Jibe Hiring VP of Technology in NYC

Jibe is hiring a VP of Technology. The job is based in New York and a great opportunity to work with leading social technologies as the fourth employee of a great startup.  I blogged about why I think Jibe is an important company tackling a big market at the time of Polaris’ investment.  Since that time, the company has done its private beta and is hustling towards full public launch.  Especially in light of the expanded Facebook functionality announced at F8, we think the opportunity is bigger than ever.

Jibe is firing on all cylinders, and Joe, Peter, and Toby are a talented, lean, and hardworking crew to join on this mission.  They’re also great guys on a personal level.  The full job spec is below.  Feel free to ping me with any questions before applying.

COMPANY JIBE - http://www.jibe.com

POSITION Vice President of Technology

LOCATION New York, New York

WEBSITE www.jibe.com

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

JIBE created the first “Employment Networking Platform” that opens up the social graph of both employers and job seekers to identify the most trusted & qualified candidates.

Designed to bring the power of social networking to online career search, JIBE integrates Facebook and Linkedin to enable employers and applicants to leverage the overlap of their social graphs. From previous co-workers to friends who work with a specific company, JIBE recognizes matches between these two networks as they apply to a job opportunity.

JIBE empowers employers to efficiently search and evaluate relevant candidates that are connected to other employees in their company. By creating a referral-based recruitment process it helps ensure a more satisfied employer and new employee. JIBE’s “employment networking platform” gives applicants benefits that no other job site provides, including the relevancy of job postings to their social connections and real-time status updates about their applications. This level of transparency and feedback gives job seekers the insight needed to get hired for the job they want.

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS:

You will report to the CEO

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Your responsibilities will include:

• Recruit, support, train, mentor, motivate and lead a best of breed technology team;
• Identify, architect, develop, implement and maintain technology solutions to meet the company’s strategic business objectives;
• Implement a flexible and scalable infrastructure to support a dynamic product roadmap and prioritize deliverables;
• Implement process and procedures in software development and hardware management that speed the company’s time to market for new products;
• Clearly communicate progress and hurdles you and your team face allowing senior management to make data driven decisions
• Manage schedules, budgets and staffing for multiple simultaneous projects;

TECHNICAL & MANAGEMENT QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience building and leading a highly motivated technical team, in a dynamic product development environment.
• In depth knowledge of Ruby, MySql, graphing databases and search solutions;
• Extensive knowledge building and managing a scalable web infrastructure;
• Experience managing consumer facing web applications and products with substantial traffic volumes and large surges;
• Extensive knowledge in build/release engineering and change management;
• Experience with iterative product development processes;

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS & EXPERIENCE:

The ideal candidate has the following characteristics:

• Business minded engineering executive, with the ability to partner with the Chief Executive Officer and executive team;
• Superior management skills with the ability to create innovative systems that serve the organization’s revenue and business objectives;
• Creative problem solver with a “can do” attitude, a passion for the intersection of media and technology and an enthusiasm for bringing innovative technology products to market;
• A business partner to the senior executive team;
• Lateral thinker with the ability to articulate a strategic decision, give clear direction to technology team and lead by example/inspiration;
• A technical innovator who can amplify product direction with sound advice and creative solutions;
• Willing and able to roll up his/her sleeves and be ‘hands on’ in the process of building and directing the technology organization;
• An excellent communicator with the ability to work effectively at all levels within the organization;
• Impeccable attention to detail and planning along with a process-driven approach towards achieving objectives.

EDUCATION

An undergraduate degree in Computer Science or equivalent is required. An advanced degree is preferred.

COMPENSATION

A competitive compensation package will be offered to the successful candidate.  The compensation package will include a base, bonus and equity.

Send cover letter, resume, and work samples to:

Hacker@jibe.com

Join Two Amazing Companies: Formpsring and ShoeDazzle

I have been slow to update my blog's "job board"... but have two great companies and opportunities to add to the list. I am fortunate to spend time with each of these companies: excellent products, teams and communities. Job specs are below. If you are interested in either company, please let me know directly: rspoon @ polarisventures

Formspring is a social question & answer service that has seen meteoric growth (my blog post here). They are looking for engineers and designers to join them in San Francisco. It is a terrific opportunity to be part of a fast-growing company and build large, impactful products that touch 10m's of users:

- Jr. Software Engineer (PHP) - Senior Designer - Sr. Software Engineer (PHP) - Systems Engineer

ShoeDazzle is a monthly online shoe society, working with a team of Hollywood stylists to choose shoes for each member every month based on the member’s unique fashion personality. ShoeDazzle delivers unique products (stylized shoes) in a unique experience (monthly and at a fixed price of $39.95)... and their community is active, passionate and excited (50,000+ Facebook Fans).

