Around 3 years ago I started Standout Jobs with two great guys – Fred Ngo and Austin Hill. We raised money, built a great product, hired an incredible team and worked to build a business. Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve sold Standout Jobs.

I can’t name the acquirer at this point in time. I can tell you that I’m very excited to see what they do with Standout Jobs, because I fundamentally believe what we built and the vision we pushed will be standards in the recruitment industry for years to come. Companies that ignore their employer brands and don’t create a quality, interactive, candidate-centric hub on the Web for recruitment will lose.

It’s been an incredible journey. There are more people to thank than I have space for, but here we go just the same:

• My co-founders: I couldn’t have done it without Austin Hill and Fred Ngo. Great guys. True entrepreneurs.
• My team: We hired some of the best and brightest in Montreal. Many of those guys have gone on to do great things, and more is yet to come. It was by far the best team I’ve ever assembled (and yes, I’m thinking about the Avengers right now).
• My investors: We wouldn’t have survived without our investors. They committed very early on to us and our vision for recruitment and this company.
• The customers: Our customers were great – supportive, helpful, and eager to provide feedback.
• The recruitment industry: The entire industry welcomed Standout Jobs with open arms (OK, most of it!) I was able to connect with many of the thought leaders in the space and establish my own voice and network that was extremely valuable.

I’ve learned a LOT in this process. Most of which I’ll hopefully be able to share on this blog over the next little while. Most of the lessons were very hard ones. But I’m going to take some time to reflect properly, make copious notes, and figure out how to present 3 years of being smack in the middle of startup insanity.

Back to the acquisition — I’m in the midst of finalizing a short transition with the acquirer. That will be done soon. I’ve already started working on a couple new projects, but nothing I’m ready to announce just yet. So stay tuned!

Many years ago when I started blogging I wrote a lot about small business and blogging. How to blog well was all the rage back then, and I studied some of the greats, like Copyblogger and Liz Strauss. These days you see a lot more “how-to’s” for Twitter and social networking, but blogging still remains huge. And in my mind, absolutely critical for building authority and thought leadership.

In 2007 I started Standout Jobs and jumped headfirst into the HR/recruiting space. It’s been quite an experience.

Since that time I’ve been looking for ways to blend my knowledge and thoughts on blogging (+social media) and HR/recruiting. Recruiting is evolving at a faster pace than ever. And I don’t see that trend abating any time soon. If anything, things in HR/recruiting are going to get faster, crazier and much more interesting in years to come. But even as recruiters flock to Twitter as the next big thing in recruitment (and I do think it has HUGE potential), blogging remains one of the best ways to attract, engage and convert the right job seekers into candidates and hires.

With that in mind, I’m very pleased to publish A Definitive Guide to Corporate HR Blogging.

It was written with the great help of Susan Burns at Talent Synchronicity.

The Guide is a very how-to, practical walkthrough of blogging for corporate HR and corporate recruiters. There’s no shortage of great resources on blogging available online, but there’s a dearth of consolidated information when it comes to corporate HR blogging. And that’s a gap I hope we’ve filled.

The Guide is almost split in half — the first half making a case for blogging and helping you bring that case and value proposition to your organization. The second half focuses in on how to blog effectively, but with a corporate HR blogging spin/center.

We’ve compiled resources and expertise from across the Web – from HR bloggers, corporate bloggers, small business gurus and more. Thank yous need to go out to Intel, Amy Beth Hale, Ben Gotkin, RSM, Becky McCray, Laurie Ruettiman, Dan Schawbel, Jim Kukral, Willy Franzen, Barbara Adachi, Deloitte and others who provided their input, tips, etc.

Blogging is as relevant today as it’s always been, and it can serve as the cornerstone of a successful social media recruiting initiative. Hopefully this Guide brings you one step closer to success in that regard.

Get the Guide Now >>

I’m very pleased to announce that Standout Jobs has launched a new version of its product, a new website and our business model. There’s a whole ton of new stuff in fact, and this is just the beginning of many changes to come.

After launching Standout Jobs in late January 2008 we’ve spent the last 9 months or so working with 220+ beta customers, collecting feedback, testing, getting testimonials and case studies and learning. Shortly after launching we began work on the next version. In this day and age a software product’s lifecycle is pretty short, especially after first launching; we knew the first version wouldn’t last. So once it stabilized and we started bringing on customers and getting feedback, we put our heads down and got to work.

Along with the new product comes a bunch of other changes as well:

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