Student Engineers: Apply to work at 170+ startups with one Common Application

I've had extensive experience in this market (i.e I've spoken to >1000 student developers) and I think this is the right approach.

From a students perspective most students have close to no-idea what kind of company they want to work for when they graduate and often have a very limited concept of the reality of what working at different companies would involve.

From a startups perspective it's very hard to target students, a typical serious recruitment campaign would cost 6-7 figures to run and is really only an option for companies who are hiring a large number of candidates (as you can ammortize the costs of having presence at careers fairs, etc.) - I would imagine Google spends in the millions if not tens of millions in student recruitment every year.

Most startups aren't Facebook or DropBox. Look at First Round's portfolio page, chances are that as someone who's familiar with the startup scene you still won't recognize most of their consumer facing startups let alone their b2b startups.

Most students will never have heard of these startups. Even if a student cares about the domain of the startup they probably still won't have heard of the startup.

You can't be the candidate's first choice if they've never heard of you. But once you've got their CV and you've decided that you want to go after them you can sell them on your company and make it their first choice.

I'm also willing to bet that most startups would rather hire a stellar engineer with average passion about the domain (but cares about the tech) over someone with stellar passion and average talent.

I'm not sure how to feel about this.

On the one hand, this is something I have always felt needed to exist. In today's weak job market it's important that we do whatever we can to match talent with openings.

On the other hand, I think startups are the wrong type fo companies for this. If I'm hiring for a small (<50) person company I want to make sure the person wants to work on my particular product and help with my particular vision. This would be great for big tech companies though, where they just need development talent and there is sure to be some internal project/product for which you're a good fit.

I think one of the most important differentiation of a traditional company vs 'startup' company is the culture. And in order to understand the culture, you'd have to research each individual company, which this service doesn't seem to offer.

The students may be better served if there was a list of tags/terms for the all the companies so the students can go through them and check/tick the ones they want to apply to. Shotgun mass spam doesn't ensure a cultural fit.

(Should +100 (for how many people in the company) even be an option? Is a company still a startup at that point?)

I'd love to have something like this. As a student at a small school in Canada it is very hard to make connections in the industry that are often facilitated by larger schools.

For those who missed the links (I know I certainly did): http://www.university.firstround.com/

I feel I need to comment on a couple topics that really stand out from First Round Capital's approach, but no one appears to be touching on:

Firstly, this is an application to be matched with a company in an investor's portfolio. What makes this is essentially different from just a common app is that interviews and work you do for any of these companies on this list may be shared with the entire community/portfolio, and there will be opportunities to move to a place to a better fit or position after establishing yourself (I have seen this done before, an acquaintance of mine worked for a startup in SF this summer, and at the end of the summer he was offered a full-time position at a different company in the same portfolio after hearing about his prowess as a web developer/designer).

Secondly, this is a beautifully put together application. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, but the questions give a lot of hints to the applicant about what qualities a startup is looking for in a future worker. For a first time applicant, this is particularly helpful.

I definitely support this approach. It has been done already by KPCB Fellows (a bit like a common app, but with less questions; they ask for a portfolio still, but also ask for the applicant to complete a programming or design problem depending on the iteration of the application), and by a16z (Andreessen Horowitz takes a similar approach where you apply with them and are matched with a company in their portfolio based on fit and need), and by Sequoia Capital, just as feniv mentioned. On a similar note, it's been a particularly hot year for recruitment websites like Readyforce, which did Hacker Tour, and Seelio, a portfolio site that just launched a jobs posting section.

The success of this will depend heavily on the people doing the parsing of applications and matching them to the right company. While I like the idea of lowering the barrier for applying for jobs, I cannot help but think that many students will look at this as another opportunity to focus on quantity of applications they send out. Instead, I would rather that students take some time to research and figure out on their own what they want for an internship, rather than just sending out a bunch of applications/resumes.

I think this could be valuable for little known startups that have a hard time being seen and will take any decent talent they can get, but for any startup that is sought after, why would I want a candidate that doesn't want to work for my startup specifically? Someone who is open to applying to 170+ startups at once is not someone I want on my team. To produce a great culture, you want to be every single candidates' first choice, not their second or third choice.

Would be nice to have one of this for foreign Engineers too.

We do the same thing at Stack Overflow Careers. Except it's a lot more companies.

I really like this part: "our Talent Team will review your submission and if you're a fit, we'll follow up directly and connect you with relevant companies". They step in and do the work to connect you with relevant companies which is a great value add opportunity for a VC.

Don't do this please. It's the total opposite of what startups actually want applicants to do I guess... If I were a startup CEO, this would be a bad thing, but I'm not, so I don't know what the reality is.

Something about this feels predatory