Employee Location Specialist

Joe Essenfeld, JIBE

Launched: 2010

What JIBE does: JIBE offers employee-recruitment technology that incorporates social media, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. On the enterprise side, the software helps businesses access top-quality candidates who may be difficult to find. The platform integrates with the companies’ existing applicant tracking systems. On the employee candidate side, JIBE.com allows job seekers to tap into their existing social networks to gain access to the jobs through the people they already know.

How it’s changing the game: For employers, hiring an employee through someone you know is usually more desirable than a “cold” hire. And for job seekers, JIBE aggregates users’ friends and connections to show them the companies and industries they are linked to.

“We started as just a job board that incorporated social networks into the application part of those advertisements,” says Essenfeld. “So it helped job seekers and employers. We’ve now evolved and have started to increase our focus on the software that’s sold to the enterprise. One piece of our business model is that we get paid to advertise jobs, and the other piece is getting paid to provide recruiting software to large companies. And that recruiting software is focused around employee referrals, as well as mobile.”

When asked if he was surprised by any of the challenges in launching JIBE, Essenfeld says, “I would say the immediacy of the ups and downs in building a company was definitely surprising. It’s challenging because you really can’t get emotional. You just have to continue to make smart business decisions, believe in the overall picture, and not get distracted by the everyday.”

What’s next: Essenfeld and his team will continue to focus on customer acquisition, both for job seekers and in the enterprise space, specifically in the Fortune 1000.