Comment by tomhallett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomhallett | Hacker News Reader

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When I "vouch" for a friend, what happens on the friend's side? Am I opting them in to getting email(s) from weekday?

If so, that seems slightly odd that I'm going through my top 10 friends on linked-in, vouching for them so that they are now going to get some a cold email(s), but I have no insight if those 10 people are looking for jobs and want this email at all. I'm pretty much saying to my friends "Hey, I just gave your info to this random company so hopefully I'll make some money off you." (And yes, it is true that I'm "helping" them get a job, but the people I'd vouch for don't need help, in this market they can get a job very quickly)

I will admit that some aspects of what I mention above are true in the "screen-share call" example you gave above, BUT it's the fact that the screen-share alternative is clunky/painful which makes it more socially acceptable. The automation/scale of your new approach starts to feel more spammy.

When you say "No recruiter mails" on your website, what does that mean exactly? Who is the subject of that sentence and who is the object? Subject: weekday recruiter? in-house recruiters at tech companies? contingency recruiters? Object: me the voucher? the person I'm vouching for?

Note: I'm not trying to be mean or negative, I'm just trying to understand the full feedback loop, so I can be empathetic to all parties, especially my friends. :)

The recruitment industry has always had parallels to dating.

We have two parties who don't want their time wasted, but want to get together as quickly as possible if it's a good match, while maintaining their dignity and their privacy.

The industry is permanently grappling with ways to make this process scalable. The road is littered with the dead hulks of companies that felt like they had cracked the code. Yet still a huge chunk of the industry belongs to plain old middlemen - recruiters - or even to word of mouth and other age old human behaviours. That reflects the fact that so far, no-one has really cracked the code, and there is often still benefit to both parties in having someone in the middle.

All of the questions that you ask are totally valid and can be viewed as just part of the dance of bringing job and talent together.

My personal belief is that the solution is out there, it's just quite complex (human are complex). It probably involves:

- karma of some kind (randos can't arrive and start pushing their friends/colleagues in front of employers without restriction)

- rate limits (if you've put forward 20 people, maybe you need to slow down until some of them have been "processed")

- candidate care limits (employers probably can't access more "candidates" until they have courteously dispatched any existing ones by hiring them or providing a formal rejection, ideally with feedback).

- saving face (graceful ways for candidates to be told their salary is out of whack, for them to push back on referrers who are spamming them out too widely, for employers to make candidate feel they were a good second place, as opposed to a failure, etc. etc., all the social lubrication that makes the world go around.

In short, the whole area of recruitment will always be fraught and fought over because there's no much damn money to be made.

But no one IMO will meaningfully "win" in this area until they deliver a platform that has deep, rich set of human-oriented behaviours and functionality that really dig in deep to what it means to be a candidate, an employer, a referrer, and treat everyone with courtesy and (yes) financial reward as required.

Just as StackOverflow became successful because it catered to the exact question and answer communication patterns that are suited to programmers seeking help, some recruitment platform will succeed because it caters to the communication patterns that are associated with gigs finding talent and talent finding gigs.

Source: many years spent building corporate recruitment systems.

This is awesome! There are so many gems here that even if pick up 50% of it and deliver on it, we would be golden. This is probably the most nuanced advise I have received on the sector/our approach and I would have spoken to 100+ VCs and other people doing recruitment. HN is great

Good luck to you. I realized I wrote "no much money" to be made, whereas I meant the opposite, so go get it.

This is a really interesting and thoughtful read, thank you.

I'm curious why solutions that satisfy those bulleted items you mention don't exist? Whether for dating or opportunity-talent-matchmaking.

My hunch is that there's some perverse incentives that keep us stuck in a local maxima. I don't use any of the dating apps, but I would think it's fair to say that the popular apps and networks are an extremely soul-sucking, relentless grind.... but yet, they stay popular, and innovative alternatives aren't really taking off en masse. Why?

I guess here are a few thoughts:

- This reflects the absolutely massive asymmetries and inequalities that infect everything. It sometimes seems like there is no "average" anymore - everything is bi-modal. There are the FAANG total comps, and the total comps of everyone else - with a huge gap between them. Massive wealth gap for people have have been invested in real estate and/or stocks for a while, and those that have not been. And in dating: The massive gap in desirability between young or attractive women - and everyone else (for example, it's not like an attractive 25-year-old woman gets twice as many messages as, say a 25 year old male.. she'll get literally a thousand times more)

- In a globalized, massive, and mostly anonymous marketplace, there is little incentive to constrain oneself to cooperate. And this includes preferring free-for-all networks over ones that "enforce" cooperation. For recruiters: I suppose spamming endlessly, while not pleasant, is probably a local maxima. Being a cooperative agent (reducing spam, investing more in each possible connection) just reduces their chances of getting a catch. I'd imagine a similar things for males in a dating market.

Personally I NEVER want my vouching for or receiving of vouching to be automated - by definition that's not vouching. It never can be.

I can never trust anything but the person with whom I have a history.

I would never drop an endorsement and stand behind it without that history and assurance that I was right.

There are some companies that I would never hire an ex-employee from unless I had two people I've know for a while vouching for them - it's their reputation and our history together that justifying my trust in their endorsement and that can ONLY be an interpersonal relationship as its basis. Anything else is just some random acquaintance or stranger making a claim.

It's ONLY the personal history that enables vouching to work. And it's the EXISTING relationship that is more important than the welfare or benefit of ANY vouchee!

Some things simple DO NOT NEED to be automated and probably SHOULD NOT be.

> My personal belief is that the solution is out there, it's just quite complex (human are complex). It probably involves: [...]

I'd say, anything that helps connect people in genuine relationships without getting in the way.

... which is not easy, since relationships aren't easy. Many of the features you mention (karma, rate limits, care limits) seem to be trying to limit the downsides of failing to cultivate genuine relationships.

Very legit point! That is a concern that some of our prospective users do share. What they do in that case is vouch for ones who they know are looking out or can benefit from vouching (eg. folks who struggle at DS/algo interviews etc).

On the "no recruiter mails", I just realised that it might be confusing. What I meant that just because you vouch for someone, it doesn't mean that they will get bombarded with spammy recruiter mails. I think that means object is the person you are voucher for and subject is contingency and in-house recruiters at tech companies.

Congratulations on the launch!

A headsup in case you are not using official LinkedIn API, LinkedIn is nuclear on browser extensions operating on its site and would even ban the users using the extension[1]. They actively scan for browser extensions and regularly update their blacklist.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/56347/prohibit...

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