Career-building website The Muse is taking money so you can be making money. That is, it announced a $1.2 million round of seed funding to build-up its beautifully designed job and company listings.

“We had a tough time initially talking with investors,” said chief executive Kathryn Minshew in an interview with VentureBeat, “In the early days we were often perceived as purely a content site and that really hurt us. Being accepted into yc was definitely a turning point.”

The Muse is focused on your job search. According to Minshew it acts as the “gateway” between you and a job, vetting companies and profiling them on the website. Candidates can search for companies to get a feel fro their leadership and work environments, and can also see testimonials from up to three different employees who work at that company. You can also search for job listings or read The Daily Muse, a Huffington Post-like content section where volunteer contributors write pieces on careers.

It makes money by changing companies to be profiled and list their jobs on The Muse, which currently has three million users, 700,000 of which are active monthly. Minshew says that her team likely won’t use the vetting model forever, one day opening the site to any company who wants to sign up, but for now she wants to guarantee the quality of each listing.

The company plans on using the money to hire more engineers and build out a sales team. It will also release a new product that can look at your personality and interests and suggest job openings to you.

Originally, the site started out as a female-focused job search site called The Daily Muse, and its three female founders — Minshew and her co-founders Alex Cavoulacos and Melissa McCreery — who did not know how to code, but did have a product vision. Since it was so content-focused, investors were worried about their prospects. They may have also been worried about the lack of technical talent on the team.

“I’ve seen teams where you have the hacker, the hustler, and the designer that all think the same and I think that can be very dangerous,” said Minshew, “I think whats important is that you team be balanced, not necessarily that your team fit into specific roles.”

The funding finally came in July 2012, though Minshew decided not to reveal the round until now. It was provided by Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Great Oak Ventures, The Lean Startup’s Eric Ries, and a number of angels.

Other tech companies on the list include SAS in second place, cloud services company NetApp at number six, and Qualcomm, Salesforce.com, and Intuit in the top 25. Rackspace clocks in at #22, Intel at #68, and Microsoft at #75.

Apple didn’t make the list, nor did Facebook.

My big question: How is this list made? What data goes into the mix? SAS is the second-best place to work in America? Really? And Wegman’s Food Market is the fifth best? Is retirement planning and personal financial services so much fun that Edward Jones is the eighth-best company?

Part of it is turnover — how many employees leave. And part of it is perks — the prototypical foosball tables and free food. Another part is salaries.

That can all be judged from the descriptions that Fortune includes in its blurbs about each company, and they make sense. But nowhere can I find an actual methodology — what data the publication looked at, what weighting each piece of data had, and why some companies appear on the list while others do not.

Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft topped LinkedIn’s list of most desirable employers, with Twitter not far behind. And college students have quite different ideas about who they want to work for.

Fortune’s list, which doubtless contains many good companies, ranks SAS second partly because it has two artists in residence. Really? And CGH Healthcare Services is third because its employees can compete in talent shows and have dress-up days in which they can “dress as your favorite president.”

I’ve contacted Fortune for details and will update if the company responds.

Meanwhile, here are the top 10:

1. Google
2. SAS
3. CGH Healthcare Services
4. Boston Consulting Group
5. Wegman’s Food Markets
6. NetApp
7. Hilcorp Energy Company
8. Edward Jones
9. Ultimate Software
10. Camden Property Trust

photo credit: @FiverWeed via photopin cc

Washington state is the toughest recruiting market for companies looking for agile developers, according to staffing and recruiting agency Yoh … which makes it the best place to be looking for a job. California is not far behind, with San Francisco being the city with the highest ration of open jobs to job-seekers in the agile market.

Yoh and jobs site CareerBuilder say that the imbalance is resulting in impressive earning opportunities for Java developers, web developers, project managers, business analysts, and .Net developers. Agile developers are getting average salaries of $110,781 — and a 90th percentile salary in the $160,000 to 170,000 range — as startups, development shops, and established enterprises such as Microsoft, IBM, and Northrop Grumman compete for scarce talent.

The states with the most demand include:

• Washington
• Oregon
• California
• Utah
• Minnesota
• New York
• Massachusetts

The cities with the most talent, however, have only a partial overlap — which means that developers who are willing to move could see impressive income gains.

• San Jose
• Chicago
• New York
• Houston
• Atlanta
• Austin
• Dallas

Here’s the full infographic:

photo credit: Tess Aquarium via photopin cc

The infographic is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on work by Yoh at www.agiletalentstudy.com.

