimbra open-source email business, its personals unit, its HotJobs online classified business and many more to come, said sources.

In fact, in a recent post, BoomTown wrote: “Mrva’s new job title should be: VP of un-mergers and de-acquisitions.”

The effort to unload big swathes of Yahoo is part of an aim by new management to slim down its diverse portfolio, even as it strives to redefine itself with a new, pricey marketing campaign that seeks to position the company primarily as a consumer offering.

Mrva has been the main exec shopping Yahoo properties around, according to many sources, a job that will now apparently be Siegel’s.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has said the company is also looking for acquisitions, mostly small, so perhaps there will be more to do for the company’s dealmakers than running an Internet garage sale.

I contacted Yahoo to find out what’s up with Siegel and Mrva, a well-liked exec in Silicon Valley, and also have reached out to him. When either responds with anything of note, I will update here.

Yahoo Adds Zimbra to the Garage Sale as It Tries to Shed What Isn't "You!"

Kara Swisher — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:16:05 +0000

According to numerous sources, Yahoo has been shopping around Zimbra, the open-source email company it bought in late 2007 for $350 million.

Zimbra is only one of the many assets of Yahoo (YHOO) that are now on the block, including its personals business, its HotJobs online classified unit and many more to come, said sources.

The effort to unload Zimbra is yet another sign that the company is trying to slim down its diverse portfolio, even as it strives to redefine itself this week with a new, pricey marketing campaign that seeks to position Yahoo primarily as a consumer company.

As first reported by BoomTown last week, Yahoo will be introducing a massive branding campaign tomorrow on the second day of Advertising Week in New York.

The new focus Yahoo is aiming for with advertisers is to stress its huge size and scale with consumers. The troubled Internet giant is still one of the most trafficked sites on the Web.

And consumers will also be reminded of this. The Wall Street Journal wrote a follow-up story yesterday on the marketing effort, noting that the $100 million campaign’s tagline is “It’s You.”

Get it? The “Y” in Yahoo is the same as the one in You!

The details of the plan will be made public tomorrow at a press conference immediately after a keynote speech–titled “Yahoo’s Consumer Revolution…Round II”–that the company’s new CMO, Elisa Steele, is set to deliver at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference.

The goal, said several sources at Yahoo, will be to stress Yahoo’s consumer business over all others, which are supported mostly via brand advertising, leaving more extraneous ones out in the cold.

Which is why Zimbra–like a lot of other Yahoo properties–is being shopped around by its top mergers and acquisitions exec, Greg Mrva and others.

(Mrva’s new job title should be: VP of un-mergers and de-acquisitions.)

Backed by Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners, Zimbra was an innovative start-up whose main business was to provide clients–including Comcast (CMCSA), many ISPs and a number of colleges–with white-label email software capabilities.

Yahoo bought the company to goose that business, whose main rival has been Google (GOOG)–along with using Zimbra technology to improve its massive consumer email offering, also under siege from Google.

That integration has gone slowly, and Yahoo now has less interest in selling email products to others.

But the price Yahoo would get, many think, would be significantly lower that what it paid for Zimbra.

Nonetheless, potential buyers include Comcast and Google, as well as private-equity investors.

In addition, it is not out of the question that its former venture investors could be interested in a classic Silicon Valley buyback.

Zimbra’s founder and CEO, Satish Dharmaraj, who left Yahoo earlier this year, is now working at Redpoint.

Here is a video interview I did with Dharmaraj in early 2008, after the Yahoo deal was struck:

[ See post to watch video ]

Yahoo's Jumpcut Pushed Off Cliff (But You Can Send Your Videos to Yahoo's Flickr!)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:01:29 +0000

You could see this one coming a mile out: After telling users they could not upload new videos late last year, Yahoo is finally shutting down Jumpcut.

“This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!,” said Jumpcut in a note to users today.

That’s code for the stylings of new CEO Carol Bartz, who is hard at work axing many of Yahoo’s similarly lagging services.

