Klout CEO Joe Fernandez Responds To Criticism, Talks Job Descriptions That Include Score “Requirements” [TCTV]

Drew Olanoff

Drew Olanoff has over 10 years of marketing, PR, customer service and support, relationship building and management, product management, and technical support experience in multiple verticals. Online, including mobile. He prides himself on being a connector. Connecting people, stories, information. He has worked under some amazingly talented and gifted PR pros while working for startups as a “Director of Community”,... → Learn More

Monday, October 1st, 2012

Over the weekend, I wrote a post about Salesforce telling potential job applicants that one of its “desired skills” was having a Klout score of 35 or more. Needless to say, I found this to be a bit unsettling, as I instantly imagined other companies forcing this into their own job applications.

Whether you agree with what Klout does or not, and for the most part, I don’t, it’s a hot space. I’m not a fan of “class systems” and people feeling good or bad about some arbitrary score.

As soon as my post was published, Klout’s CEO, Joe Fernandez, tweeted to me about how HR people are using Klout at companies. I asked him to come to our office and discuss it with me, and he graciously accepted. I also got to ask him about the rumors that the company had manually adjusted scores for people who complained loudly that theirs was too low.

Have a watch:

Klout is most certainly a lightning rod, and at least Fernandez isn’t backing down from a good argument or discussion.


Mr. Joe Fernandez Co-founded Klout, Inc. in 2008 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Previously Mr. Fernandez provided data solutions to the Real Estate industry as Director of Innovation and Research at OnBoard Informatics. In 2003, Mr. Fernandez co-founded Evalulogix and helped over 5000 school districts meet their special education reporting mandates for compliance with NCLB and IDEA. He serves as Director of Klout, Inc. He attended University of Miami and Oxford University.

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