Here at TheOnlineBeat we are all about people going after their dream job, but what if you aren’t quite sure what that dream job is? Sound familiar? Well you aren’t alone. In fact the majority of people finally realize they are ready for a change…to make some big moves…and are blind sighted by the realization that they don’t know what they want to do or where they belong.

That’s why I freaked out (you know...in the really good way) when I came across Jiibe.com, a site that actually helps you figure out what kind of work culture you belong in. Jiibe is a valued source of info for job seekers and for employees who instinctively know that they don’t quite fit where they are working now but they can’t quite put their finger on what it is, until the go through the assessment and see the results.

Greg Scott, CEO and Co-Founder, was kind enough to answer a few questions for us on his road to where he is and how he came up with Jiibe. He walks us through the philosophy behind the site and explains why he thinks it’s a revolutionary tool for job seekers in today’s bustling workspace. Here is what he had to say:

TOB: Give a little background on the jobs and professional road that has led you to where you are today?

Greg Scott: In 1995, I was one of the earliest innovators of online recruiting and applicant tracking systems (ATS), which emerged in 1999 as Vision2Hire.com. Vision2Hire Solutions developed and marketed its Applicant Tracking System for Human Resource practitioners and received notable success in the Bio-Med/Tech, Educational, Hospitality, Industrial and Entertainment markets with key clients such as Intrawest, Janssen-Ortho, Lafarge Canada and WestJet Airlines. Following the sale of Vision2Hire in 2004 to Brainhunter Inc., I ventured into the entertainment industry and founded Stealfocus Creations, a startup Las Vegas theatrical entertainment company which produced critically acclaimed highly collaborative, artistic, multi-discipline shows featuring the artists from Celine Dion's "A New Day" and Cirque du Soleil. Working with such intensely passionate and creative artists provided the spark that inspired Jiibe, raising the question, "how does a work culture evoke the passions and creativity of its people to cultivate groundbreaking innovations and simply, a happier place to work?"

When I moved back to Vancouver, I was talking about the importance of corporate culture to a colleague with a background in Occupation Psychology who specializing in assessing the unique characteristics of people and organizations (my partner Stephen Race.) We both agreed that people need to fit well with a company’s culture in order to be happy at work but that there was no reliable way for individuals to learn about a company’s true culture. We decided that it would be great to create a tool that would assess a company’s culture and make it public.

TOB: Tell us more about Jiibe…how did you come up with the idea?

Greg Scott: Jiibe is a free web tool paired with assessment technology for job seekers and employees to identify culture gaps. By asking the employees questions on two levels—

1.    To describe their "current" work culture
2.    To describe their "ideal" work culture.

By collecting ratings from users about their “current” culture, Jiibe builds a database of cultural profiles for companies that is 100% based on employee ratings. By asking users to rate their “ideal” culture, Jiibe is able to match people’s ideal culture profile company culture profiles in the database that closely align with their ideal culture. So the benefits for users are first, to show them the gaps between where they currently work and the kind of place where they would ideally like to work, and second, to match them to other companies based on their work-culture preferences.

We also off an internal platform called—Diialog, the “enterprise” version. It is a web 2.0 internal network for employees to identify, analyze and solve the company's culture gaps.

Both Jiibe and Diialog ask the employees questions across ten strategic factors, compiling the data in real time and providing unique visual analytics for all employees to see and share. That level of transparency is powerful. Employees can provide real solutions to the most apparent problems. Companies that are willing to be this open and engage their employees are the ones that are most able to quickly adapt to a very dynamic and competitive marketplace.

TOB: How has the initial feedback been? What current goals do you have for the company?

Greg Scott: We have had amazing feedback when people use Jiibe. It has been a valued source of info for job seekers and for employees who instinctively know that they don’t quite fit where they are working now but they can’t quite put their finger on what it is, until the go through the assessment and see the results.

