Genotrope Gets Some Ink

We were pleased to see Genotrope receive some positive press in a recent Mass High Tech article.

Hiring strategies shift toward social media

We have been watching the number of positions available at start-ups creep up by about 100 every week for the past month and a half, indicating the end of job depletion and the beginning of a return normalcy.

Our timing might be right on the money for a change. We just introduced the new job posting functionality for companies and user ability to find jobs at companies within their professional graph, as hiring increases but the need to keep costs low is still high priority.

Genotrope a Featured Company for Virtual Min August 12th

Genotrope is a featured company at the upcoming Mass Innovation Night because our focus is Boston area emerging technology companies and entrepreneurs. One of our main features is a database of Communications, Computer, Software and Web companies presented in a Genealogical fashion. The other is a Directory of Boston Venture Capital companies. Both have proven very popular with our users.

Here is a bit about our concept.

The Genotropic approach to recruiting. geno- : genus : kind kin : a group united by a common interest or common characteristics or affinity tro-pism : a natural inclination Simply put, companies are comprised of individuals that share some common traits, goals and backgrounds. They have been attracted to their companies because of these affinities and will be inclined to move to the next company that offers them a similarly comfortable environment.

We hope to improve on the current offerings in the online job market, with an Affinity Job Search tool that focuses on matching you with companies rather than jobs. Matching culture and fit rather than buzzwords.

Community contributions will at some point overtake our editors valiant efforts to populate the company database. When that happens, we will have a micro-chunkable database of much value to the users. Stay Tuned.

Major Rollout of Job Postings and Search

Although we do a new build almost every week, today we have rolled out major new functionality.

We believe heartily in the process of “finding the company first and then the job”. But it is swimming upstream against an industry that is built around the job posting.

Candidates look for jobs and Companies want to post jobs. So instead of fighting against this fact, we have released job posting capability.

Now companies can register with Genotrope and manage their company record, post news as well as create and edit job postings.

The difference is that now when Candidates are viewing the list of job posting the Genotrope Icon will be present in the job listing to indicate companies where the candidate also has an affinity match through their professional graph. These jobs will be the better fit matches when compared to matches done strictly by position or industry.

Along with the new job postings, we have added major new search functionality.  Both Browsing and MyGraph mode on the FindJobs page can be searched by zipcode proximity, Industry and Company Status. This means you can slice and dice the company database to find very specific matches, such as all B2B companies with a series A investment that are 25 miles from my home town.

One last thing, registered users will notice the new home page not only displays All Recent Job Postings, it also shows the New Jobs from Companies in your Graph.

These changes reflect the fact that the job market is picking up and Genotrope’s increased focus on helping People and Companies connect.

Thanks to Ganesh and his team for a release well done.

Register Company New Feature

Now it is possible to register your company in Genotrope. Once registered, your company administrator is now the only one able to add or update information to your company page.

Registration if free and allows companies to more actively target potential candidates. We currently offer sponsorship of our home page, VC Directory and blog.

In the future we will introduce a subscription model which will include job postings.

The Talent Target page shows the list of companies connected to yours through our graphing algorithm. Users with these companies in their work history will be updated with your company’s news and jobs and receive a feed of this information.

The Hiring Target section allows your company to reach users at competitors or companies deemed to have quality potential candidates that are not in your Company’s Graph. Once added users with these companies in their work history will be updated and able to view your companies news and jobs and receive a feed of this information.

Make sure to frequently add Press or news announcements as well as jobs from your website. This will maintain a steady stream of information going out to your targeted talent pool.  Add your career or job page to these links. Use the title Careers, and the link will always appear at the top of the list. Otherwise entries are in  chronological order.

Search by Location New Feature addition

We are pleased to announce that now you can filter Companies by proximity to your location on your Find Jobs page.  The default zipcode is taken from your profile.

We have also added the ability to filter by Industry and Investment status on both the MyGraph and Browsing lists. That is the good news.

The bad news is that not all companies have address information in their records. We are working hard to populate that information. Please lend a helping hand and add company address info for your company as well as when you are browsing around the database.

A Few Problems after Switch to New ISP

Our move to a better service provider has gone smoothly. There may be a lingering issue with the redirect, but that will be cleared up soon.

Unfortunately, some of our new features have regressed, with some build mishaps.

One of the new features is the ability to filter your FindJobs list based upon location. We hope to restore the  location filter later on this week.

Thanks for your patience. If you find any other problems, please let us know.

Web Innovators 20 was a great event

We had a good time and met some great people at the premier networking event in Boston for web startups.

Web Innovators Group has grown from a small gathering in 2005, of a few entrepreneurs in a bar to the large event it is today. Around 700 people attended last tuesdays WebInno 20 event.

The line up of companies was stellar, and we were fortunate to be a part of the group.

Thanks to David Beisel of Venrock for including Genotrope as a sidedish presenter.

New Linkedin view of Companies

We have a couple of things to tell you about this month.

Now registered users can view their Linkedin connections to a company by clicking the icon next to the companies name on the Companies Page. This powerful feature will help you discover if you know anyone at your target companies so when you you will have an internal contact to find out the scoop on the work environment.

You may also have noticed the Feedback icon   in the bottom right corner. We always welcome input and with this addition, we hope to make it very easy to send us your comments, suggestions or problems.

New Features for October 2008

We heard from our users that hadn’t yet worked at a funded or connected startup that the Find Jobs page was less than fulfilling. Thanks to you guys for the feedback.

Check out the Find Jobs page and you will see that in addition to the companies in your MyGraph listing showing companies connected to your work history, we have added a browsing feature. When browsing, users can filter companies by Industry as well as Funding Status. This feature lets you go beyond your professional network to slice and dice the market and view only the sectors and stages you want to see. As you view the list, the MyGraph icon lets you know when that company is in your graph.

Another cool feature we have added is the detail window to the right where a short company summary will appear, as you mouse over a company of interest.

Now it is much easier to compile a list of interesting companies and apply to each directly.

Let us know what you think.

Sorry, were having problems with IE rendering the company graph

We are working on the problem and will resolve it as quickly as we can. The problem we are seeing is when an unregistered user views the Companies page in IE, the graph does not complete. It happens randomly and often. A refresh sometimes works, but unfortunately not always.

You can still see the parent and child relationships, just not the cool little graph. For now you can either use Firefox or become a registered user. The second option will provide you some cool stuff, like being able to contribute to the database, feeds about your connected companies as well as powerful search ability for finding your next career move.

Sorry for the inconvenience.