ShoeDazzle is looking for a Director of Social Media & Community. Details are below:

The Director of Community and Social Media will be ShoeDazzle’s social media maven. This person will drive the development and implementation of all social media marketing programs and expand ShoeDazzle’s web presence and user base. The position takes ownership of all marketing efforts on social mediums including blogs and viral marketing campaigns for ShoeDazzle.

Responsibilities - Create and execute ShoeDazzle’s social media strategy that will exponentially grow the user base - Be the company’s expert on understanding social media marketing and functionality on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, and other core social platforms. - Responsible for aggressively using social media to drive consumer engagement and grow ShoeDazzle’s online community. - Produce innovative, efficient and measurable social media programs that will engage ShoeDazzle’s users - Drive viral marketing campaigns using social networking tools - Develop and drive events, contests, promotions and incentives to keep the ShoeDazzle community actively engaged - Work cross-functionally with the Marketing, PR and Creative teams to develop tools to support social media initiatives (i.e. landing pages for social media contests, offline promotions, etc) - Increase customer life time value through targeted customer communications and appropriate incentives and promotions - Managed and produce regular contributions to blogs and social networks that will interact and communicate with the community, expanding ShoeDazzle’s web presence - Responsible for analyzing and monitoring web metrics (e.g. page views, Twitter followers, fans) and strategizing web content accordingly while providing reports to senior management - Identify and implement weekly, daily and often real time content updates - Stay up to date on social media tools online communities and share knowledge with the rest of the organization

Experience - 5-7 years of online marketing experience with 2-3 years of social media marketing preferred - Possess a keen understanding of social media’s added value to ShoeDazzle’s product offering since it is an integral part of how customers engage with the company - Expertise around crafting and executing user acquisition and retention campaigns on social media platforms - Demonstrated ability to develop and execute marketing strategies, with measurable and consistent results - Ability to manage social applications effectively with an expert understanding of the technologies deployed by social media - Deep understanding of social network structures with experience effectively using social media/Web 2.0 tools to effectively communicate and build relationships - Familiarity with dynamics of ROI/metrics related to social media channels

Skills

- An analytical mindset is a MUST! It is critical this person test, test and retest marketing campaigns - A charismatic, credible communicator who can lead by example - Have excellent communication skills – written, verbal, presentation and interpersonal - Strong organizational skills with attention to detail, operates with urgency, focus and discipline - Have the ability to thrive in a high energy, fast growth, entrepreneurial environment - Hands-on; completes tasks and dependable - Strong team player who can build strong relationships at all levels of the organization - A cost conscious, proactive problem solver who can maximize the resources of a start-up - Ethical, fair and of high integrity

Compensation: VERY competitive + equity

Recruiting For Success: The Right Questions & Job Req

A handful of recruiting-related blog posts were published over the weekend; and whether you are hiring or interviewing, these are important reads.

First, in "Recruiting High Impact Employees", Peter Flint of Polaris Ventures gives a list of questions to ask when hiring. Before joining Polaris, Peter spent several years at Ramsey Beirne Associates and is an expert in building senior management teams for early stage venture backed companies. Peter provides a detailed check list of important questions (attention job seekers: prepare for these!). Here are a few: - Strengths and Weaknesses analysis: Delve deep and follow up any generalized comments by asking for examples. Also get specific examples of failures and successes. Everyone wants to give you just the strengths. - If the candidate is being considered for a more senior role than he has played before, what challenges will he/she face? - Ability to hire well: Get examples. full list here

From a job seekers' and perspective, both Jason Antman and provide advice on crafting job reqs to specifically attract engineers. The two most interesting takeaways:

1. Engineers should write the technical specs... and be very specific about critical skills and nice-to-haves. 2. Pay as much attention to the non-technical specs as the technical. Describe the job, the team and work environment, etc.

According to both bloggers, the majority of engineering ads fail these two bullets.

Terrific, Big Job at JibJab: Are you a Product & Social Media Maven?

JibJab is looking for a product and social media guru who is excited about: - joining the 2nd fastest growing website according to Comscore - working on the web's best Facebook Connect integration (by my account at least!) - being part of a terrific, smart and fun team - and impacting a big, exciting part of their business

If you are interested in applying please contact me via email or Facebook

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Director, Marketing / Product at JibJab Media Location: Greater Los Angeles Area General Business, Distribution, Product Management, Marketing

JibJab is seeking a passionate, entrepreneurial product & marketing maven to lead its most promising everyday greetings vertical: birthdays. The Director will have his or her own P&L and will be responsible for product development, customer acquisition, monetization, and ongoing engagement. This role is equal parts entrepreneur, product manager and quantitative marketing dynamo and you should love being accountable for results.

