Austin-based Itzbig, a recruiting technology company run by industry veterans Hank Stringer and Jim Hammock, is making good progress on their Bay Area expansion. When Jim McGovern came on as CEO, one of his strategic tasks was to expand the company beyond Central Texas into key technology markets like the Silicon Valley. The company seems to have been pretty successful in doing that, signing up customers like CNET, eBay, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! and Logitech. Itzbig focuses on private and anonymous profiling and communications between job seekers and employers. This level of comfort is helping to facilitate the recruiting of passive job candidates, or as Itzbig called them, quiet working professionals. “These companies understand that the Quiet Working Professional, or passive candidate, who ordinarily isn’t looking for a job, embraces the itzbig network because it promotes the efficient exploration of job opportunities, while preserving their privacy and anonymity,” said Jim McGovern, the CEO of itzbig. “These passive candidates are also attracted by the user control and ease-of-use of the network in that they can enter a profile in a few minutes and see  in real-time how they match and score against various job opportunities on the network.”

Last week, Itzbig was named by American Venture in it’s list of 2008′s most promising startups (the article is here but requires a subscription).