We want to take the feedback we’ve received and the suggestions for improvement that we’ve collected and refine Jiibe. With Diialog we’re in the data collection phase with the first few companies using it and we’ll listen closely to them for a round of enhancements to the system.

TOB: What has surprised you the most as you embarked in creating & launching Jiibe?

Greg Scott: The greatest surprise was finding out how many companies are really open to this global transition towards greater authenticity—greater trust. Those companies, from the data, clearly will attract the best people and have the most engaged staff. If I was to bet on a company’s future success, I’d bet on our most active companies, they just have a culture that encourages their employees to speak up.

User generated content in the enterprise is nothing new; it is synonymous with “managing by walking around” (MBWA,) made famous in the 1982 best selling book, “In Search of Excellence.” However, 2.0 makes that principle truly scalable and far more efficient. We still need personal contact, we still need leaders, but the best ones can now get to the heart of their problems much quicker.

TOB: I actually ran through a profile set-up for Jiibe.com and was surprised with some of the questions the automated platform generated. How were these questions decided on? Do you think these questions will always ring true? Or will you be updating constantly?

Greg Scott: They are standard questions in Jiibe that prompt users to tell us what it’s really like to work somewhere, each of the questions are linked to one of the 10 culture factors, but some of them are done in a cheeky way. We will be updating them on a regular basis. In fact, we were surprised how popular Jiibe was in Denmark and other European countries, so we will need to reconsider some of our North American colloquialisms in the future.

TOB: Considering today’s economical situation, do you think it’s more or less important to find a close match between yourself and a work culture? And why is that?

Greg Scott: For companies we feel it is more important since morale and productivity, which is directly driven by culture, will be critical in these tough times. We feel culture is less important right now for individual employees and job seekers, but that’s not to say it’s not important.

TOB: With so many companies out there, and so many ways to read up on their reputations—there is almost an overload of information for today’s job seeker. In your opinion what should they be focusing on? If you had one or two variables of a work place that it was most important to be lined-up on, what would they be?

Greg Scott: That brings up a good point. We totally agree that there are many sources of information—an overload. That is why we feel it is so important to use a structured assessment for all companies and not make them sift through reams of unstructured comments, data or marketing speak. We want to make immediate suggestions that produce the best match. Now, to answer your question, I would want to focus on transparency. It is already far too stressful in this bad economy to be left in the dark about your company’s direction.

TOB: For you personally what is your ideal work culture? What does Jiibe strive to be for its employees?

Greg Scott: Generally, for me it has always been empowerment and creativity. I like organizations that allow me to make decisions and encourage my creativity. That is what I focus on the most at Jiibe.

TOB: Our readers love to hear what a typical day looks like for our interviewees. Please describe what a usual day looks like for you.

Greg Scott: Lately I have been a Twitter hound, but typically I spend my days reading about corporate culture; communicating with CEO’s of other start-ups; and discussing partnership opportunities. We are always looking for new ways to build the business.

TOB: If you didn’t end up in the entrepreneurial space with your own site, what do you think you would have ended up doing?

Greg Scott: I am not totally sure, but I think I would have been a teacher of some sort. I coach basketball and love doing that more than anything. Even on Twitter I really want to help people use the tools of web to find a job and I am not talking about just Jiibe. I like to point people in the right direction—it’s very satisfying to me.

TOB: Lastly—what are your immediate goals for Jiibe.com, and how you are planning to accomplish them?

Greg Scott: We want to have as many people as possible become a Jiibe user and contribute ratings to our database. We have over 1000 company culture profiles in our database today and we’d like to triple this number in the next 12 months. The more data we have, the more accurate our company culture profiles and matches will be, and this will make Jiibe a destination for both the curious and the serious.

TOB: Well it seems like you are on the right track! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us a bit, and we look forward to seeing Jiibe grow in the future. Best of luck to you!

To connect with Greg & Jiibe or to gain job search and job fit advice, follow them on Twitter:

Greg on Twitter
Stephen on Twitter