You can tune into the show, and interact with us via the chat, by clicking here. You can also use the Calliflower Facebook app to tune in and participate.

Join the regulars from RWW Live, plus:

• Charlie O'Donnell, co-founder and CEO of Path 101, a "Community Powered Career Discovery" service.
• Paul Forster, co-founder and CEO of Indeed, a search engine for jobs.
• Dion Lim, President & Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Simply Hired, also a job search engine.

RWW Live is hosted as always by Sean Ammirati, with Marshall Kirkpatrick and Bernard Lunn from ReadWriteWeb on the call.

Before the show starts, we're interested in what questions you have for the panelists. Please leave a comment on this post and one of the RWW crew on the call (Sean, Marshall and Bernard) will do our best to ask your question.

We will post the audio from the show at the end, but we hope you join us LIVE on Calliflower or Facebook.

Example questions:

• How has the current economic environment effected each of their businesses?
• What career needs of individuals are not currently supported by online tools but should be?
• What do the panelists think is the most common misunderstanding among people using online career tools?
• If someone is listening to this podcast and looking for a new job, what advice would the panelists give them?

UPDATE: the show is now finished, here is the audio:

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Many of today's web sites for seeking employment seem like they haven't been updated in years - many don't even offer RSS feeds! It's as if the whole shift to a more social web has completely passed them by. It's about time those static sites received a little competition...and now they have it. Compared to the others, PaidInterviews is more innovative, but, like most new sites, it will only be disruptive if they can build a large enough network of users.

What makes PaidInterviews different is that it's more of a social network than a job search web site. And before the LinkedIn comparisons start up, remember that this site is designed solely to connect potential employees with employers - a feature that's only one aspect of what LinkedIn offers. PaidInterviews is more focused on "careers" than "contacts."

Using PaidInterviews

On the site, users create profiles and fill them out with the expected info like education, work history, skill set, etc. But there are also Web 2.0 aspects to these profiles - things like profile photos and tags, for example. Also, one of the big differences is that on PaidInterviews, potential employees have the option to upload video resumes along with their other information. Several spots are provided where you have the option to upload any sort of videos you want. The site does offer some suggestions, though, based on traditional interview questions ("What are some of your strengths and weaknesses?", "Why should you be hired?" etc.)

Video resumes may be the next big thing for job seekers, but few sites have implemented them so far. (We looked at few of those sites earlier this year on the post "The Resume, Rebooted" available here).

Optimatch Technology

Another difference between PaidInterviews and the current crop of job sites is the way they match candidates to jobs. Instead of simple keyword-based matching (which leads to spammy invites from recruiters who just scour the database for a particular word), PaidInterviews uses a patented "Optimatch" technology. Like "eHarmony for jobs," optimatch works by having candidates fill out and rate various aspects about their ideal career (pay, lifestyle, benefits, commute, skills, etc.). On the other end, employers then see matches ranked by percentage of the best (highest %) matches to the worst (lowest %) .

Optimatch in Action

Business Model

Employers don't get to see a candidate's personal info unless they're ready to interview, at which point they need to make arrangements to pay. However, the business model for PaidInterviews is very different - commission fees aren't paid to recruiters, but to the candidates themselves - sort of a "sign on" bonus thanks to using the site.

Candidates name their asking fee which is then matched to an employer's bid fee and this fee is paid by the employers on top of the employee's salary. If a candidate and employer are a good match but the asking fee and bid don't match up, they can both negotiate to reach an agreed ask fee. PaidInterviews believes this will lead to higher-quality candidates - it may or may not, but it's an interesting experiment. Considering that the youngest crop of workers (Gen Y) sees their skill set as a commodity available to whichever employer makes it most worth their while, this creative model might just gain traction.

Watercooler

The other big feature of this site is an area called the "Watercooler," which is a place where you can ask and answer questions about what a particular company is like. Here you can talk about what you liked/didn't like about the company. Since your username will display here, you may not want to go with your traditional web handle when signing up for PaidInterviews. Let the site instead generate a user ID for you so you can anonymously share your real thoughts.

Conclusion

Will PaidInterviews take off? It's too soon tell, but they have a lot of great features that make it a more appealing career search web site than what we currently have available today. There is certainly a lack of social media-infused innovation in this market, so it's nice to see they are doing something unique.

Semantic analysis of content makes topic focused search smarter than otherwise possible, and wrapping it in other value adds like blog and job search is a smart, solid play.

The news section of each hub displays recent stories vetted by topical relevance via an industry specific ontology, combined with relative weighting of top sources according to how often they write about a particular sector (again determined by industry specific ontology). Its an interesting approach to news, a combination I don't think I've seen before.

A news feed made up of all the hubs you select is then displayed on your Orglex page and is exportable in feed format. The company has a white-label version of its Venture News feed available on the leading blog VentureBeat, though this automated aggregation of links off-site doesn't get very prominent billing there. No surprise and no knock on either company for that.

The feeds published by several of the hubs look like something worth subscribing to already. The most recent items in the "social networking" feed are on the left, judge for yourself.

In addition to news, Orglex also aggregates industry specific job listings from sites around the web and pages for people in each industry. The people section of the site seems inoperable right now and for a job aggregation site to try and to wring cache out of big brand icons as "featured employers" seems questionable.

One of the most interesting parts of the site is the leader board set up for each hub. Top sources are presumably indexed manually but ranked by the frequency with which they write about that hub's topic, according to the ontology. I'm always looking for new ways to discover top sources in new niches and Orglex could be a good tool to put in that toolbox.

The whole site is a work in progress and that's probably why Orglex hasn't gotten any media coverage to date except for the Amazon Web Services blog post I discovered it through. None the less, it's an interesting service to watch.

Readers interested in semantic web developments should check out the resources we've compiled on that and four other emerging key topics in the ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for 2008.