Hcareers’ parent company onTargetjobs acquires JobLoft.com

Acquisition positions Hcareers as number one recruitment solutions provider for hospitality industry worldwide

Vancouver, Canada, October 29, 2007 – Hcareers, the leading online job board for the hospitality industry worldwide, announced today that its parent company, onTargetjobs, has acquired the assets of JobLoft.com, a cutting edge hospitality and retail job board located in Toronto, Canada. The combined companies now hold the number one spot as the dominant provider of online recruitment solutions for the hospitality industry.

The addition of JobLoft.com into the onTargetjobs family of job boards reaffirms onTargetjobs’ commitment to hospitality recruitment professionals and jobseekers worldwide, both in the hourly and managerial markets. JobLoft.com’s concentration on the hourly jobseeker looking for local jobs coupled with Hcareers’ worldwide reach and industry presence enables Hcareers to provide a more holistic solution to its hospitality, restaurant and foodservice clients.

JobLoft.com’s state of the art technology platform and rich Web 2.0 functionality provide the ultimate user experience. Using JobLoft.com, jobseekers can find employment opportunities in their community, and then have them visually displayed using Google Maps’ technology. JobLoft.com’s technology applications fit perfectly with onTargetjobs’ dedication to giving the hospitality industry jobseeker the opportunity to find the most suitable job to fit their needs and experience level.

“This is such a great move for the hospitality industry as a whole,” said Chris Nguyen, CEO of JobLoft.com. “Our loyal following in the hourly job seeker space is going to flourish from this new ownership as we’ll now be able to expand the opportunities available to job seekers in their own communities”

Since 1998, Hcareers has been providing the hospitality industry with an online job board specifically targeted to the industry. Job openings are delivered to the ever-expanding Hcareers network of partner career centers, including those of the national, provincial and state hospitality and restaurant associations, bizjournals’ regional business journal websites and the International CHRIE member schools, which comprise the bulk of the culinary management and hotel management schools worldwide.

“We are ecstatic to be able to have the JobLoft team join our family and together with the existing Hcareers product offering, we will leverage the excellent technological advancements that JobLoft offers the hourly hospitality and retail marketplaces,” said Allen Paschal, CEO of OnTargetjobs. “With name brand clients such as Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Hudson’s Bay Company, and Sobeys, JobLoft has developed an excellent reputation within the industry.”

For more information on Hcareers visit www.hcareers.com, for onTargetjobs visit www.onTargetjobs.com and for JobLoft.com visit www.jobloft.com.

About Hcareers
Hcareers is the leading job board for the hospitality and restaurant/foodservice industries. A unit of onTargetjobs out of Fort Worth, Texas, Hcareers is known for being the leader in providing industry-specific online recruitment solutions with the most relevant jobs and job seekers in their niche market and has rapidly become the number one choice for both job seekers and employers in the hospitality and foodservice industry worldwide. For more information about Hcareers’ online recruitment solutions, visit http://www.hcareers.com/.

About onTargetjobs
onTargetjobs is the parent company of Applied Recruitment Technologies (HEALTHeCAREERS.com), Hcareers, CareerBank.com, BioSpace.com and MedHunters.com and provides online career services to the accounting, biotech, finance, insurance, healthcare, insurance, pharmaceutical, hospitality and restaurant markets. onTargetjobs invests in leading niche Internet job sites, serving a defined vertical industry or job function. The company’s operating philosophy is to invest in strong management teams who continue to operate the acquired company, with onTargetjobs assisting through capital, consultative and other resources to enable accelerated company growth. OnTargetjobs is in partnership with Warburg Pincus, one of the oldest and largest private equity firms in the world with approximately $13 billion under management. For more information about onTargetjobs’ online career services, please visit http://www.onTargetjobs.com/.

About JobLoft.com
JobLoft.com is an online job board that lists retail, food services and hospitality postings based on geographic proximity. By entering a Canadian postal code, users can view nearby job postings using Google Maps software. After seeing the inefficiency of the traditional job search process, JobLoft.com’s founder teamed up with his classmates to make his vision a reality. To learn more about JobLoft’s online job board, please visit http://www.jobloft.com/.