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This guest post was written by oDesk CEO Gary Swart.

Next year we may not be commuting to work in flying cars yet, but it won’t really matter—many of us won’t be commuting to work at all. It’s no secret that telecommuting, flexible work arrangements, distributed teams and even entirely virtual companies have exploded over the past few years. We’re bringing the work to the workers, reversing the almost antiquated model of bringing workers to the work. And in doing so, the way we work is changing rapidly, with everything from organizational structures and team workflows to career paths and education undergoing radical shifts.

Here are four trends I believe we’ll see in 2013:

Specialists will dominate the job market

In the past, being highly specialized in one thing wasn’t usually viable; there just wasn’t enough volume to support it. Today, the Internet is cracking open the potential market available to specialists, creating a long tail of opportunity that not only supports them but seeks them out. Just as Amazon.com created a market for lesser-known books, online workplaces are doing the same for specific experts not commonly available in many local markets.For example, Toronto entrepreneur Sima Gandhi needed a Portuguese translator this year to help with business she was doing in Angola. While finding such a specific and somewhat rare skill was challenging locally, she was able to find a translator online who actually lives in Portugal. The working relationship has already lasted for half a year, and is a win for Sima—who found her specialized worker—as well as for her contractor, who is now a resource for someone halfway around the world.

In 2013, deeper focus will be considered basic career guidance, especially as higher demand for specialization leads to higher compensation.

Custom catered education

To support this career specialization, education will become more customized as well—it will be broken down into smaller, more focused units of learning. We’ve already witnessed the rise of online coursework (as seen in Coursera and Khan Academy), and 2013 will see the emergence of extremely short-term online courses and trainings in very specific skill sets (such as through Lynda.com and Code Academy). This shift towards modular, highly personalized education will enable professionals to learn the specialized skills they’ll need to be competitive and keep pace with the rapidly changing skills landscape.

Big use of big data powering agile staffing

To stay competitive, businesses are moving faster than ever, and creating flexible teams that they can adapt as dynamics change. However, this “need for speed” has to be balanced with process analysis if a business is going to be both fast and successful. Businesses that are using big data to streamline their processes will start applying this analysis to hiring and managing. In 2013, analytics-driven HR will become an important way for companies to gauge the effectiveness of things like team structure, individual progress, collaboration tools, workflows and decision-making processes, and working relationships between team members. Examining data on team interactions and outcomes will help teams keep moving in the right direction even while sprinting.

A new disruptive skill will emerge

If next year will be the year of specialization, what will be the next big skill to specialize in? It likely doesn’t exist yet. Look at mobile apps, for example, and you can see how quickly high-demand skills take off. I work for online workplace oDesk, and while in Q3 2008, businesses spent $62,500 on mobile app development through the site; in Q3 2012, they spent $6.3 million, and that’s still growing at a rate of 133 percent year-over-year.

Interestingly enough, two of the biggest growth skills we’re seeing on oDesk right now are HR (at 272 percent growth this year) and statistical analysis (at 190 percent growth this year), already bearing out the trend towards analytics-driven hiring and managing. In fact, we’ve even seen job posts in those categories that are as granular as a “LinkedIn Specialist” or “Yelp Researcher & Analyst.”Career success today is about watching skills as they emerge, customizing your education, and not being afraid to dive into that niche specialty you’ve always been interested in — it could be the big skill of tomorrow.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos via photopin cc

But, for at least an hour, there was a job posting on the UK government’s website for an James Bond-style “elimination specialist.” And yeah, the job code was 007.

MI6/SIS is looking for a Target Elimination Specialist. Get the full details from DirectGov: jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/GetJob.aspx?Jo…

—
John Graham-Cumming (@jgrahamc) November 23, 2012

The link is now expired, but when it was live The Telegraph took a screen capture of the listing. While the salary is nothing to write home about — 50-60,000 pounds — performance bonuses are available. And the perks are pretty hot: jet packs, mini submarines, and yes, a Walther PPK pistol.

Source: Wikipedia

A Walther PPK

Prior military history is preferred, especially sniper experience, and interested applicants must be willing to “work on a non-attributable basis” and take care of people “whose continued existence poses a risk to the effective conduct of public order.”

Three big clues that this is a spoof?

