Creator here (shamefully submitted myself, haha). Happy to answer any/all questions or ramble on and on about the problem.
We basically think there needs to be a legitimately trustworthy service out there. Something that acts more like a a career coach instead of a position spammer. Something that understands your needs and specific situation.
Along the lines of "doing things that don't scale", we're completely human powered but technology assisted. There are a lot of things that are involved with career coaching or recruiting that are simply tedious -- we automate them away so we can better focus on relationships.
Do you have women on your panel of experts, and if not do you have plans to add women to your panel of experts? Asking not because "OMG MORE WOMEN IN TECH" but because the experience of being a woman trying to navigate a tech job is going to be different than a man's experience, so I would have more confidence in signing up for/recommending your service if I knew it catered more towards my specific demographic.
Also, what's your geographical range of companies you're working with? Companies all over the US? Only SV? Only West Coast? Worldwide?
We have multiple women in our expert network. I should have highlighted them... doh. We'd love more! https://jobstart.co/experts
This was a pivot -- we started off as a mentorship platform, so we're not actively using all of our expert pool at this time. After realizing the nuances of mentorship were making us solve the mentorship problem instead of the job placement problem, we moved onwards. Fun fact: we didn't have any female experts until we had about 30 male experts. But that changed quickly! The first one liked helping out so much she personally invited all of her friends, and all the sudden we were nearly 50/50 for short while. :D
We have contracts with mostly Silicon Valley startups, but there are a couple in there from NYC and even Georgia. The fact that we don't force our candidates down our own funnel though, and will help them attain a job anywhere, is our real uniqueness.
> We have multiple women in our expert network. I should have highlighted them... doh. We'd love more! https://jobstart.co/experts
Getting a good candidate:expert match sounds integral to your model, so it may be useful to have a process for leveraging your expert network to review the pairings (including the advice they produce and candidate feedback) to identify places where the coaches may need coaching, or the fitting process may be able to improve.
Thanks Zach for doing this (both starting the company and coming here to Hacker News to answer questions).
Based upon what you're seeing:
1. Please rank these in order of importance:
- technical skill in one (or few) technologies
- broad technical skills
- years of experience
- raw smarts & ability to learn
- user/customer domain knowledge
- soft skills (project mgmt, systems analysis, etc.)
- cultural fit
- attitude & determination
2. What % of opportunities are in large companies vs. start-ups?
3. What % of a "typical" programmer's energy should be spent presenting themselves better vs. actually getting better?
4. What makes your coaches/experts so special? Do they have last names?
Nice concept. Best wishes to you and all your candidates.
1. The importance there depends on the company. This is why we take a human-oriented approach, instead of just building a marketplace. We can understand the nuances of what different employers want better. Data models will follow, but we're hand picking the points to start.
2. Remember we're open to helping you get anywhere. We've placed people at both startups and large companies already, but most of our contracts are with startups. Large companies don't do recruiting deals unless you're pumping them huge numbers or giving some crazy insightful data.
3. This depends on the programmer. I think, unfortunately, a lot of getting the right job is knowing how to present yourself better. In addition, I think most programmers already know how to get better at programming, but few learn the tricks to land more interviews and get more offers.
4. The status quo is pretty terrible. I like what some of the new companies are doing (Triplebyte for example), but recruiters are still the predominant factor in hiring. Some of them are good, but most of them... nope. Our coaches are all engineers. Our experts are all engineers. Our coaches have a full-time job -- that job is to understand the job market, understand the candidates they work with, and help them out however they see fit.
I'll also mention that since we're still only 3 people, we, the founders are also doing a large portion of the coaching. Gotta love startup life!
Whenever you reach the point when you can use the point of view of a non-SV, non-tech industry programmer with heavy enterprise & SMB experience, let me know how I can help. Contact info in profile.
I can agree with you here. One thing businesses are constantly telling me: "We are flooded by unsuitable candidates, because recruiters are playing the numbers game. Their strategy is submitting large lists of candidates in the hope that one or two are suitable."
The status quo has evolved because employees don't feel qualified, or like they have the resources, to conduct an initial candidate search. They don't think they have the networks, but they need a new hire fast. So they outsource to 'experts', but the incentive is all wrong.
Good luck to you. I'm on the other side of the Pacific thinking about what we can do to take recruiters out of the mix, focusing on better marketplaces, but you've certainly piqued my interest.
For the salary negotiations, you take 20% of the difference. What do you do? Do you wait for the candidate to get an offer, then actually go talk to HR at the company on their behalf, or do you simply coach and tell them "Hey ask for $XX,XXX more!"
Are you hiring? While I'm hunting for tech work in NY even now, but have had a frustrating enough experience that I'm open to just tackling the problem directly.
Being that you are based in SF, do you think that you are equipped to provide services to job seekers in other cities (i.e. Austin, NYC, Boston, Raleigh, or Seattle)?
Looks like you're based in SF. Do you primarily work with West coast based companies? Because I love where I live right now (unwilling to relocate atm), and that limits my options quite a bit.
Hey Zach, Creator of InterviewBit here, we are doing something similar, however relatively less human powered, would love to hear your thoughts about what we are doing at InterviewBit.com
Almost every company with a half decent optimization strategy will use similar sites to measure interactions and categorize users. Most of these measurements are things that a site could do on its own (like analyzing how effective a call to action is) but it makes sense time and cost wise to outsource to an expert.
If you're worried about this- use an adblocker or don't go to corporate sites.
1) Addthis is what we use for sharing. It's helped us a lot.
2) Google analytics puts in doubleclick.
3) Facebook sharing... yup.
4) We're currently running an A/B test with Optimizely.
5) Segment.io is a great analytics tool.
I'd recommend all the above services. That's my opinion on the above!
The trouble with the FB button is that is lets FB track you just by visiting the page, even if you don't click on the button. You could use a non-JS version of the button, or use a "two-click" button that doesn't load scripts from FB until the user is ready to share something.
We make deals (recruiting contracts) with companies who really want first dibs on top talent. When a candidate comes through, we'll discuss all their options, but mention that we also work with some companies and talk about those companies as well. If they'd like an intro, awesome! If not, totally cool.
We're sacrificing potential revenue to build the most trustworthy brand. The economics of recruiting let us do that... just an insane market right now.
Creator here (shamefully submitted myself, haha). Happy to answer any/all questions or ramble on and on about the problem.
We basically think there needs to be a legitimately trustworthy service out there. Something that acts more like a a career coach instead of a position spammer. Something that understands your needs and specific situation.
Along the lines of "doing things that don't scale", we're completely human powered but technology assisted. There are a lot of things that are involved with career coaching or recruiting that are simply tedious -- we automate them away so we can better focus on relationships.