Furthermore how do you distinguish between a high quality endorser giving accurate information about candidates and a low-quality endorser trading favors to bolster their own number of endorsements? Currently on linkedin I can see somebodies endorsements which can raise red flags about them "trading favors". How will searchlight provide a similar ability to scrutinize endorsers?
The experience and knowledge of the referencer factors into how we calculate the strength of the recommendation.
IANAL, but I have spent many unpleasant days reviewing GDPR and I think it's likely that such data is the candidate's personal data and they are allowed to see it.
https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
Also, I'd imagine there would be a huge defamation liability.
Regarding our landing page, that's a great point! We are a candidate driven product, but we are first focused on employer adoption. That adds legitimacy to our platform when Searchlight reaches out to candidates. In the future, we plan to allow candidates to initiate the Searchlight process themselves - we have already gotten requests from current Searchlight candidates to build this feature.
I hear your hesitation to provide references early. It's a new hiring approach. But we've seen that with our positive messaging and candidate engagement process, candidates see Searchlight as an opportunity to stand out. We try to minimize the burden on candidates and references by saving the answers so references don't have to do it again. As our credibility grows over time, we hope that everyone will feel comfortable making a Searchlight profile.