Friday, September 26, 2008

PeopleAhead jumps into crowded job site waters

By Christopher Calnan

A new Waltham company wants job hunters to find jobs without having to go through the trouble of looking for them.

PeopleAhead Inc. connects a job seeker’s resume to a prospective employer’s need based on users’ online profiles. But the three-person startup is entering a tough market with plenty of competition and a trend toward consolidation.

PeopleAhead, which was founded in 2006, lists member profiles for free and charges employers a fee for PeopleAhead to match what the employers are seeking to the member profiles it has listed. The approach is designed to obviate the need for experienced workers to crawl online job boards, CEO Carlos Larracilla said.

So far, the website has attracted just 1,000 members, but the company has been funded by angel investors, according to co-founder Thomas Chevalier, who declined disclose the amount.
Nationally, the automated hiring software market is growing at nearly 17 percent a year, according to Lisa Rowan, program manager for human resources and talent management services at Framingham research firm IDC. Spending in the United States on such products is expected to rise from $1.3 billion during 2007 to $2.1 billion by 2012.

PeopleAhead plans to differentiate itself from other job and recruiting services by positioning itself as a long-term tool that employees can use over and over as they climb professional ladder, Chevalier said. “They can take our service with them,” he said. “It’s more like joining a social network, but it’s for their careers.”

But the market is crowded and rapidly consolidating. Several New England companies have developed products to capture pieces of the recruiting software market.

Waltham-based RetirementJobs.com Inc. recruits retirement-age workers, and Brookline-based Zapoint Inc. develops software that converts resumes into charts for job recruiters. Chelmsford-based Kronos Inc. develops work force software suites for HR managers. Other local competitors include Boston-based Zoom Information Inc., which offers a service that profiles workers for recruiters, and Waltham’s BrassRing LLC and Boston-based Bullhorn Inc., which develop recruiter software.

In 2006, Ireland-based recruitment software maker, Candidate Manager Ltd., opened a North American headquarters in Boston. And in 2005, H Three Inc. launched in Cambridge with a referral reward payment software system. Waltham-based Authoria Inc. and Wayland’s Softscape Inc., both develop human resource software that include recruiting features.

At PeopleAhead, angel investor Ted Clark, former managing director of Boston-based HarbourVest Partners LLC, said the startup needs to ramp up during the next six months by targeting employers and employees — both of which are potential customers.

Larracilla was previously a human capital consultant for Accenture Ltd. while Chevalier was previously operations manager at Hartford-based The Stereo Shop.

The duo consider job board operators Monster Worldwide Inc. and CareerBuilder.com to be their chief competition.