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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

SimplyHired simply out of steam

It was a bleak Memorial Day for recruitment classified aggregator SimplyHired.

Over the weekend, Todd Raphael of ERE Media reported the company is either shutting down, or will see pieces of its technology acquired in the coming days.

Jeff Dickey-Chasins, “the Job Board Doctor”, provided further details this morning by disclosing a letter that was sent to SimplyHired partners:

"First, on behalf of the entire Simply Hired team I would like to thank you for your partnership. We have appreciated working with you and your clients. I am writing you to let you know that the company is in the process of ceasing operations and winding down and, as a result, the Job Sponsorship Program will be discontinued 30-days from this notice, or on June 26th, 2016. We greatly appreciate the partnership we’ve had with your company and regret that we will not be able to continue working with you. We would be happy to set up a call at your earliest convenience to discuss your options."

SimplyHired employees were told about the closing at the end of last week and were not expected to be part of any acquisition, Raphael reported. RecruitingHeadlines.com said the company had about 100 employees.

SimplyHired was founded in 2004 at about the same time as arch competitor Indeed, but despite $34 million in venture capital money, 30 million visitors a month and some clever features, it never quite succeeded in catching up to the recruitment classified industry’s chief disruptor.

The company is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., in Silicon Valley. There was no word how many employees would be affected. Its careers page still lists some openings — we guess updating it isn’t a high priority when the company is shutting down — and the usual dot-com employee amenities like “company happy hours,” “lunch provided every day” and “commuting subsidies.” But perhaps it’s an indication of the company’s fall from grace that it hasn’t been mentioned recently in either the San Francisco Chronicle or The (San Jose) Mercury News, and we don’t recognize the names of any SimplyHired executives except Bob Taylor, a veteran of the recruitment advertising industry who joined SimplyHired in February 2015 as SVP of sales after stints with CareerMosaic (long, long ago), Bernard Hodes Group, Yahoo HotJobs, Vault.com and others.

Dickey-Chasins suggested that clients simply gave up on SimplyHired, choosing Indeed “for its significantly larger traffic numbers” and that “a management overhaul [at SimplyHired] a few years ago brought a new logo, but little else.”

TechCrunch reached out to SimplyHired’s press desk, support team and CEO, but received just this terse response:

"This desk is unable to comment. Please watch for a press release"

The full letter SimplyHired sent to its partners is here.

Here’s some strong additional coverage from TechCrunch and from Chris Russell atRecruitingHeadlines.com.

Peter M. Zollman contributed to this report.