Also, what's your geographical range of companies you're working with? Companies all over the US? Only SV? Only West Coast? Worldwide?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Solid question.
2) We'll still help you land a remote position.
Cheers!
s7.addthis.com
stats.g.doubleclick.net
s-static.ak.facebook.com
cdn.optimizely.com
2762420311.log.optimizely.com
cdn.segment.com
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!
However, the point remains. They all do user tracking.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdf...
I wonder why FB isn't being blocked. Anyone any ideas?
or am I missing 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.