Brian McCullough is the founder of WhoToTalkTo. For the past seven years he has been the CEO and head writer at ResumeWriters.com.

What are some things your service does better than a business oriented social network like LinkedIn?

I'd argue that we're nothing like LinkedIn. For one thing, we're not a social network. The analogy I'd use is that our model is closer to eBay-for-jobs than MySpace-for-jobs. There's no creating networking groups or social circles or anything like that. It's more like a true marketplace: each user comes with something to contribute (a referral to a job they can't use) and they transact that for something they want (a referral to a job they want). This model has never been attempted before, to my knowledge.

And it's interesting, because we stumbled upon this model after trying earlier incarnations that incorporated things like networking groups. The truth is, the traditional social networking model doesn't work for jobs; just because you're looking for a job right now, doesn't mean your friends or friends of friends are. So you're motivated, but their not. A networking model that requires building connections doesn't work if all the connections aren't equally motivated. It was when we stripped everything down to the most basic idea that we had our "eureka" moment: what if ALL the participants were active job seekers? That way, everyone would be equally incentivized to participate.

LinkedIn is a great tool for white collar workers to structure and develop their EXISTING networks, or at least illuminating connections that weren't obvious in your existing network. WhoToTalkTo is about making connections that don't yet exist. The person that sells a good on eBay doesn't know their customer until the transaction happens.

In the same way, think of a user who comes to our site. She is dreaming of working at Company X. If she already knew of someone who worked at Company X, she wouldn't need to "job search" to begin with because her existing network would already have provided her the connection she needed for a personal referral to her dream job. Using WhoToTalkTo, she can search and find someone connected (or connected to someone connected) to Company X that she never would have known of otherwise. She can get a referral through connections she wouldn't have access to otherwise.

What is the current state of the company?

Right now, it's funded by me and operated by me. I developed the site with two co-founders and colleagues who did the design and coding. So we're a 3 man team, very much still tweaking all the little nuts and bolts now to make it hum. As far as public interest, it's hard to say since less than 1,000 people have seen the site (just in the process of going live today). Talk to me in a month. But we're getting signup ratios of 50%.

And interestingly, I was looking at our logs today (our first day of public testing) and we've been getting the majority of our traffic from LiveJournal, MySpace and StumbleUpon. Not sure what that means yet, but it has come from zero advertising... Maybe this is an idea the MySpace generation "gets" more intuitively? You gotta login and look at the quality of these referrals though... they're really blowing my mind so far. Exactly what we'd hoped for: "I know someone at company X. I can give you a referral to the exact person who does the hiring." Real, quality referrals.

What is your personal background in business and the web, and how does it help you in developing WhoToTalkTo?

My background is that I'm the founder and CEO of ResumeWriters.com. Our writers have helped tens of thousands of people find work since 1999. I personally have worked with thousands of clients. So, I'm a career services professional first and a web entrepreneur second. But if you read my "about us" essay on the site, you'll see that the whole genesis of this project came from the frustration with the job boards that ResumeWriters.com clients have expressed ad nauseum.

I really think the current online job search model is broken. And if you think about it, there's been zero innovation in this space. Newspapers have had help wanted classifieds for hundreds of years. All the "job boards" did was take these classifieds and put them online. The new "job aggregators" bring all the job ads into one place, but they're still dealing with the same thing: classified ads. Online job search has never left web 1.0. We think this is the first attempt to bring a qualitatively new type of job search result to users.