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Comment by joshhart | Hacker News Reader

I work at LinkedIn, so I think I'm reasonably qualified to provide my opinion. I'm certain that this won't work well. Charging $5 per profile view ($50 per 10) is simply outrageous. Most profiles will be junk or irrelevant - recruiters work very hard to sift through the chaff. Even of those that ARE relevant, there's a small chance they'll wind up working at your company. You'd have to have an unprecedented algorithm here. It's unlikely that you do, given we've had engineers working on optimizing search for recruiters for years.

That said, LinkedIn doesn't do the best job of allowing employees to anonymously signal that they are looking for a job. I think there's space for you to make an impact, but I think your payment model will hold you back.

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LinkedIn likes to brag about how it's reasonably priced... Just $18 per resume.

"The cost to obtain a qualified resume on LinkedIn was less than CareerBuilder; $18.33 per resume versus $175.50."

http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2009/12/cost-per-r...

I don't think pricing is going to be the problem here.

That's not comparable at all. Or rather it is, but it makes LinkedIn look exactly the same price, with a bigger candidate pool.

The $18 per resume there is after human screening removed the bad resumes. Pleasepoachme charges $10 per match - and as far as I can see all they do is a text match on the requirements.

In the post you linked to, he had to review 39 LinkedIn resumes to get 11 qualified candidates. Based on the Pleasepoachme rates, looking at 40 resumes would be $200. Assuming 11 candidates were found, that is $18 per qualified candidate.

With pleasepoach.me, it seems that choosing 11 candidates means paying $550 (but you get to look at 110 candidates). Am I wrong?

Opposed to how pleasepoachme works; here is a free experimental web site we created; http://www.jobrupt.com. Jobrupt is for job seekers to initiate a job application by asking publicly the companies to create or open a job position for them by telling how they can add value and why they are the best candidate. Could anyone provide me with some hints or ideas if jobrupt would help anyone? Or is the idea too unrealistic?

Charging $5 per profile view ($50 per 10) is simply outrageous.

A lot of people are weighing in on the opinion that using agencies costs significantly more. As a Tech Recruiter working for one of those agencies, let me add some weight to your argument.

Regardless of how niche the job I am trying to fill is, I will get hundreds of applicants and speak to dozens of people in order to send three suitable CV's to a job. The main reason most employers justify large recruitment costs is down to the fact that recruiting is a massive time sink. Finding the candidates, screening each applicants CV, trying to get a hold of those of potential interest, spending approximately an hour with each suitable candidate, etc.

The impression I get from this poachme as a potential customer is that I would be paying $50 to see 10 candidates where the only info I have exposure to is a company name and a paragraph or two from the candidate on why they think they are great. I get close to the same level of info direct from Linkedin purely by searching peoples profiles and that doesn't cost a penny.

I'm itching to see a start-up disrupt the recruitment industry and change the hiring model for good. Unfortunately this isn't it.

i'd love for you to check out my company and concept. i'd really love to hear your thoughts.

Glad to. It will have to wait until I get home this evening however as my archaic work machine runs IE8 and you don't appear to support it (don't blame you!).

i worked for MS for a while and learned how many people are actually stuck with older browsers (office versions and OS versions) due to work/IT processes taking longer than consumer upgrades... well, sorry about that :)

there's a feature currently not visible on the site, but i'd be happy to demo it, it allows instant-searching our profiles, as a recruiter...

I use LinkedIn and I can safely that my profile is pretty inaccurate in a couple of areas - mostly pertaining to contract work. Oh, I did the work, but LinkedIn doesn't adequately represent my network.

And it's waaaay out of date these days.

Make tying to LinkedIn an option and it might be worth something for those of us who don't really see the value of it.

"Charging $5 per profile view ($50 per 10) is simply outrageous."

Is it? How much do (large|small|startup|<in market x>) companies pay for recruiting? In my experience, referral bonuses paid to employees are thousands of dollars for a single candidate. In aggregate (staffing, advertising, sites like LinkedIn and pleasepoach.me that provide some quality of filtering) it has to be a lot.

It comes down to how well pleasepoach.me can match candidates to your organization per dollar versus other methods.

However referral bonuses are paid only if your proposed candidate works through trial period (e.g. 3 months). You are paid for fish in the net not for fish in the sea.

Perhaps they could adopt the model used by some online dating sites. You browse profiles for free but you pay to make contact.

Hey Josh,

That's interesting! Curious what you think about mine if you have time? :) We just launched publicly. I imagine you guys must have people who are working on something similar to us as well. Here's a writeup.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/socialcheckme/

Hello.

Your site interests me, but I've no idea what you do. I need to provide an email address to find out. This is not a good value proposition for me.

Could you perhaps make your site more informative, please? Thanks.

Hehe, yes, we're making all that good stuff actually this weekend. :) We felt tired of working on little details and wanted to immediately push out to get some feedback. But we've realized we need more detailed information and how-tos available also. I'll email you when we put it up!

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