On Monday, June 23^rd, we published our 15^th edition: Southeastern Arizona.  The local edition will be distributed at 900 high-traffic locations, with a distribution of 18,000 papers per week and a projected readership of 32,000 per week. Job seekers and employers can find copies of our Southeastern Arizona edition in Tucson, Catalina, Cortaro, Kino, Marana, Oro Valley, Rillito, Vail and the surrounding cities.

In addition to the local Tucson print edition, we have partnered with local radio and TV affiliates to better serve employers and job seekers. Our radio partnership is with Citadel Broadcasting stations: 1290 AM, KHIT 107.5, KIIM 99.5, 97.5 BOB FM, and KTUC 1400. The TV partnership includes cable affiliate, COX Media.

The JobDig van and distribution crew have been working hard! I wonder where they’re off to next!

Eden Prairie, MN – JobDig, a leading employment focused media, advertising, and technology company, today announced the release of JobDig Tracker, a web-based (SaaS) Talent Acquisition application. Targeted towards small and mid-sized businesses, JobDig Tracker allows HR Professionals to better and more efficiently manage the hiring process within their companies and employer organizations.

“Essentially what we’ve tried to do with JobDig Tracker is bring the sophistication of a much larger talent acquisition system to smaller businesses and organizations, but make it simple to implement, easy to learn, and intuitive to use,” said Toby Dayton, President and CEO, JobDig. “And despite a broad range of innovative features and impressive functionality, JobDig Tracker is, by far, the least expensive applicant tracking system on the market today.”

JobDig Tracker enables users to streamline job postings, track and report on which sources are generating candidate flow, and centralize and better organize the multiple steps involved in the recruiting process. The system allows for customized automation and facilitates improved collaboration and sharing of information. “Every aspect of the application is designed to make it easier, more efficient, and less costly for companies to leverage new technology and improve how they hire new employees,” explained Jake Stupak, who is overseeing the development and rollout of JobDig Tracker.

Some of the features embedded within JobDig Tracker include a customized applicant portal which integrates seamlessly with a company’s web site, job order tracking, resume parsing, source tracking, candidate ranking, and automated job board posting. The system costs $179 per month for an unlimited number of users and a guided tour is available at www.jobdigtracker.com. Live demonstrations can also be scheduled with a product specialist to specifically highlight how JobDig Tracker could benefit the specific organization.

Ever heard the phrase “what you give out, comes back to you.”? Here is one more small example, and proof. GL’s blog is read regularly by Robin McMaster in Pittsford, NY, who operates a unique business there with Dr. Ellen Weber. Both are noted business brain experts and lecture at the university level on how the human brain works. GL mailed her a dog several weeks ago, like we do often to prospects and customers. We do it so often, frankly, that we have become a bit jaded to its impact. Evidently, Robin thought highly enough about it to write about in a special blog posting, which you can read here. If she likes GL’s blog, think how she will like Toby’s, called Diggings, which you can read here.

And, one of the editors at US NEWS and WORLD REPORT thought that she would weigh in with a follow up column, based on one of WWDS’s most recent blog topics, on resumes. You can read Liz Wolgemuth’s article “Will This Resume Tip Get You the Job?” here.

And, seems like each weekend brings more sobering news about our local newspaper, the Star-Tribune, which you can read (first, often) in Toby Dayton’s blistering series of articles on their financial difficulties. In case you missed the last installment, you can read it here.

Today’s event was the Pole Vault – a very intense and animated event which brought out the competiveness in each JobDig Olympian.

The stakes were high and team leaders focused on pumping up their teammates to take home the victory. Team Argentina, Sweden and Italy advanced to the final medal round.

Kristi Wood, one of JobDig’s new Market Research Interns and member of team Sweden, stepped up to compete for her team. The JobDig Olympic Stadium fell silent and the audience impatiently waited for her score……

A perfect 10!! The crowd went wild!

Team Sweden took the gold and Kristi made JobDig Olympic history!

On May 23rd, JobDig published its first Salt Lake City newspaper.

“We are very excited about bringing JobDig to Salt Lake City,” said Toby Dayton, President and COO. “It’s a perfect market for us with a diversified, expanding economy and a terrific group of world-class employers.”

JobDig will distribute at over 1,100 high-traffic locations, with a distribution of 36,000 papers per week and a projected readership of 78,000 per week. Jobseekers and employers will be able to find copies of our free jobs paper in Salt Lake City, Murry, Provo, West Valley, South Jordon, Ogden, Park City and other surrounding cities.

JobDig will provide employers and businesses in the Salt Lake City area with an additional source to advertise their job openings.

“Through our best-cost recruitment advertising solutions involving print, web, radio, and TV, we look forward to helping those employers find the best qualified candidates for their openings,” said Dayton.

JobDig’s Salt Lake City radio partnership includes Citadel Broadcasting stations: B 98.7, KBER 101, 101.9 The End, KFAN 1320AM, 860 The Wolf, and KBULL 93FM. TV partnership includes cable affiliate, Comcast Spotlight.

