Doesn't look scalable for a startup but I'd give my pinky (OK, maybe just a month's salary) for having a decent tech recruiter work for me (developer open to new opportunities), as in sparing me of the 90% of BS that I usually go through when dealing with recruiters/companies.
Going to promote <a href="http://offerletter.io" rel="nofollow">http://offerletter.io</a> here :-) We help engineers and other workers by connecting them with a live human who can help evaluate opportunities, and give them advice to help them get what they're worth.<p>OfferLetter is adding real value to people's lives and careers. We have a lot of great data on market rates, career trajectories, and company cultures. And because of our tip-as-percent-increase structure, the incentives are totally aligned.<p>Shoot me a mail if you have any questions, or I'll be hanging around the comments here! mallyvai AT offerletter.io
Hired.com (formerly DeveloperAuction) comes to mind. I found my current role at Lookout through Hired. Having worked with traditional recruiters in the past, the difference with Hired is they have candidates' interests in mind as opposed to focusing solely on commissions. If you're qualified, they put your resume/CV in front of tons of great companies, give you the inside scoop on how interviews work at different companies, and provide more transparency through the whole process.
Angellist.<p>How? Because I can browse the companies that are hiring, see the compensation levels, and apply. The companies can find me and express interest directly.<p>No recruiters involved whatsoever. I think <i>THAT</i> model is truly the future. It's changing the world of tech recruiting because it's challenging that idea that recruiters need to exist at all... and it's a pretty convincing argument.
I started a project similar to talentbin.com: scraping Github, StackOverflow, and about two dozen other sites to compile searchable developer profiles. Figuring out when a Github and StackOverflow profile belonged to the same person was a pretty fun challenge. Eventually I abandoned it though, because it felt like I was just enabling keyword-based recruiter spam. Selling it to people made me feel bad instead of good.
hackerrank.com (formerly interviewstreet) - This came in at the right moment when tech companies are struggling to filter out 1000s of resumes for a programmer job.. You can read more about it here..<p><a href="http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/interviewstreet-disrupting-the-it-sector-hiring-process-103524.html" rel="nofollow">http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/interviewstreet-disr...</a>
Some guys from here, Lisbon, Portugal are kinda making referrals work without all that linkedin bs... <a href="http://www.jobbox.io/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jobbox.io/</a> , you can gain some serious money recommending people a better job