Simply Hired fires a big part of its staff (exclusive)

Updated at 5:03 p.m. PT with more info about which teams were let go.

VentureBeat has learned that job search startup Simply Hired has laid off approximately 20 percent of its staff, according a source close to the company.

After repeated queries, the company would neither confirm nor deny the percentage of staff that it had laid off. However, it did admit that it had “consolidated” and “expanded operations offshore,” which means the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup has let go of at least some U.S. staffers. We left the door open for more information from the company, but it would only give us the following statement:

“As part of its 2012 strategy, Simply Hired made some changes to its organization,” said Simply Hired CEO Gautam Godhwani via e-mail. “We consolidated Bay Area operations to our new headquarters in Sunnyvale and expanded operations offshore. These changes were implemented at the start of the year as part of our annual planning process. The company is profitable with continued growth in Q1.”

Additionally, a second tipster has informed us that President/COO Dion Lim, VP of Sales Brian Corey, the QA team, and most of the sales team were let go in the layoffs.

Simply Hired competes with other job search sites like Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, and Dice. In mid-2010, the company took a big step with Facebook integration that would let you look up jobs based on where your friends work. As of today, the company counts LinkedIn, Twitter, PCWorld, BusinessWeek, and CNNMoney.com as partner sites. The company wouldn’t confirm how many employees it has, but 92 people listed themselves as employees of SimplyHired in professional profiles on LinkedIn.

In a second case of irony, Simply Hired owns the website www.simplyfired.com. When you go to simplyfired.com, the site re-directs to simplyhired.com. With regard to the layoffs, that’s unfortunate.

Simply Hired has raised $22.3 million in funding to date. It last raised $4.6 million in fourth-round capital in August 2009 from IDG Ventures and Foundation Capital. The company also had prior investments from Fox Interactive Media, Garage Technology Ventures, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, Guy Kawasaki, James Hong, and others.

If you know any other details about the Simply Hired layoffs (or any other pressing news), please drop us a line at tips@venturebeat.com.

Unemployed worker photo: Lasse Kristensen/Shutterstock