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.<p>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.
I'm not trying to crush your startup dreams but you should stop right now and immediately talk to 20+ recruiters or hiring managers about your app before you invest any more time or money.<p>I built a prototype for a similar idea about 18 months ago - it imported your linked in profile, your network could write skill specific references which back-linked and allowed recruiters/employers to search for skills/experience/geography/salary range they wanted to generate an anonymous short list of candidates in seconds; they could browse shortlisted CVs, read references and they only paid when a candidate agreed to release their details to the recruiter. Great idea eh?<p>The problem was, just about all the recruiters & employers I talked to about it (in Australia) weren't that positive. Their reasons were:
* network effects - it only becomes useful once plenty of candidates were in it.
* many recruiters already had their own database of candidates that they didn't want to share or duplicate.
* many recruiters needed near immediate response (they had 48hrs to fill a role). Waiting for candidates to respond to a request was a negative for them.
* some recruiters saw it as a threat and didn't want to support that kind of system.
* Companies often wanted a full service solution so while this could generate a quality shortlist for them, many wanted hand holding.<p>HR is ripe for disruption but execution is everything. What does your app do that paid access to searchable linkedin profiles doesn't?
I like the idea, +1 for originality. Just some thoughts though: Not that I have much experience from the employer standpoint, but the fact that I have to keep paying (even if it's $50) each time, will always leave a constant reminder that I'm spending money. That, coupled with the fact that I'm not sure what quality of candidates you'll be showing me (and I KNOW how bad headhunters can be trying to cram someone where they don't fit, just for that commission) seems like you'd have trouble getting anyone to fork over $150+ on this. Not that I have better specific suggestions, but trying to get one big lump sum might work better, as it's easier to spend once, as opposed to multiple times. And one last thing, I don't how long ago you launched, or if you already did this, but i'd try to find as many alpha tester companies (give it to em free) and candidates as possible, cuz if I just spent my third round of $50, and I"m seeing the same people, kiss it GOODBYE, and I'll be sure to warn my friends. Like I said though, you could be there already, I don't know, it's just a thought that crossed my mind.
Some feedback:<p>1. About the name: Non-native speakers may not know what "poach" means. I've lived in California for four years in the past and I was confused.<p>2. The cartoon fox looks like it's about to steal my mouse. It looks like you're trying to sell me lockpicking tools...<p>3. I think you should better explain what recruiters get out of this versus what LinkedIn offers.<p>4. Your landing page is really two landing pages: one for the people (they're the product), and one for the recruiters (they're the customers). I think you should better seperate the two, or just drop one of them altogether.
As a hiring manager, this does not make sense. Why should I pay $50 just to make initial contact with one person, and then still have to do the full recruiting and interviewing process?<p>Recruiters will do all that for me for free, and pre-screen everyone, so it is the same net result to me, at least on the front-end of the hiring process.<p>FYI, answering this question here isn't the point - your site needs to clearly tell hiring managers why it is better for THEM. You won't get a chance to open a dialogue with them when they view your site.
I like the idea. Two implementation critiques:<p>1) Let recruiters see the value before making them pay (e.g. wait until people want to reach out to somebody).<p>2) Come up with payment terms that don't discourage use. You want people to pay you and then use your service religiously. Per-use pricing forces people to ration the extent that they use your service which gets in the way of maximizing the value you provide them.
I think this is brilliant. And I think that it will be successful as evidenced from the <i>strong</i> opinions in this thread. Strong opinions help products spread. The fact that some people hate this app is only evidence that they'll tell someone else how much they hate it; which can only help you. I'm a big fan of polarizing products.
Pet peeve: Are these really "job offers"? (I've seen similar terminology used when companies contact people due to their open source projects and that bugs me, too.) I think a more proper way of describing this is that companies are offering interview opportunities.
This is connected to an employee's LinkedIn profile, so why wouldn't an employee just change their contact settings to "I am open to career opportunities"? I know a lot of people that have that setting on, even if they are very happy with their job, and I don't know of a single person who has gotten flak for it from their employer.
