Some very exciting news today.

We had a great meeting yesterday showcasing WireHire to some of Tucson’s most prominent business leaders. To put it bluntly, they loved what they saw, and we garnered some valuable feedback. We’re now focused on developing potential partnerships in the local business community, alliances we believe will generate many more beta users to help us refine ease-of-use for the hiring tool.

We hope to announce some of these here soon. Check back!

The stock market is diving. the housing market needs a makeover, and the job market has gotten so bad that laid-off attorneys are lining up to scoop poop for $7 an hour. This brings up the natural question: is this really the best time to be starting a new business like WireHire?

We say yes.

It’s always darkest before the dawn. So while it may be a slow time for hiring as the world economy continues its meltdown, it’s prime time to be relaunching WireHire. This may not be logically intuitive, but stay with me here because I’m on the way to demonstrate why you should be signing up to be a beta tester.

The timing makes sense for two reasons. WireHire’s primary benefit is its ability to save human resources managers time by quickly eliminating the wrong applicants from giant candidate pools. By putting the right person in the right position faster, WireHire ultimately saves companies great deals of money by rolling back HR investment costs, reducing turnover and systemizing the hiring process.

The other reason? The swelling unemployment rate.

Let’s take a moment to visit Elkhart, Indiana. Besides promoting itself as the RV-manufacturing capital of the world and boasting a city emblem that showcases municipal deer-love, Elkhart is unfortunately home to a 15% unemployment rate, the nation’s highest. Imagine you’re a hospital administrator in Elkhart looking to fill a few open positions. When you post a employment listing in this once-thriving burg, you’re going to have more job-seekers than patients flooding your facility.

The solution? Cull your pool through filtering applicants through WireHire. Obviously, this applies to places far from Elkhart as long as there are a lot more job-seekers than jobs. And, dear readers, it’s looking like that’s going to be a long, long time.

That refrain has been adopted here at WireHire HQ as we get back on track. So welcome to WireHire, launch 2.0.

A little background on the absence of activity here. Shortly after we had the site up and running last year, unforeseen events took our focus off launching the hiring tool we spent a year developing.

In other words, WireHire’s two co-founders/sole employees have day jobs. Michael Schmidt owns a Web design firm, and I, Mike Kalil, toil as an accountant. In the last five months, these food-and-shelter-funding pursuits demanded more of our time than usual. But after our Q1 Team Regrouping Session (two guys talking over pizza and beer last week), we’ve re-committed our energy to executing the WireHire Launch Plan: Phase One.

This entails a publicity push. We’ve identified some media outlets here in Tucson that we’ll be pitching to publish features on WireHire.   After those clips are in hand, we’re hoping to move on to the Phoenix business press, then follow that with regional and national campaigns.

If you have any leads in the media world who may be interested in covering a dynamic startup with huge potential to revolutionize the way workers are hired in America, feel free to drop us a line at media@wirehire.com

We’re excited to announce we’re competing for $100,000 in the 2008 AWS Start-Up Challenge!

This annual contest is ran by the good folks at Amazon to find hot-startups using their Web services to enhance their businesses.

For the more technically inclined among you, we’re using Amazon Web Services’ S3 storage service in our web app to store and backup candidate responses. When WireHire users request playback, audio files are downloaded directly from S3.

We hope you’ll support us in our effort to capture the grand prize ($50,000 in cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Services credits and an investment offer from the deep pockets of Amazon).

First round voting in the contest begins in late October. Amazon will choose finalists from more than 1,000 expected entries. Assuming we’re among the finalists (we think this is a no-brainer, of course), you’ll be able to cast a vote for WireHire at http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge.

Cross your fingers!

The anticipation’s been building all year. Now, we’re finally ready to welcome the rest of the world to what you’ve all been clamoring about: the revolutionary Web tool that changes how your hire!

And it’s still free. Yes, free. WireHire’s trial account allows you to create ONE position and accept UNLIMITED responses from as many candidates as you can attract to your job! Why still free?  It’s simple. We’ve been basking in your kudos for a long time, but we know there’s always room for improvement. Now, we want to hear about it as we’re opening up to more users.

We’re seeking a wide array of employers who can tell us how to make WireHire even better for them. Just click the Feedback tab and tell us how.

Next time: How WireHire turned from a far-fetched idea into your company’s best friend