- Drive results by working directly with engineering staff, analytics personnel, and content team members. You will be accountable for business results and you will have the tools to succeed. - Create full-cycle marketing plans, from user acquisition through the resulting sale and, ultimately, retention. - Gather evolving business requirements and define responsive product features and specifications. You will drive specifications through the engineering lifecycle to deployment, iteration, and optimization. - Research competitive products and others in the space in order to assess, recommend, and implement breakthrough customer acquisition strategies. - Enhance monetization opportunity in your vertical via established distribution partners and new channels you identify.

Skills

- Must possess tactical experience with Facebook Platform, SEO/SEM and email marketing. Resumes without these qualifications will not be considered. - Experience in product development for consumer Internet products is essential. You must understand how to work in a startup web organization with folks across the functional spectrum. You love our engineers almost as much as you love our customers. - Ability to dig into and crunch on imperfect data. You love spreadsheets almost as much as you love hunches and assumptions! - Ability to work autonomously and to get hands dirty. You are comfortable with ambiguity and you are a proven self-starter happy in a start-up. - Deep understanding of social networking and search engine marketing. Your thinking needs to be current, but you should have enough experience to know the difference between hot trends and proven strategies. - Experience with a content-driven, programming-oriented product is a major plus. Company Description

JibJab is a leading provider of digital greetings and online entertainment. From irreverent viral videos to offbeat eCards and personalized Starring You!® products, JibJab has been at the forefront of innovating online media for over 10 years. In 2009, the company reached new heights with over 180 million visitors, 265 million content views and a thriving direct-to-consumer premium business model thanks to the herculean efforts of 36 artists, technologist and business people passionate about reinventing the traditional media model. JibJab is backed by Polaris Venture Partners, Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Calling All Technology Finance Executives & Controllers!

Attention all controllers and finance executives in the technology space! Dogpatch Labs Cambridge is holding office hours and scheduling 30-minute blocks to meet great folks from the space. If you are interested in meeting, Lindsay Barnett will represent Polaris (director of portfolio recruiting) and you can contact her directly at lbarnett@polarisventures.com. We look forward to hearing from you and meeting you! There will be other events across both Dogpatch Labs locations focused on other fields as well. Stay tuned and be sure to follow Dogpatch Labs on Facebook for the latest updates:

Dogpatch Lab Cambridge Office hours Wednesday,

Starts:Wednesday December 16, 2009, 01:00PM Ends: Wednesday December 16, 2009, 05:00PM

Location: Dogpatch Labs Cambridge 222 3rd St, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02141 US

Intended For: Controllers and VP, Finance executives from the technology industry

If you are a Controller or VP, Finance at a technology company based in the Boston area we are interested in meeting you! Email me at lbarnett@polarisventures.com to schedule time to meet on Wednesday, 12/16, between 1-5 pm. I will be scheduling 30 minute blocks in order to fit as many people in as possible. I look forward to meeting you!

Seeking VP of Digital Marketing at Modelinia

As you may have noticed, I have begun posting exciting job opportunities connected to either Polaris Ventures and/or Dogpatch Labs (you can find them in the "jobs listings" category). As always, if you are interested in learning more, applying or recommending great people, please contact me directly (rspoon @ gmail.com). Polaris portfolio company Modelinia is actively seeking a VP of Digital Marketing to help lead the internet marketing and social media strategy, efforts and success. Full details below:

VP, Digital Marketing

Modelinia, New York or San Francisco, NY (San Francisco, CA) Modelinia is a multi-platform media brand where supermodels share their fashion, beauty and lifestyle secrets. Modelinia connects women to fashion, beauty and lifestyle through unique access to the world's top supermodels. Those supermodels reveal their secrets, ordinary and extraordinary, to help our audience gain the “style confidence” to look and feel their best. The result is compelling and unique content that will live on the internet, television, and at live events. Modelinia revenues come from advertising sponsored content, ecommerce and social media applications, such as games.

Modelinia was born from Full Picture, a strategic marketing, production, and public relations firm founded by CEO, Desiree Gruber. Full Picture’s award-winning team lives and works at the crossroads of fashion, design, television and technology, handling public relations for supermodels Heidi Klum, Hilary Rhoda, Brooklyn Decker, and brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Frederic Fekkai, and many more. They were also the creators of Project Runway and the unique viral series for Microsoft’s MSN called Style Studio.

Modelinia’s funding is provided by Polaris Venture Partners, a Waltham, MA - based partnership of experienced private equity investors, operating executives and entrepreneurs. Polaris’ mission is to identify, invest in and partner with seed, early stage, and middle market businesses with exceptional promise and help them grow into market-leading companies. A national private equity firm with offices in Boston and Seattle, Polaris invests in businesses throughout the United States and selectively in Europe and Asia. Polaris has over $3 billion under management, more than 20 investment professionals, and current investments in more than 90 companies.

