There are certainly difficulties around raising money for new technology start-ups in this economy, but Adam Klein, the former president of AskJeeves, sees that as an opportunity for Bintro, the free semantic service for job seekers and posters whose board he has recently joined.

“When we come out of the recession many, many businesses that were there before won’t be there afterwards,” says Klein, whose expertise in helping companies transform their business has played out in roles as president of VideoEgg, vice president of strategy and business development at EMI Music, executive advisor to chairman of MTV Networks, and EVP at Hasbro. “It’s accelerating the rate of transformation, the demise of older models and ways of doing business that have legacy approaches from a technology, marketing or cost structure point of view.” As the next stage of the economy grows up around new types of companies, younger and more agile competitors in existing industries, and established players in the throes of transformation, Bintro is in the sweet spot, he says.

“It is positioned in this jobs domain exactly where, as the economy takes off, everyone is hustling for a bit of advantage -- and it will be a powerful tool for helping job seekers be understood comprehensively for who they are, and for differentiating the quality of applicants.” Bintro lets users create very descriptive profiles using both natural language and menu options, and it disambiguates terms so that two parties can come together in highly relevant matches even if job poster and seeker didn’t use the same specific language in their narrations. “It takes more time and effort but the more thoughtful you are the more positive the outcome will be,” he says, with the power of semantics and contextual relationships helping identify “far greater subtleties” for making matches.

Klein plans to use his deep application knowledge and strong sense of marketing, strategic branding and strategic positioning to support CEO Richard Stanton on making the most of Bintro’s value proposition in the job search space. “The most important phase is to execute superbly on what we’re doing at the moment,” he says – to best utilize what he sees as the company’s natural advantages in part by bringing to bear his own experience about how to connect with consumers and make money in digital media. The online employment search space has to move from being what he calls “a bit of a blunt instrument to date…You need to have a more refined edge and that is a hugely appealing proposition for Bintro.”

Bring in Da Noise
That said, the names that this generation of job seekers have grown up with appear to be heading in a similar direction. Monster.com, clearly the real monster in the space, has launched a fee-based semantic-based Power Resume Search for employers and has been testing a service that uses the same engine with a simplified interface for job hunters. Klein says he welcomes the competition. “It’s excellent because it helps raise the bar. It changes the expectations of what search in this domain should be about,” he says. “It’s harder for us as a smaller company to completely change the profile and expectations….This is what you need to have accelerated market acceptance and expectations, so that to me is an upside.” As bigger companies help proselytize semantic search, that helps create the ‘noise’ that Bintro can leverage to differentiate itself on the value it brings to the market, he says.

Another upside to is that the day is coming when semantic search will become, Klein says, “an integral part of all we do.” That includes job searching, of course, but also the larger world of online news. Klein is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where he’s begun teaching a course on the business of journalism. “There’s no such thing as a 30-year career at the New York Times anymore, and how you understand digital opportunities and the issue of semantic capabilities will be a big part of online journalism and online news in the future,” he says.

Momentum is in Bintro’s favor, he thinks. “No doubt a year from now we will make a series of tweaks because you learn rapidly in this market, and I really hope in a couple of areas we are able to differentiate the quality of experience for employers and employee candidates,” he says. “So they say if you don’t have a semantic search capability, it’s not a serious game.”