She has reportedly been readying plans to sell off Yahoo’s lackluster HotJobs employment listing service, for example. And there will surely be more to come, from the many companies Yahoo has gobbled up in the last few years and has done nothing much with.

Such as the sassy video editing service, which was bought by Yahoo in 2006 amid high hopes of the Internet giant becoming a big player in the hot online video market.

That honor, as it turned out, went to YouTube, which was more cats-on-skateboards-oriented than tools-oriented.

Yahoo (YHOO), ironically, was poised to buy YouTube in the month after it grabbed Jumpcut, until it was snatched away in a last-minute acquisition grab by Google (GOOG).

Now, Jumpcut is a wrap.

Curiously, Yahoo is making users download the videos to their computers, and then suggests they upload them to another Yahoo property, Flickr, which now allows video.

Why the company doesn’t just let people migrate the videos is probably due to the silos of tech at Yahoo, which are infamous and which the company is trying to fix.

But not today.

Thus, Jumpcut sent this note to its customers:

Dear Jumpcut user,

After careful consideration, we will be officially closing the Jumpcut.com site on June 15, 2009. This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!

Very soon, we’ll be releasing a software utility that will allow you to download the movies you created on Jumpcut to your computer. We’ll send instructions to this email address when the download utility is available.

Once you download your movies, you may choose to upload them to another site such as Flickr, which now allows video uploads. You can find out more here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/video/

Thanks for your understanding and thanks for being a part of Jumpcut.

The Jumpcut Team

And, for a trip down memory lane to happier times, here is the memo Yahoo wrote when it bought the San Francisco start-up:

SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

Jumpcut Joins the Yahoo! Video Family

Yes it’s true!

Jumpcut just announced they’ve agreed to join us, which will make Yahoo! Video an even better place for people to create, share, and discover great video online. If you haven’t heard of Jumpcut, it’s a San Francisco-based startup that has a passionate community of users and a great suite of online video editing capabilities.

Ever since Yahoo! Research Berkeley launched the International Remixer, our interest in this space has been pretty clear–we couldn’t stop talking about how cool it is to mashup multimedia of all kinds.

So needless to say, we are very happy to have Jumpcut join the Social Media group here. They’ll be bunk-mates with Flickr, and just around the virtual corner from Delicious, and Upcoming.

Please head over to Jumpcut’s blog for the official word.

Jason Zajac
VP Social Media

At South by Southwest, a Web 1.0 Blast From the Past

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:24:34 +0000

True story: The guy behind me in the cab line at the Austin airport offers to split a car. He seems nice enough, and once we’re in the cab we get to talking. I’m in from New York to check out South by Southwest interactive, the nerd spring break/convention. He’s from Wilmington, N.C. I tell him what I do. He tells me that he doesn’t have a job right now because his company got sold to Yahoo.

Wait a minute. Yahoo (YHOO) hasn’t bought anybody for quite some time. When did his company get acquired? 2002, he tells me. And the reason Richard Johnson hasn’t worked since then is because he didn’t have to. He was the founder of HotJobs, which Yahoo bought for $436 million in cash and stock.

Johnson, who’s a very pleasant fellow, says he hasn’t been in a coma since then. He’s invested in some companies, including stock photo agency Photoshelter. But he’s also spent a lot of time fly-fishing in Wyoming, and says he hasn’t felt compelled to start up something new because he hasn’t found anything that both excites him and that he understands. But he’s hoping that might happen in Austin this weekend.

So there you are: A walking, talking winner from the Web 1.0 era, here to poke around the deflating Web 2.0 bubble for opportunity. Johnson’s particularly interested in Present.ly, a Facebooky/Twittery tool for enterprise customers–he knows the company’s founder and has volunteered to work at the start-up’s booth so he can get a better handle on the business.

Drop by and say hello–and if you get a chance, ask him about his company’s then-famous ad that didn’t run in the 1999 Superbowl.