Named after Ryerson alumnus and founder of the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, the 2007 Isadore Sharp Outstanding Recent Graduate Award was given to our team here at JobLoft.com. We are the youngest recipients to receive this prestigious award.

It is a great honour to be recognized by Ryerson for our hard work and efforts. Sunny, Andy, Lee and I have come a long way since we met in our first year ITM100 course.  It doesn’t get better than this!

Congratulations to the fellow recipients of the 2007 Alumni Achievement Awards:

Tania Bortolotto, Architectural Science ‘90
Bryan Cantley, Journalism ‘69
Sheri Cohen, Social Work ‘96
Tony Gagliano, Business Management ‘80
Jenny Gumbs, Public Administration ‘02

I wish everyone all the best, thank you to all for the kind words.

The journey continues…

To read about the event, click here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOBLOFT.COM!!!

Like the saying goes “success is not a destination, but a journey”.  Let’s just say, the past 365 days have been one interesting journey.

Trying to build a company is never easy. Our fledgling internet company has traversed more highs and lows over the past year than Tobey Maguire in the “Spiderman 1,2 &3″, but it’s has been a worthwhile and meaningful journey.  We’ve come out the other side a wiser, stronger and more determined company.

So let’s reminisce about the last 12 months in the life of Jobloft.com

• 15+ Newspaper articles
• 10+ TV spots
• 2 Dragons Den appearances
• 12,000+ Job postings

No complaints, no excuses and no regrets.

Thanks for all the support, this is just the beginning!

First off, I want to say Thank You. Thanks to all the JobLoft.com supporters. We will use this opportunity to tell our side of the story. All we ask is for you to share our story with your friends, your relatives, your neighbour… anyone you can think of. We also want to hear your feedback, so feel free to add your comments below. If you’re making a blog post on your site, please use the trackback URL at the end of this posting.

As we always tell everyone, “there’s never a dull moment in the world of JobLoft”. In a nutshell, we had the money, the money was taken back, and we’re using this as a valuable learning experience. Please allow me explain in more detail.

From reading our last blog entry, no one could have predicted that we would end up without closing a deal with the dragons. However, the ending remarks from last blog that “‘success is not a destination…but a journey’, so hop on board, it’s going to be a fun ride” takes on a whole new meaning.

What we need to address first is that what was shown on TV was just a glimpse of what happened in that boardroom on a wonderful Halloween morning. Of course, it was edited for TV, and producers have a magical way making things look and feel a certain way for television. So what is being told here and now is the story of JobLoft.com “telling it how it is”.

From the taping of the deal in August and recalling the last thing Kevin said to us, “As soon as we finishing taping this show … I am in your face … I am in your face … Guaranteed! … and looking forward to it”. Trust us, no one was in our face. And that’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, nor are we blaming anyone. The dragons are busy individuals running their own corporations. A little different of a picture than what we originally imagined. 50% of your business to give up for partners who are tied up in their own businesses doesn’t quite bode well for JobLoft’s future. What ended up happening was that we spent a lot of time with lawyers and at the end of it all, left with a huge legal bill as a result.

Regardless of what the CBC portrayed during the show of Dr. Norrie (our advisor and former professor), the JobLoft team holds the utmost respect for Dr. Norrie, who comes from the high-tech industry, was an entrepreneur himself, and has immense credibility as a business person and as an academic. We are fortunate to have him as a mentor and we are willing to stand up for the best interests of the company. Does he have a vested interest in the company? Absolutely not. He has nothing to gain except to see his former students and now alumni, succeed in the business world as he did.

So what was our advisor trying to say that the CBC couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) show in a span of 3 minutes? Well, the dragons were talking about how to spend the $200,000 on marketing to employers ONLY. Dr. Norrie merely highlighted the fact that we should not focus only on employers but market to both job seekers and employers. Our company is unique, such that we need to market to both ends of the spectrum. Our advisor believes that because the dragons’ businesses require them to market to only 1 set of customers, they may not have been aware of this aspect of our company despite having a copy of our business plan. However, as some of you may saw, the whole thing sort of escaladed into something else.

