Yelp looks for local hires

Prominent social location-search service Yelp is coming to Australia, and has kicked off advertising for staff to fuel the site's local reviews.

Yelp was founded in San Francisco in 2004, and allows users to rate the places in their city to be compiled into an online social directory.

Yelp has expanded across the US, Canada, the UK and Europe, and partnered with Sensis in July for a presence in Australia.

Three job ads surfaced on Seek.com.au this week, for local positions with Yelp in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

"We're coming to your city!" the job ad reads, adding that the company is looking for residents that know their city "inside and out" to scout local hotspots for the site.

When the Yelp partnership was announced in July, Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst said that he expected Yelp.com.au to be live by the end of 2011. Yelp.com.au at the time of writing still redirects to the US site, with no Australian listings to be found.

Yelp's journey to business success has not been without struggles in the US, with a District Court Judge in October dismissing charges in a class action suit that alleged that Yelp was threatening to degrade the ratings of stores if they didn't advertise with the social network.

Since then, Yelp has gone on to file its initial public offering (IPO) in the US to be listed as a publicly traded company.