Social Recruiting: Localbacon Relaunches As Jibe, Raises $875K Seed Round | Hacker News Reader

Social Recruiting: Localbacon Relaunches As Jibe, Raises $875K Seed Round

techcrunch.com

11 pointsmgrouchy4 comments

The core idea of localbacon seemed really good, in essence creating a market for job applications so that both job seekers and employers would treat the application as if it were worth something (as opposed to most job sites where the applications are largely worthless). Now they took that idea and added social networking, for some reason. The localbacon idea was good on it's own, and the social networking-based job website idea is perhaps good on it's own, but what is the synergy between the two mechanisms? If you're going to help applicants gets recommendations from their friends who already work at a company, why do you need the pay-to-apply mechanism? If someone is paying to apply who cares if they know anyone at the company? Both of these are good methods of screening applicants, so why have both?

It seems to me that this company would be better off focusing on one idea or the other and doing it well.

Looking at the article more carefully, it actually seems to me that these two ideas aren't just not synergistic, but are actually antagonistic. It says you can either buy job application credits, or earn them by farting around with your profile and sending messages. As an employer, I think I'd much rather hear from someone who bought some credits to apply than from someone who got their credits by spending a lot of time on facebook. The social networking angle makes the pay to apply angle less valuable, I think.

This is something I really, really want to succeed. A simple tweak to the job market (seekers pay a nominal fee, reviewers must provide feedback) plus a slick fast UI.

Although hopefully I won't need to search for jobs after my startup launches and takes off :)

I don't know if the site can accomplish it's stated objective: "The idea was to get the most qualified applicants who were really serious about the job."

I suspect most really qualified applicants don't have too much trouble navigating the job market (and probably choose to do so the old fashioned way of personal networking rather than using job boards).

That being said, I can see a market for students desperate to hear back from an employer. The most frustrating part of job boards from an applicant's point of view is only hearing back from <5% of the companies you apply to.

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