Jobster's death march

Lucky that Seattle's heavily-funded Jobster has pioneered such a revolution in recruitment lead generation. Jason Goldberg's Ignition-backed jobs board, which tracks referrals by a company's own employees and contacts, needs every trick of viral distribution to fill its own vacancies. Only two of the top six managers at the venture a year ago are still in place, and attrition at the next level down is as bad as the casualty rate of the British officer class at the Battle of the Somme. Among the departed: Kirk Johnson in account management; Jim McGee in marketing; Dave Lefkow in professional services; Alan Steele in product development; and James Gallagher, Heather Gray, Jim Duddy and Steve Amsden from sales; and Kerry Rupp in business development. Now Jobster did cut nearly half its staff when it abandoned traditional paid job listings, and it was pretty top-heavy, in any case. But still: this is an epic exodus. There's only one problem with Jobster using its own referral system to plug the management gaps: few of the company's own employees would recommend a friend work for an ultimate boss quite as bad-tempered as Jobster's Goldberg.

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