To lead the world’s biggest recommendation engine is no easy task. We take responsibility to provide people from all around the world with the absolute best piece of content available to them at any given moment. Whether it is on the site they’re currently on or from all around the web. You can find Taboola on some great publishers sites such as CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, Washing Post, Mens Health, RunnersWorld, USAToday, Beet.tv and many others.

As Will Richmond reported, Taboola is already showing its product in the US to more people than products or companies like AOL, Microsoft Search Engine Bing.com, or Tumblr. We will soon reach more people than Twitter or Wikipedia. Or as Andy Plesser reported – Taboola is like “Crack For Publishers”. However, this reach comes with meaningful responsibility to constantly innovate, improve our service and EngageRank(TM) prediction technology, work with our clients on how can we better serve them, and most important “listen” to users around the world as they click on our recommendations to be even better.

We are fortunate to have supportive investors who believe in our vision to connect the world population with content they love and we’re taking action. It’s time to grow.

As of mid/end Jan both our offices in Tel-Aviv Israel and Manhattan will move to a bigger space, allowing us to hire more top engineers, mathematicians, client services, product, sales and more. We are on a constant hunt for talent. Our HR manager tells us that she meets hundreds of people, scouting for folks that can join our Taboola family.

More fire power. Taboola - Because We Recommend.

Guest post: Neomi Farkash, HR Manager at Taboola

Last week I attended a Jobinfo sponsored lecture by Mr. Ariel Halevi, Co-Founder & C.E.O. of Debate Company Ltd. The topic was why so few HR executives move up to a CEO position. Finance, Sales & Marketing and R&D execs have a much better chance of moving to the CEO chair at the height of their careers. But HR, whether VP or otherwise, aren’t likely to make the move.

The talk was fascinating. It helps that you’re a great debater, as Halevi has to be. But a lot of what he said resonated with me – “HR needs to be connected to the business aspect on all levels”. The HR work has to be quantified, measurable in money – even if it’s “soft” and immeasurable on other scales. Halevi’s perspective on that was unique and it’s one I intended to try.

(more…)

Guest post: Adam Singolda

Tonight, Apple confirmed a real tragedy.

The legendary founder and leader of things such as the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone or the iMac has passed away.

(more…)

Guest post: Neomi Farkas, Taboola HR Manager

As some of you may know, we had an HR gathering event here at @Taboola Israel offices recently that I blogged about (read here) with some great companies HR managers.

There were ten of us in all and we discussed the best ways to contribute more to our company’s goals by improving the recruitment process, and how to increase our value as ‘business parents’ to fellow executives as well as the challenges of creating an organizational culture with offices around the world.

I got some valuable tips – such as the importance of building a company culture where HR can gradually demonstrate to the executives how it can help them to perform and execute business goals.  I’m a little nerdy so my first inclination was to ‘talk, talk, talk’ – and try to convince my way into decision making

We also traded recommendations for suppliers, services and equipment and benchmarked some confusing issues like does LinkedIn have the same value in all regions and how do you build a vacation/sick days/PTO package for US employees.

A great big thank you to all participating colleagues.

We’ll set the date for a second meet up just as soon as the holidays are over.

Guest post: Adam Singolda

If you’ve ever worked at a startup, you know it’s really hard work. From establishing your product/market fit, business model and messaging to building the infrastructure to support your growth.

As one of our investors used to tell me, if making money was easy, everybody would do it. That said, there’s one thing that I’m certain drives success versus failure: the people you work with.

We have a top-notch team here at Taboola, from state of the art Mathematicians and Engineers to Business folks, a place I’m proud to come to work every day. And now, we’ve added to our team a very experienced player from the news industry as Taboola Consultant. Please welcome Mark Contreras (linkedin)

Mark brings with him vast managerial and professional experience in the news vertical. He was most recently Senior Vice President at Scripps Newspapers, managing 4,000 people. He’s also a terrific guy to work with and focused on what can help Taboola grow and propel our vision.

Changing the way people around the world discover videos they love.

P.S this is how cool Mark is, here is a video of Mark interviewing Twitter founder at the NAA

Watch the full video here

Guest post: @Neomi, our HR manager

I’m  super excited about hosting our first HR forum meet-up in Taboola’s TLV office, so I thought I’ll blog about it!

The topic we are focusing on is HR challenges and practices for international companies with offices in more than one region. Mainly we are going to focus on – how to meet the ongoing dynamic needs, how to be there for employees when you’re in another continent and grow meaningful values among managers, and executives.

The response has been overwhelming !

Already more than 15 HR professionals from top leading companies including Optier, Peer39, BigBand Networks, Dome9 and Africa Israel will participate.

It looks like we’ll need to make at least two sessions to meet the demand, and I will try to publish some key findings on our @taboola blog.

Stay tuned, and please don’t hesitate to send me tips if you have them or if you woud like to participate in future Taboola HR meetups.

Best to reach me at neomi@taboola.com.