If I wanted to look for a job anonymously, the last thing I'd want to do would be to sign in with my LinkedIn profile. I'd probably rather make an extra email account somewhere and use that.<p>It seems way to easy to implement a third column to this offer: Companies! Find out which of your rat bastard employees is about to abandon ship for only $50 (per month). Get email notifications as soon as one of your employees logs into our site and use our handy Word template to fire them automatically!
I went to sign up as an employer, but stopped since I didn't want to fork over $50 before even seeing what quality of engineers you have. I'll bet you'd get a lot more employer interest if you let people inspect the goods before entering a credit card number.
We built this with the hope that people will find the jobs they truly want. Let us know what your thoughts are.<p>Most importantly, have fun with it ;)
Putting aside all the costs of how much it costs to recruit a talented engineer/designer, I think the current monetization model these guys are using for the site is terrible for gaining traction.<p>When I first saw this on HN, I thought, "Sweet! If I can browse through the candidates and only pay $50 per email, I think this could be manageable!" I immediately started to look for where I could begin browsing before I realized I needed to enter my CC #.... There wasn't even a free trial... It was straight up, "Hey! You don't know how good/bad our candidates are, but give us $50 and just trust us!"<p>My suggestion? Make it like the dating sites like many here have already suggested. Let me browse your PF and see your qualifications. Why not set a bidding system on the 5 emails sent out a week? That way you can even rank how good each candidate is and what the demand for them are.<p>All in all, current model for me is no bueno. For all I know, you're grabbing people off CL.
As someone who would consider signing up to be poached, I would really want to know more about these "high quality job offers" before giving you my personal information.
FWIW, this isn't especially interesting to me as someone trying to hire engineers. I can look at resumes on LinkedIn all day long for free. Why should I pay you $50?
Nitpicking: "Don't like your job?" feels too negative IMHO.<p>I think the concept is good, but reading this as the first words in the site sparked a mental "I like my job, no thanks." response, and would have just closed the tab if it wasn't a HN submission.<p>Wanting to get poached if there is a good opportunity doesn't mean hating one's job. Instead if I hated my job I'd try to run away from it within three months, and wouldn't expect to get poached within this timeframe.
To start with, let me tell you its an ingenious idea.
but,<p>How do I know if this site is active or not?
This site looks to me like a proof of concept. I mean the creators are testing out if it would work based on the number of registrations. May be they would be working on the actual promise now. This could be a classic launch first and iterate example.
You need to clean up the homepage copy. Multiple errors inbound:<p>"Pleasepoach.me is built to give people who don't like their job out an option to transition quicker and easier. It's also build with the belief that companies don't want people who don't want to work there - so this is better for them!"
As a hiring manager, why would I hire people who advertise themselves to be poached?
In a couple of months, I'm not really sure if they will still be interested, or if they are already on the site again.<p>I guess that depends if you can keep them interested first.
It took me a while to figure out what I don't like about the design, but I think it's just the yellow highlight on "anonymous": it the throws off the colors and visual balance.<p>More importantly, though, it was quickly clear what exactly the site did and how it worked. I'm impatient, so I appreciate that.
Generally speaking the best jobs are given through word of mouth and knowing the right people, so you'd still be far from getting the cream of the crop positions. I think the HN crowd can be more ambitious than this.<p>Also, startups and small businesses most likely cannot afford this service.
If the job market for the target audience is so great (which it is), a service like this doesn't make sense. You'll only attract employees who are not competitive.
Also, grammar check your landing. Even the first sentence has an error.
Great idea. Filtering linkedin contacts who'd like to be poached. I'd like to sign up but I can't work out how! The login link doesn't take me to a register link. The big red poach button seems to do nothing.
I mistyped my e-mail address, so, presumably, the confirmation will bounce. There's no mechanism I can see to change it, even though I can still get to the Settings page.
clever idea, but it sort of sounds like a way to find bad apples who any company would be glad to have poached.<p>One idea: Offer a "honey pot" service to companies to see if their employees are trying to be poached.