On June 2nd, JobDig announced their 3rd annual month-long employee contest: JobDig Olympics.

Each morning, all 75+ employees meet with their assigned teammates and prepare to play the daily selected event on two Nintendo Wii’s. Each country-based team is made up of employees from every department to build company unity. Daily cash prizes and medals are awarded as added incentives.

“JobDig’s tagline is ‘because everyone should dig their job.’ Not only does that philosophy apply to the job seekers and employers we serve, but also the kind of company we’re trying to build ourselves,” explained CEO and President Toby Dayton. “We literally want JobDig to be among the best companies in the world to work for. Life is just way too short to spend half of it working in a job you don’t love or for an organization you don’t care about.”

Joel Gray, one of JobDig’s new Account Representatives and recent college grad, started his first day of work on the debut of the JobDig Olympics. “I walked into a conference room filled with young people cheering, Olympic signs and country flags hung, team sweatbands worn and two Nintendo Wii’s playing, and thought, how did I manage to land this job?” Gray continued, “My first day was awesome and I immediately knew that this was a company that I’m excited to work for.”

The conclusion of the month long contest will be on Friday, June 27th. Closing Ceremonies will include final cash payout and a catered event at a MN Saints game at Midway Stadium.

For the 6th year in a row, JobDig and its employees helped build a home for Habitat for Humanity. About 30 volunteers donated a total of about 250 hours of time in West St. Paul working on a house for a low- income family. The ‘Entrepreneurs House’ was the brainchild of JobDig director John Bergstrom (who is also a Habitat director) who felt that smaller companies were unable to sponsor an entire house on their own the way Fortune 500 companies in the Twin Cities do. The Entrepreneurs House allows a dozen or so emerging, high-growth companies to team up and work on a house collectively. Said Bergstrom, “For 5 years now, JobDig has been the largest source of volunteers to the Entrepreneurs House, and we love having their involvement. They’re also the most talented, hardest working group every year.”

Way back when we were discussing our company’s name and main product, we knew we had a winner with JOBDIG. It was short, concise, active and, in the age of the internet, it had only six letters. Alyn Shannon, a local graphic artist, came up with the idea for a clipart dog to represent the name. It was ok, not the best, certainly not special or unique. We knew it would have to change and get better.
Those first few years, we were working hard at building the company, raising money (constantly), making more than our share of mistakes, but always keeping our eye on serving employers and jobseekers.

When Toby joined us from Cherry Tree, he introduced the company to Brad Norr, an independent graphic designer who had some ideas on a new direction for our dog. His idea was to infuse the dog with a bit of attitude and fun. After all, work is work…but the people who hold these jobs all want pretty much the same thing: respect, fairness, a sense of belonging and purpose. And, they wanted a bit of fun, too.

Over the next few years, Brad has designed over 150 special dogs for us…we have Minnesota State Fair dog, trucker driver dog and nurse dog. We have Amarillo dog that Toby just showcased over at Diggings.

We even made up basic dog as a plush toy and sent it out to our prospects a friends. Several thousand of them are now sitting on monitors and water coolers all over our markets. Customers call us and ask us for more dogs because “someone took mine.” We pass dogs out at trade shows, charity events like the CF Walk and many more. Each time, someone gets our dog, they smile. We win.

I am not too sure what branding experts like Becky Carroll of Customers Rock, Martin Jelsema of Signature Strategies, Oliver Blanchard of the brandbuilder or my friend Dan Schwabel at Personal Branding Blog would think of our brand, er, dog.

I know this: we like him. Which one is YOUR favorite dog?

You know what we say…because everyone should dig their job.

For four years, JobDig has supported and walked in the yearly CFFwalk to help cure cystic fibrosis. This year Josh Rock, the man under the JobDig dogsuit, again gave up his Saturday for this good cause. Several other JobDig employees also walked the three miles around Lake Calhoun all in support of CF and a special kid, Max, pictured here.

Very intentionally, the blogs we have been writing at JobDig (What Would Dad Say & Diggings) do not contain much information specifically about JobDig. Rather, they have both attempted to build a readership over the past two years by focusing on general advice for jobseekers and people interested in furthering their career (What Would Dad Say) and providing commentary on the media, advertising, and receruitment advertising industries (Diggings). While we have, on occasion, promoted noteworthy events at JobDig, we’ve pretty much kept news about our own company out of our blogs, feeling that readers were maybe not as interested in our own self-promotion. While that has been a successful strategy, at least as far as we can tell, we have increasingly felt the need to start a new JobDig blog that will contain only news about JobDig. And for that reason, we are launching J.D.’s Blog - a blog with news, updates, stories, product and service releases, employee news, and anything else we feel like placing in there about our company. There will be a number of contributors to the site, and we hope that over time, people who are interested in JobDig will find the blog interesting, entertaining, and informative. If you have comments, ideas, thoughts, or feedback, please leave a comment and let us know.

Thanks.