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Our VisualCV partnership was mentioned on Cheezhead today. Big thank you to Joel Cheesman for blogging it.

About Joel Cheesman

Cheezhead author Joel Cheesman is one of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world. He was the recipient of Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog for 2005 and received Best Recruiting Blog in 2007. He has been featured in Fast Company magazine and its blog under FC Reads, as well as NewsNow, Workforce Management, AIRS, Crain’s Business, BusinessWeek Magazine, Resumes for Dummies, U.S. News & World Report and The Wall Street Journal (print addition).

Joel’s blog is a daily chronicle of how the Internet and technology are shaping human resources and how organizations can attract the talent needed to thrive in tomorrow’s economy. As an employee and insider of some of America’s biggest online job sites since 1997, Joel founded HRSEO to help employers and companies in the recruitment space move to a world where search engines deliver high quality and cost-effective traffic.

Joel is an evangelist of search engine optimization (SEO), Internet marketing and other emerging technologies that help employers and like businesses drive targeted candidates to vacancies.

Joel also serves as a special consultant to the new, non-profit organization overseeing the development of the carefully regulated .jobs domain. He speaks at international events like the British Columbia HRMA conference.

John Sumser, a recruitment industry guru, adds, “Joel Cheesman has little respect for the way things used to be. That’s why we like him so much.” Gretchen Ledgard, former Staffing Marketing Manager at Microsoft, calls Joel “a crazy smart guy.”

Prior to working in the Internet recruiting space, Joel cut his teeth in the political arena in Washington, D.C. and managing congressional races around the US. Joel is a graduate of Ball State University.

In addition to being a closet SEO geek, Joel’s an avid fan of sports, music and good food. So don’t be surprised to see him relaxing some summer Saturday afternoon at Jacobs Field with a Stadium Mustard topped bratwurst and a Dortmunder watching the Indians, hanging in the Dawg Pound for a Browns game or enjoying a concert at The Agora.

Joel lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife Laura, son Cole and their two cats, Nacho and Chili.

Management Today in the UK ran a post about our recently announced partnership with VisualCV. This folks is part of the reason I've been a bit MIA from this blog lately. The other being I'll be ramping up the interviews again for The China Business Show now that I've got the help of a real professional who apparently edits and produces content like this in his sleep.

For those of you wondering what the deal is with our partnership with VisualCV, the Management Today article sums it up pretty well:

US company backed by VC Valhalla Partners and search firm Heidrick & Struggles, which claims to have ‘reinvented the resume’ for ‘today’s Web 2.0 environment’. What this means in practice, judging from the website, is a lot of dentally-impeccable Americans with swanky interactive CVs that include links to their previous employers, examples of past work and even short video clips of them talking about how great they are.

The advantages for ambitious execs are obvious – now that there’s so much information about lurking all over the internet, it’s never been more important to control the way we appear online. In fact, a recent survey by web hosting company Fasthosts found that over two-thirds of British business owners are worried that their online image could have a negative effect on their business – and if you’ve ever Googled a prospective example only to find embarrassing comments on Facebook or compromising photos on Flickr, you’ll know exactly what they're talking about.

It could also make networking easier. VisualCV has just signed a big white-label deal with the online community The China Business Network (which brings together English-speakers who do business in or with China) – it’s providing the software (under licence) that will allow members to create interactive branded CVs, which they can then use to network with each other. CBN’s Christine Lu described her new service as ‘open and social enough to be appealing, yet professional enough for members used to traditional networking - without it being too cutesy or boring’. It's certainly all very Web 2.0 - even down to the fact that Lu found about VisualCV via Twitter...

I'll be spending the next month or two in NY with our team entering a semi-state of stealth mode while we work on launching the beta version of our new platform. In the meantime, if you want to keep posted and receive an invite to our beta launch, click here.