On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but it is nothing more than lipstick on a pig, plain old recruiters. You're better off using multiple recruiters, who will expose you to many companies and get you the best possible price.
That seemed like a pretty good deal to me, but then again, all the recruiters I know work for single companies. What's the best way to meet some that are more like "freelance" recruiters?
I heard about the founder on a podcast (= mildly positive feelings for the company) and then a few months later got the spam email (= HATE them forever).
They also sent me a gift basket, which didn't hurt.
And what did you really expect them to do?
Worst is when you're trying for internal transfer and get PIP'd because of it. Then you have to get a job elsewhere, because the PIP fucks up your internal mobility.
You can usually negotiate a severance when that happens, since they haven't had time to draw up documentation. Speak to a lawyer.
They are still curated with a manual selection process, in other words they are still recruiters. A true disruption would need to occur for every locale. Not everyone is looking to move to Silicon Valley and not only Silicon Valley companies are looking to hire.
Their business model is excellent:
1) Pay us $4k-$6k (let's say average $5k)
2) We'll train you for 4weeks or more
3) We'll find you jobs guaranteed with min salary $60k-$80k (whatever) or money back.
[Hidden] 4) Companies pay these guys "recruiting fee" between 10-20%
Some of the bootcamps were public about their recruiting fee but most of them are not (I'm not judging whether it's good or bad but merely pointing out the behind-the-public-business deals).
Let's say there are 20 potential candidates with 5 that will get the job (success rate 25%).
Income from Bootcamp = 5 x $5k = $25k
Income from Recruiting = 5 x $6k = $30k (10% of $60k)
Total Revenue = $55k for getting 5 people a job.
These are minimum numbers.
Loss occurs when either 0 gets hired or for certain threshold (I'm guessing pretty low).
These people are increasing the chance of replacement.
We're based in Chicago, so that might help. ;)
I have thought about the recruiting business a lot in the past couple of years. I have a few ideas, but I do not have the time to implement them. They are not trivial and I am content with my day job.
I'm not really sure why this is so hard to see, the auction model is so weird, of course it'll take some time to figure out the kinks before "going global".
Seriously though, I don't see anything wrong with concentrating on a specific location and expanding, Facebook style. I'm not sure how well this would succeed in places like London, but I guess competition is good.
- Posting a picture is a legal minefield for US employers. Companies literally don't want to know anything about your age/race/sex at the screening stage for fear of a discrimination lawsuit. The only safe policy is to ignore/reject all candidate applications with a picture. (It's not illegal for the employer to know or even ask, but it's illegal to make decisions based on such information, and the best way to convince a belligerent labor attorney that a decision wasn't discriminatory is to never possess the information in the first place.)
- The salary box has a hilarious pair of up/down arrows for increments of 1. Yeah I'm going to click 110,000 times to enter my desired salary. :)
- Am I blind or is there nowhere to list skills/responsibilities/experience under the work experience section? Or is that the point, to avoid that stale format?
What about all the recruitment done via Linkedin? Many people have a photo of themselves there.
In the case of DeveloperAuction, I'm assuming that if you have a photo, then the potential employers are going to see it. If a 45 year old with similar qualifications as a 25 year old doesn't get offers from the same companies as the 25 year old, it opens up the potential for lawsuits -- this might be over-simplifying. I'm not qualified to comment on how much standing a lawsuit like this would have, but it's certainly happened in similar situations before. That's why photos are a no-no in recruiting in the U.S.
You have to work for it!
If you're lucky enough to arrange all your offers to fall within the same time frame maybe you can play a couple against each other and even then you can only go back and forth a few times.
Here, you automatically get a group of companies simultaneously competing for you. Is that not desirable?
Yes, it's not fun if you're non-US and you want to take advantage of this service. I'm sure that, if it's a viable way to match employers with employees, someone will eventually get around to providing the service in your country.
But, hey, it's hard enough to get people to understand that thriving development communities exist outside of London.
I've been on both sides of the equation. I've used recruiters to try and find people and have used recruiters to try and find work.
On the receiving end it is always shocking to see someone ask you for a $25K fee to hire a $100K employee. I'd rather give the employee more money.
At best a recruiter should be perfectly happy with a 5% finder's fee. Why are they asking to get paid the equivalent of what a person will take a quarter of the year to earn?
This is particularly true in this age of database-driven recruiting. It costs them just about zero to have you in a database.
Not saying its true or untrue, but you can't just say something like "Thats 3 months worth of earnings!" when value is the thing that matters, not price.
Are you are recruiter? Because, you know, as an entrepreneur, yes, value is always important, but price is always, always, always important. Fairness too.
25% is ridiculous. The recruiter is NOT generating the employee's value, the employee is. And don't go for the "you would not have found them if it were not for the recruiter". In my experience there are very few recruiters that actually add value to the process. Most are horrible resume farms that algorithmically (or not) match resumes with job requirements and barrage the employer with a bunch of candidates to see if something sticks. In other words, the quest for easy money rather than anything else. The more people and companies you shovel through the system the greater your probabilities of making money.
How many of us have received the formulaic email from some data-entry worker in India saying something like: "I came across your resume and it looks like a perfect fit for one of our clients. Please submit resume, availability, desired salary and ability to relocate." Right.
There are a few (definitely count them with one hand) companies that might truly do a good job of getting to know both candidate and employer, but these days, that is far, very far, from the norm.
I offered that 5% might be a good number. What I actually think is that the whole model is completely broken. I have some ideas on how to fix it, but that's not for this thread.
The $110k was at a company I'd consider working for if I didn't have to work from their NYC office. (I'm in SF now.)
It seems the 165k one wasn't. Which is understandable. If they were a great opportunity for you, they wouldn't have to reach that deep into their pockets.
email I got at the time said "We're reviewing developer applications over the coming week" and there seems to be no way to delete my account now... so my information is sitting in triage
AMA
What does that mean? Somewhere else it says that it is free to developers. Is the hired developer receiving a portion of the fee you charge the employer?