[Image credits: Bubble/Pink Sherbet Photography; Johnson/University of North Carolina Wilmington]

Almost-Yahoo Bradford (and Her New Boss, Schneider) Speak!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:28:27 +0000

After the news broke that former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford was on her way to Yahoo as the head of its U.S. ad sales and more, I talked to both her and her new boss, Hilary Schneider, on the phone this morning about the move.

While the pair (pictured here, Schneider on the left and Bradford on the right) would not give specifics about how Bradford was hired, they both noted that they had gotten to know each other over the past year.

And Bradford added that she had met Yahoo (YHOO) President Sue Decker at a poker table several years ago while attending a women’s executive conference run by Fortune magazine.

“I won,” said Bradford proudly. “I beat her and everyone else [at the table].”

How much does BoomTown like a person who insults her uber-boss’s card-playing skills before she even starts?

Very much!

Actually, sharp gambling skills and a little in-your-face style are probably just what Yahoo needs, as the U.S. economy continues to tank and the company tries to recover from the Microsoft (MSFT) takeover debacle.

Combined with management drift and employee turmoil over the last year, Yahoo’s ad business has suffered accordingly.

“I had a laser-like focus on bringing in Joanne,” said Schneider, who said she always asks ad clients who most impacts their online strategy and Bradford’s name kept popping up. “There was a kinetic energy that made it a good fit.”

Bradford is taking over the job of Dave Karnstedt, who is headed to Silicon Valley VC firm Redpoint Ventures as an executive-in-residence. His departure has been long rumored internally.

According to sources, Bradford was unhappy at Spot Runner, the ad-services start-up that has received truckloads of funding, and even more attention when Bradford arrived.

Whatever the case, the former Microsoft exec left her job as national ad sales chief at Spot Runner, where she arrived just six months ago, to take the position of SVP of U.S. revenue and development at Yahoo.

Bradford will oversee sales, market development for advertisers, small business and HotJobs at Yahoo. She will report to Schneider, who is EVP of Yahoo’s U.S unit.

It will be a very tough gig. Yahoo is facing that soft U.S. economy, a weakened stock price after the takeover attempt by Microsoft and justifiable questions among advertisers about its effectiveness, as other sites like Facebook grow faster and with more attractive demographics.

Yahoo is likely to also have to deal with new regulatory scrutiny of its ad businesses, since it was reported yesterday that the Justice Department might block the deal Yahoo recently struck to outsource some of its ad sales to Google (GOOG).

Bradford insisted that Yahoo was still a major force, underscoring that for all its troubles, the company remains one of the top online ad sellers: “My approach has always been about giving advertisers the product they want. … Yahoo has a lot of assets for me to play with.”

Schneider added that the job Bradford has is larger than Karnstedt’s, in order to be able to offer ad clients as many different kinds of Yahoo ad product as possible in an integrated solution.

“It is a different role in that it aggregates all of ad revenue … and touches teams in all of our ad businesses,” said Schneider, who noted Bradford’s job does not include its overseeing its publishing relationships, including a controversial recent deal with Google. “It’s the whole magillah.”

And Bradford knows from gorillas. Previous to Spot Runner, she was a VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network and has worked at the software giant for a long time.

At Yahoo, where she will start in two weeks, she will not be the only former Microsoft exec–content head Scott Moore, who also reports to Schneider, was a longtime exec there.

It’s a sneaky kind of Microsoft invasion, if you think about it.

Bradford, who left Microsoft right after it made the now-failed bid for Yahoo, said she looks forward to wrangling with her former company in the ad market, especially now that Yahoo has to carve out new roads following its decision to resist.

“Everyone needs good competition, and it will be fun to compete [with Microsoft],” said Bradford. “I think Yahoo is at an interesting point of changing and growing its businesses … but it is still in a leadership position and there is a story to be told around that.”

