San Francisco-based Evolv on Demand has hired away Monster.com's vice president of product marketing and alliances, Daniel Enthoven, to be its new chief marketing officer, the company announced today.
The high-level hire is part of Evolv's plans to grow this year after raising $15.7 million in new financing; the company plans to hire an additional 80 staff members by year's end. Enthoven, 41, began his new role May 2.
At Monster, Enthoven was responsible for giving the company's sales associates data and success stories to woo new customers. Enthoven joined in 2005 when the company he was working for, Trovix, was acquired by Monster for $72.5 million.
Enthoven's job at Evolv will be to craft a coherent message about the value the company brings to clients. The challenge, he said, is to "take the facts of what you're doing and put it into a compelling narrative that people can click with, and push the information into different channels that will get to your clients." Those channels will include, traditional media, Twitter, advertising campaigns and attendance at trade conventions.
Evolv on Demand was founded in 2006, and uses employee data to improve hiring decisions and reduce turnover for employers with a large amount of hourly employees. The company said its algorithms can anticipate what candidates are most likely to succeed in a given job and which ones are at risk of quitting shortly after being hired.
"I just want to make sure people understand how we're different," Enthoven said.
Enthoven decided to leave a large company with almost 6,000 employees, Monster, for a startup that has 60 partially because he wants to have a large impact in a company that he sees as changing the way business is done.
"I had a good compensation package, a great team and a lot of good friends," Enthoven said. "But it's rare to see a startup and say, 'They could really make it and this is a position where I could really add value.'"
The other reason he jumped from Monster? Google's vice president of people operations, Laszlo Bock, who sits on the Evolv board, convinced him to.
"For him to have such a strong interest in the company made me think, 'Wow,'" Enthoven said. "This is what Silicon Valley's all about, trying to change the game, what am I doing on the sidelines?"
Write to Joseph Walker
