Simply Hired Takes $13.5m from Fox and Foundation Capital

Simply Hired (TechCrunch profile) has raised $13.5 million from New Corp’s Fox Interactive group and Foundation Capital. Both investors will take board seats in the company.

This is big news for Simply Hired. The Fox investment almost certainly signals that Fox’s other properties, including MySpace, could have a very close relationship with Simply Hired in the near future. And – Simply Hired’s competitor Indeed has taken money from the New York Times. These startups now both have some very heavy hitters supporting them and it will be interesting to see how things shake out.

Another angle on this deal is what didn’t happen – this was not an outright acquisition by Fox, which has been on an acquisition tear lately. My guess is that acquisition discussions have been ongoing for some time, but the valuation on Simply Hired may have been too high for an outright purchase.

All of this is speculation of course. But the jobs space just got more interesting.