Yahoo Brings In–Drum Roll, Please–a Former Microsoft Exec to Head U.S. Ad Sales

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:43:06 +0000

In what is both a surprising and not-so-surprising move, Yahoo has replaced its top U.S. ad sales exec with one from Microsoft.

The departure of Dave Karnstedt, who took over last year when longtime Yahoo ad sales exec Wenda Millard left Yahoo in the first of many controversial partings, has been long rumored internally.

(In fact, I have driven one of Yahoo’s PR people crazy in recent months trying to verify a persistent tip I had been getting that he was headed out the door.)

Karnstedt will be joining Redpoint Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture firm, as an executive-in-residence.

And, in a rejiggering and addition of duties at Yahoo (YHOO), Karnstedt’s job and more is going to Joanne Bradford (pictured here), a longtime and well-known Microsoft (MSFT) exec who decamped from the software giant to helm national ad sales at trendy ad services start-up Spot Runner just six months ago.

There have been rumors swirling that Bradford was unhappy at the smaller company after working at the giant Microsoft.

She was EVP of National Marketing Services, focused on national advertisers, for Spot Runner, joining in a high-profile move in March. Previous to Spot Runner, Bradford was a VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network, and had worked at BusinessWeek before that.

In any case, the move will be seen as a blow to Spot Runner, which recently did some unusual layoffs, despite receiving a large slug of cash from investors.

(Here is a post and video I did on a recent trip to Spot Runner, including an interview with its CEO Nick Grouf.)

“I am going back to my entrepreneurial, build-something roots,” Bradford told me at the time she joined Spot Runner. “There is such inefficiency in buying and selling of advertising and someone has to solve that, both for big companies and small ones.”

Well, welcome to Yahoo, Joanne, which could use a little efficiency in its buying and selling of ad sales!

Seriously, Bradford will now will take over as SVP of U.S. revenue and market development at Yahoo at a very dicey time.

Besides facing a withering U.S. economy, a weakened stock price after the takeover attempt by Microsoft and ensuing mess related to it, it was revealed that the Justice Department might block the deal Yahoo recently struck to outsource some of its ad sales to Google (GOOG).

Yahoo said that in this newly created role Bradford will oversee sales, market development for advertisers, small business and HotJobs. She will report to Hilary Schneider, EVP of Yahoo’s U.S unit.

Karnstedt, whom I interviewed when he first took over ad sales a little more than a year ago, is leaving to pursue other opportunities.

In Silicon Valley, that means the inevitable stop at a VC firm. Hence, Redpoint!

Interestingly, he joins former Ask.com head Jim Lanzone at Redpoint, while former Yahoo execs Jeff Weiner (Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital) and David Goldberg (Benchmark) also landed cushy EIR gigs after leaving Yahoo.

Karnstedt had been SVP of U.S. sales at Yahoo and had apparently resigned from the company earlier this summer (thanks for not confirming that when I asked so many times, Yahoo!)

With Yahoo seven years, he was charged with the difficult task of integrating Yahoo’s search, display, Blue Lithium and Right Media sales teams.

And while Karnstedt was well liked, many complained that the longtime online ad techie was not enough of a gregarious and schmoozy ad sales exec, with deep relationships on Madison Avenue, as Millard–and Bradford–surely are.

As I wrote in Aug. 2007, after an interview with him at Yahoo’s New York offices:

I made the point to Dave (he is the kind of guy you can call Dave, as you can see pictured here) that an ad guy needs to sell himself, but to no avail, so we press on in text. Nonetheless, let me set the visual scene:

Nicest guy you ever want to meet walks into nondescript room, wearing khaki-oxford-jacket Internet uniform 101. Declares Yahoo is going to kick some advertising butt in the nicest possible way. It is revealed this nice guy has been around the Web block for quite a while. Much chitter-chatter ensues. Cut to my clear-as-Fiji-water observation that nice guy, as nice as he is, has his work cut out for him.”

And now, more than ever in Yahoo’s key ad market, so does Bradford.