Now it seems that we have a story of us, starting from scratch; getting investment and having the carpet pulled from underneath; all in a short period of time. We have to say that the outcome is for the best, and this was an excellent learning experience for all involved @ JobLoft. We are now able to seek greater investment, with a proper company evaluation that is not a made-for-TV drama, which will take JobLoft to a global playing field. So what did we do the day after that boardroom meeting? Business as usual.

Recently several leading venture capital and private equity funds have approached us indicating a strong interest in JobLoft. We’re open to ideas and we are not closing the doors on future investors. I guess there is sunshine outside the Dragons’ Den.

For the record, Chris Nguyen, CEO of JobLoft says, “I learned a lot about business when I was at Ryerson…but nothing prepared me for the harsh lessons about what can happen when things go so wrong, so fast. The coolest thing about it though, is that in retrospect I wouldn’t change a thing about what happened and learning is always a good thing. As we complete the search for appropriate investment partners in the coming weeks, I think the shareholders have realized that we are better off with this outcome than the alternative of a fractious board fighting about the right strategy for our company. I would never take an investment offer again without making sure everyone was aligned on the company strategy. No regrets, no hard feelings and my partners and I, and even our company advisors, all wish the Dragons well and hope they can say the same about us…”

We are very excited to hear all of your feedback on our involvement in the show and the turn of events. If you have any comments or questions, please leave us a note below.

If you would like to keep up with JobLoft, please feel free to sign up to either our press release distribution list or our periodic newsletter. Also, if you’re a member of the press and you’d like to know more about our side of the story, please email us at press@jobloft.com.

Finally, we are able to let the cat out-of-the-bag. It has been killing us @ the Loft not to talk about Dragons’ Den in great detail as we signed an NDA. Most people didn’t believe us when we told them that we didn’t know the outcome. They were right! Imagine trying to keep this a secret from everyone you know, including your own parents. However, not even we could have predicted what was going to happen once we’ve entered the Den.

JobLoft’s journey started early July. We actually heard about the Dragons’ Den auditions one day before they were wrapping up in Toronto. We figured… what’s the worst that could happen and started working on a presentation. Oh and of course, we went shopping for our famous Orange Ties!!!

The morning of, we went through our presentation and in all honesty, we were impressed with ourselves. So we get downtown to meet Sean Wise, who only heard about 30 seconds of our presentation before he started grilling us for information. We delivered the right answers and were invited to pitch to the Dragons. Thanks Sean!

Still living off the adrenaline rush from our audition, we took the advice we gained from the presentation and updated our pitch to the dragons. However, just days prior to entering the Dragons’ Den, we were advised that only 2 people were allowed to deliver the pitch. We didn’t let this phase us and the team tweaked the presentation accordingly.

Even though only 2 of us were going to face the Dragons, we all came out for support. Continuing our tradition of loyalty & team dynamics, our orange ties were again in effect. We arrived on set early morning and watched as people enter the Den. Some left crying, others with a sneaking smile.

As one half (Chris & Lee) enter the Den, the other half (Andy & I) was escorted to the waiting area. Let me tell you that was one of the longest moments in my life. I even tried to listen in on some of the stage crews’ headsets. Just before I made another attempt at trying to eavesdrop onto what was going on, we rushed onto the set as an offer had been put forth.

Now, being rushed into a serious and life changing situation, without being a part of the discussion and having to make a discussion is one thing, however, having cameras on you and recording every word you say is another.

Andy and I entered the room as Chris and Lee approached. Right off the bat, Chris says “we got the amount we want, but the catch is we have to give up 50% of our company to four of the dragons”. We tried to counter for 30% for $200,000.

It was a no go, but the fifth dragon (Jennifer) decided that she wanted a piece of the action too. It was a tough decision to make, do we take their offer and lose 50% of our company, or do we try to tough it out and operate JobLoft.com on our own. When we first decided to give up 15% of our company for $200,000, we only banked on landing 2 of the dragons. However, after seeing as how ALL 5 were interested, we’ve decided that even 50% would be well worth the tradeoff. After all, like Chris says, “would you rather have 100% of a small pie, or 50% of a much larger pie?”

Everything happened so fast, and before we knew it, the deal with the dragons was done.