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS: The VP, Digital Marketing will report to the Chief Executive Officer of Modelinia.

RESPONSIBILITIES: The VP, Digital Marketing will be responsible for:

•Creating and executing a winning user acquisition strategy, including but not limited to paid search, natural search and social media;

•Developing and executing a comprehensive engagement strategy focused on user activity and retention;

•Designing and managing quantitative measurement programs (internet marketing and social media campaigns) that can track, measure, and analyze performance;

•Developing a Modelinia email strategy and campaign that is analytical, exciting and engaging;

•Working effectively with existing and potential partners across strategic, marketing and product opportunities;

•Foster an active / engaged Modelinia community and manage creative, ongoing contests and events;

•Work cross-functionally with the engineering and monetization teams.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS & EXPERIENCE: The ideal VP, Digital Marketing candidate has the following characteristics:

•Extensive experience in internet marketing: SEM, SEO and affiliate marketing;

•Deep understanding of social media and community management: both onsite and on sites like Facebook and Twitter;

•Excellent analytical skills and ability to synthesize large amounts of data and information into concise recommendations and action for the company;

•Experience in product management and project management across cross-functional teams and projects;

•Great communication and presentation skills;

•Deep familiarity with web development technologies;

•Comfort and ability to work in fast-paced, agile environment.

Dogpatch Labs Resident Hollrr Seeking Technical Co-Founder

From time to time, I post exciting job opportunities tied to Polaris portfolio companies or, in this case, Dogpatch Labs! Hollrr.com is a current Dogpatch Labs resident in San Francisco and is actively looking for a technical co-founder. If you are interested in learning more, you can either contact me or founder David Hegarty directly (hegs@hollrr.com).

Hollrr.com Want to help your friends discover a great new product? A quick Hollrr is the easiest way to help them discover it

We’re aiming big… Hollrr is a start-up with big ambitions. By harnessing the power of word of mouth recommendations, we want to overthrow advertising on the Internet.

From our headquarters in San Francisco CA, we are on a mission to destroy generic, banal banner advertising that no-one likes, and allow fans to liberate great new products struggling to reach new customers. Viva la revolution!

We have a lot of work to do, and we need your help.

Technical Head (we will call you ‘El Jefe’) Let’s be clear… we’re looking for a lot from this person.

Advertising/marketing as we know it is going to be flipped on its head over the next 5 years. Search/Google has already done that for one component of it, and the combination of Social Media and Advocate Marketing will do it to another component of it. There is a huge opportunity, and we believe the opportunity is wide open to be captured.

We are looking for a Technical Co-Founder to help us capture that market.

At a high-level that means that not only would you have to be a rock-star engineer, but you’d also have to be a partner contributing significantly on the business/user insight side too. In addition, you’ll need to be a solid people manager able to recruit, build and manage a high-performing Dev team.

This means we’re looking for someone who can hit the ground running:

- Understand and contribute to the vision for Hollrr - Be obsessed about iterating quickly to turn user insight into features/improvements so we can build a community of fanatics - Have the engineering chops to architect and plan for scale, but the humility right now to get down 'n' dirty in the code as we iterate quickly - Bench lift 300 lbs - The ideal person would have done a similar role at 1-2 start-ups previously... but to be honest, by far the most important thing is that you are an open-minded, curious individual, passionate about building Holllrr.com.

If you like what you read and you think you fit the bill? Email me at hegs@hollrr.com, I'd love to meet for coffee.

Seeking a Senior Marketing Maven at Ice.com

Love jewelry and fashion?Looking to join an industry leading company and team? Are you a talented marketer excited about e-commerce, user acquisition and social media?

Ice.com, a Polaris portfolio company and the leading internet jeweler operating both Ice.com and Diamond.com, is searching for a VP of Marketing. Reporting directly to the COO this critical role will be responsible for developing and executing acquisition plans to drive profitable, new customer growth.

Contact me directly if interested or if you have great referrals.

Description and Responsibilities:

This critical position is charged with increasing online recruitment for the jewelry sites Ice.com and Diamond.com The VP of Marketing must develop a recruitment strategy that:

- Optimizes current acquisition programs through achieving the right mix of quality advertising partners: ad networks, portals, paid search, affiliates and shopping comparison sites

- Increase the profitability of our online marketing programs through a mix of investment analysis, offer testing, creative messaging, and user interface recommendations.

- Accelerates our move into emerging areas of social marketing: blogs (e.g. sparklelikethestars.com and blog.ice.com), Facebook, Twitter and continue to build out our natural search practice

- Lead the company's efforts to improve our natural search rankings through better site architecture and content

In addition to online marketing skills, the candidate must possess strong managerial/training experience in order to build out a world class acquisition team.