More HR Business
www.mzinga.com (a provider of social networking and community and learning solution) has closed another round of funding and changed their name from sharedexpertise. They have also purchased Knowledgeplanet, an LMS supplier.
Former employees of Teds have repurchased the company from Fidelity and will continue to build out the Talent Management suite and market their products independently.
www.hewitt.com has divested itself of the old Cyborg platform to a private equity firm.
www.geolearning.com has closed $31M in funding.
www.massmutual.com is expanding their retirement portfolio business with the acquisition of First Mercantile Trust Company.
www.workopolis.com has purchased the Job Network business from Brainhunter expanding their target reach into niche sites that predominately support associations
Merlin Technologies Corporation, a new human capital management technology company providing integrated pre-employment and talent acquisition solutions for corporations, raises $10 million and acquires ASSESS Systems ( Bigby Havis). It's great to have Steve Sasser back in the space as CEO of this organization.
www.risesmart.com, the human-powered job search service for $100K+ earners, has secured a $1.5 million seed round of financing from angel investors, including Craig Stamm, the former chief financial officer for CareerBuilder.com and Headhunter.net, Mark Hamdan, founder and chief executive officer of
www.hrsmart.com; and Louis Ramery, senior vice president of relationship marketing at Sears Holdings Corporation.
One of the funniest guys I know (besides my brother Dave who many of you know), is a guy named David Copps, the CEO of
www.purediscovery.com.
I can only imagine that he is smarter than a rocket scientist (who else indexes tens of millions of movie purchases to determine probability patterns that you will buy a certain movie?); and he also has the uncanny knack of always making you smile and laugh when you talk to him. His emails are often even funnier…
as a parent, as a business owner and as a serial entrepreneur.
He told me yesterday that many of our readers could learn from all the mistakes I make and that I should share these words of wisdom with you.
So for each blog I will try to share something…
For Christmas, I bought my two older girls (Hailey 15, Katie 13) iphones. First of all you have to realize they are not available in Canada and I really struggled with what type of example I am setting for my kids if I buy them something that I have to illegally unlock to work in Canada…. But I did buy them partly because they had everything else a teenager could want and I had no idea what else to buy and secondly, because they are simply the coolest things out there and I wanted my kids to be cool! So a month later I get their first bill - $1,588 for the two phone plans. I guess I learned three things from this:
1) If you buy them a really cool device they will use it above and beyond their current plan.
2) Data charges on a non-data plan are where all the phone companies are making their money. I am realigning their plans monthly.
3) Ask and you shall receive. I called Rogers, our national phone carrier, pleaded guilty, asked for help and they reduced the bill by $500.
SO
cool = expensive and now onto rockband - which is the coolest new thing…
Does anyone have a summer job or part-time work for my kids? They need money to pay for their cell phone bills.
I see iphones or other devices like this as the future of learning, remote workers' knowledge base and so many other things. The phone carriers will figure this out along the way and be a predominant player in corporate HR budgets for training, onboarding, employee communication and much more.