The $200,000 will be a definite asset to the company, but the most important part is the intangible value that each dragon brings to the company.
We’ve watched the old BBC shows of Dragons’ Den in the past, and it’s usually 1-2 dragons who invest in a company. But to have ALL 5 Dragons believing in your company is truly something else.

To have the founder of La Senza, Boston Pizza and Mr. Lube on our side is truly priceless. Here are two successful gentlemen who understand the pain in recruitment and know our industry like the back of their hands. Not only did we get support from Retail & Food services gurus but, the other dragons understand technology & marketing and are gurus in their own respect.

The power of network, experience and business acumen is worth its weight in gold, far surpassing any monetary value. Not many 23-24 year olds out of university can say that their partners are Laurence Lewin, Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, Jim Treliving and Jennifer Wood in one sentence.

We definitely couldn’t have done this without the continued support from our family and friends. I still remember just a little under 3 months ago, we made our first major public presentation at DemoCamp with the help of David Crow. As the saying goes … “success is not a destination…but a journey”, so hop on board, it’s going to be a fun ride and this is just the beginning!

Pop Quiz: What does YouTube, Flock and JobLoft.com have in common??

Answer: They were all interviewed by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur for the hip podcast Inside the Net.

Check out our podcast below!

Thanks to the team at Call for Help, we were lucky to be on 2 different segments with host Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte. I presented JobLoft.com from the job seeker’s aspect and on the flip side, Lee presented JobLoft.com from the HR recruiter’s point of view. The show is on G4 TechTV. We will give an update when this show goes on air, so stay tuned!

Some interesting moments. 20 minutes before entering the studio I took a sip of my coffee and then SPLAT! coffee stain on my shirt (just my luck). Thanks to quick thinking from Lee, we were able to remove the stain using a bottle of water and elbow grease. Just imagine two guys pouring and rubbing water on the same shirt on the side of the street!

Shoutouts go to Mohit Rajhans for arranging our appearance and Mike Lazazzera for coordinating us backstage. I actually felt like a celebrity for that window of 2 hours (make up, coffee/snack table, waiting area.. the works )

Enjoy the pictures.

pic 1. Lee, Mohit, Me

pic 2. in front of the studios

pic 3. picture with Amber Mac on set

pic 4. lee, mike, me

I actually started this blog because of DemoCamp. Somebody mentioned that we had a lot of web 2.0 related stuff except a corporate blog. I thought it was a good idea and this lets us keep a running journal of what we’re up to.

On July 25, 2006, we attended DemoCamp 8 at No Regrets restaurant in Toronto. This was our first time demoing, as well as our first time at DemoCamp. We first heard about DemoCamp through David Crow at CaseCamp a few weeks prior and he mentioned that there would be one coming up and welcomed us to present.

We had a lot of fun demoing JobLoft.com. We had many features that we could potentially demo but we ended up only choosing 3 or 4 features to show: job search w/ajax + google maps, rss, add jobloft to your site and showing a list of our clients. We figured this way, we’d save more time for Q&A and to gather feedback/suggestions from the audience. We did end up receiving a lot of questions and feedback which was awesome.

The next day on July 26, we were scheduled to be featured in Metro News (Workology section - page 18). A few people from DemoCamp contacted us about seeing JobLoft in the paper. It was pretty exciting to see the 2 unrelated events to come together. We also scoured the web looking for various blogs talking about the event, in case people didn’t want to express any criticisms to us live. We’ve found that people tend to be much more direct and give their honest opinions in their own blogs. We were really pleased to see that overall, people liked the product and our demo in general. Here are a few links to blog entries that did an event summary for DemoCamp 8:

• http://www.oliyiptong.com/blog/2006/07/26/democamp-8-2/
• http://pyre.third-bit.com/blog/archives/576.html
• http://archives.i.canblog.com/2006/07/26/democamp_8_quick_sum_up.html
• http://alanhietala.blogspot.com/2006/07/democamp-thoughts.html
• http://www.falsepositives.com/index.php/2006/07/27/toronto-demo-camp-eat-8/
• http://colin.smillie.ca/content/view/49/
• http://blog.fawny.org/2006/07/26/democamp8/
• (missing any? leave us a comment!)

For photos of the event, there are a good number of “democamp” tagged photos on Flickr.