Social recruiting site bridges Facebook and LinkedIn

Smart recruiters are increasingly recognizing that resumes just aren’t enough to predict success in a job. Much the way MedRecruit incorporates lifestyle into the hiring picture and CareerTours uses video storytelling, KODA is a new site that aims to provide social recruiting capabilities that are “more professional than Facebook but more personal than LinkedIn.” Launched in late May, KODA allows emerging talent and smart companies to go beyond the resume or traditional job posting with employer and employee profiles that allow both sides of the hiring equation to get to know each other. Currently free to use during its beta period, the site allows users to post photos, PDFs and videos along with the information about their education, skills and experience that would normally be part of a hiring profile. Rather than providing long lists of opportunities, KODA focuses instead on matching talent with the right career and the right organization. Toward that end, it uses a recommendation engine to suggest connections that may be worth exploring. Specific opportunities get pulled from employers’ internal career pages for highlighting on the site, and companies can also give prospective employees a “look inside” their organization. Illustrative “compatibility bars,” meanwhile, indicate the compatibility between an individual and an opportunity or organization based on historical information, profile content and other criteria. As users look through KODA, they can send messages or bookmark profiles for future viewing. They can also “wave” at a particular organization that they would like to stay in contact with, causing a notification to be sent to that employer. Based in San Francisco—but with another branch to serve the transformation currently going on in New Orleans—KODA is also planning to add more functionality in the near future, including additional ways to publish opportunities, advanced search capabilities and printable KODA profiles. One to partner with and bring to the hiring front near you…? Spotted by: Cecilia Biemann