One, the hours of work contain a misspelling: “flexitime” rather than “flextime.” Two, the ridiculous suggestion that to apply, interested parties should “express their interest somewhere near the large and rather fake-looking rock in Regent’s Park.” And three, the job reference code is the famous 007.

Oh, not to mention the email for more information: mi6recruitment@hotmail.com.

James Bond most certainly does not use Hotmail.

Here’s the supposed job posting:

Source: The Telegraph

The “James Bond” posting

photo credit: johanoomen via photopin cc

At first.

In fact, according to HiredMyWay, 80 percent of job-seekers are happy to spend a few dollars to ensure their resume doesn’t immediately get round-filed … or lost in the depths of an automated candidate tracking system.

The hiring and recruiting space is extremely noisy right now. From gamified social hiring to daily deals for jobs to  eHarmony for careers to video-based hiring to more video-based hiring to even more video-based hiring – many startups are attacking this market.

This tumult is reflects the noise for recruiters and hiring managers, who review an average of 219 resumes before hiring a candidate, according to HiredMyWay. But chief executive Matt Mosher says that number drops by a factor to ten when using his company’s solution.

“Companies are inundated with resumes,” Mosher says. “What we’ve done is eliminate the spray-and-pray by asking candidates to invest a few dollars in exchange for a guarantee that the hiring manager will look at their resume.”

A job on HiredMyWay

The theory is that when no limit exists on the number of resumes a candidate can send out, job-seekers send out hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. But if a cost — $5 — comes with the application, people will only apply to jobs they think they actually are qualified for, can get, and are passionate about.

“We’re a hybrid between a recruiter and job board,” Mosher says. “We provide a company what a job board would give them but offer more of the result that a recruiter would provide.”

It’s free for companies to post jobs. With each job, however, the company posts how much they’re willing to invest to find a successful candidate, from $500 and up. The higher that amount, the more exposure they get on the site, and the higher the referral bonus.

When a hiring decision is made, the cash is split evenly between the referrer, the successful candidate, and HiredMyWay.

Doyle Mosher, the company’s chief strategist, first funder, and yes, father of the CEO, says  HiredMyWay’s system has other benefits.

“Companies have become more scientific and less emotional in their hiring,” he says, noting that companies rely on automated candidate tracking system which filter candidates by keywords and skills. “What we’ve found is that people who have been rejected by hiring systems can come in and get hired via HiredMyWay.”

In other words, once the noise is out of the system, recruiters can focus on the human element again. It’s not just the algorithm anymore. And that, Mosher senior says, helps companies distinguish between people who might not be the perfect candidate when reduced to zeroes and ones, but might just have the passion and drive and determination that will make him or her a stellar hire.

So far, 1,500 companies have posted jobs, and 45,000 candidates have registered, as the company has had mostly a regional focus in the midwest: Detroit and Chicago. HiredMyWay is currently adding 100 new employers a month, but that number should jump quickly as the company expands in the next few months to New York, Boston, San Francisco, and L.A.

After initial self-funding — the Moshers own a successful real estate development business – the company has already raised an initial $3 million single investment round Detroit Venture Partners and a pool of local angels. The money will come in handy in HireMyWay’s planned expansion.

What might come in even more handy is that HiredMyWay has created a recruiting model that is clearly differentiated from so many of the other startups focused on the hiring process.

photo credit: bgottsab via photo pin cc

It’s official: social media is here to stay, and companies late to jump on the social train are scrambling to snatch up the social butterflies of the online world to humanize their brands.

With the ad-skipping mentality and technologies available to customers today, soft-sell social marketing seems to be the saving grace of the advertising world. Customers now opt to do their own research instead of being bombarded with annoying, impersonal ads – so someone had better be at the helm when customers come calling. Employees are jumping at the chance to be that social helmsman, too. With perks like working from home or a coffee shop and bragging to their friends how they are professional Facebookers, social media jobs equate to a win-win situation and business is a boomin’.

The infographic embedded below, created by OnwardSearch, exemplifies the demand for talented online socialites by displaying the social media job listing densities across the nation, percentages of available jobs in the social field, and the salary for those positions.

How do you feel about companies having a presence on social media? Think you have what it takes to represent someone other than yourself across an increasingly dynamic myriad of social networks? How does social media work for you?

Brian Wallace is the President of NowSourcing, a premier social media firm specializing in infographic design, development and content marketing promotion. The company is based in Louisville, Ky. and works with companies that range from small business to Fortune 500.

Infographic via OnwardSearch (Click image to enlarge)