Editor’s Note: Writing this from Luxembourg airport. Free and strong wifi. Awesome.
Company: Doostang
Location:
Doostang, Inc.
160 Brannan St. Suite 306
San Francisco, CA 94107
E-mail: contact@doostang.com
Launched: Recently
What is it?
Doostang is a trust network and employment service. Once you have joined, you can post a profile, upload a resume, post and search for jobs, write testimonials and invite other people.
You can join by invitation only. If you would like an invitation, email us (see our about section) and we will be happy to send you one.
In their own words, “Doostang is the trusted professional network. The network grows by invitation only which ensures that all contacts that enter the system are trusted by at least one or more members in the network. The value of the network grows with time as the number of contacts increases. The initial goal of Doostang is to fix the quality vs. quantity gap in online recruiting and job searching.
Over 50% of recruiting today is done through the personal network of contacts and a large portion of which is done by email communication. Using your personal network is the most effective way to find the right candidate for a position and to find the perfect job. It eliminates the need to either post a job to an irrelevant audience or to search through the multitude of jobs available on the Internet or newspapers that would be of no interest to you. Doostang provides the infrastructure to connect personal networks together and to create a natural quality filter for recruiting and job searching.
Doostang hails from two Farsi words, “doost” which means friend, and “tang” a word used to symbolize the trust between a close group of people. Farsi, one of the world’s oldest languages dating back to 600BC, was spoken from the borders of India in the far east and Russia and China in the north, to southern shores of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean in the west. The word Doostang fittingly describes our company’s long term goal to be the trusted professional network.” Link
The site works in similar ways to LinkedIn, in that you choose your trust network (friends), can interact with them, post testimonials, etc. There are two important differences.
The first difference is that you can only become a member via an invitation. That does create an atmosphere of exclusivity.
The second difference is that the jobs seem to be very high quality. Nivi mentioned this in a comment conversation we were having in his post about Doostang and I have to say I agree with him – the quality level is at this time very high.
We like Doostang and will continue to build our network at the site.
Screen Shot of Profile:
Founders:
Mareza Larizadeh
Pavel Krapivin
Link
Relevant Links:
Tags: doostang, jobs, linkedin, socialnetworks, techcrunch, web2.0, indeed, simplyhired, hotjobs, monster
This is a fair criticism…I was thinking that I may be polluting the trust network when I wrote that.
On another note, as positive as we are on new services, the problem is that there are just too damn many of these social networks. Anyone suggesting building a new one should be taken outside and beaten. Maybe it’s just getting to me because I try out every single new service, one or two a day, but there are just too many of these things.
I think it is invite-only because it is in Alpha. Not because they are going to keep it exclusive. Since it is a social network, the quality of your network will determine your success in seeing good jobs on the site.
Hello
Doostang is a great networking resource. Nothing on the web can match it; it’s unparalled.
However, it could be of a better quality if:
They upgraded the community’s servers. If you invited a lot of people in one go, the community’s server would crash (and you would get booted)! Don’t ask me how many a lot of people is. I suspect that it’s any number ranging from 4-12, because I got booted for inviting 4 people. Mareza doesn’t say how many people are too many, as well. BUT he will tell you PERSONALLY, not to invite too many people.
My Message to the Honourable Mareza and His Business partner is:
“Upgrade your server! It no-longer copes with the size of your community.
If you don’t do that, you are going to end up booting people off, for inviting more than 2 people; and you’ll end up having a lot of “UNHAPPY” people.
I’m sure you wouldn’t wan’t to do that. OR you don’t care who you piss off as long as they are not your advertisers?? We’ll your advertisers won’t have anyone to advertise to, if you irritate and boot-out their target members!!!
Goodluck Friend!”
Craig,
I agree with your first comments; Doostang is amazing. I got my job at a top NYC hedge fund through them. The quality of their jobs is truly unbeatable; better than even the top executive recruiters.
I invited 200 of my friends to join in one go and have never had a problem. Anyone reading this should invite as many of their friends as possible. The bigger the Doostang network gets, the better it is for all of us members.
Carl!
Are you sure we are talking about the same Doostang?? As in http://www.doostang.com? You probably joined the site early.
That cant be true, as they clearly say that you can’t invite more than 5 people at a time (according to the podcast on minority rapport)? How did you get to invite 200 in one GO?
You are probably an Ivy leage alum; because I suspect that this site is not open to some of us that didn’t go to the top universities (doesn’t matter how high you G.P.A is)!!
Anyway, i’d like to network with you, if you are networking for a Hedge fund.
contact me on craigchirinda@gmail.com
The site is still great though, it’s just overly regulated; unfortunate they don’t tell us exactly which rules we are to follow WHEN we join…
Hello there Craig,
I’m not exactly sure what you are posting about but my money is that they may have canned you for spamming? I just graduated from UCLA and, like many of my classmates, found my first job on Doostang. I invited all of my facebook friends (approximately 500 or so) to join and never had a problem.
Good luck to you,
Jess B
Hey Jess
Thats a solved issue now. But thanks for your input.
It was a techical problem with my ISP and I have sinced solved it
Cheers
Craig what are you talking about??!?! You are nuts….
I emailed Mareza after reading this blog a month ago and asked for an invite. He was awesome – responded within an hour. I joined and within two weeks I had a great new job at a large, well known NYC hedge fund. I’ve gone ahead and used the import tool on the website to import and invite my Outlook contacts – all in all 1,100 people. I didn’t have any problems. The server was great. None of my friends have had any problems either.
I’ve been at the fund for about two weeks now and love it – best job of my life! I highly suggest you email mareza mareza@doostang.com and ask him for an invite…..
Thanks Doostang and Craig, just shut-up and fix your ISP
Matty
Hey guys and gals,
I have not been able to log on to my Doostang account ever since I tried inviting some of my friends about 2 weeks ago. I have tried emailing Doostang, but have not gotten a reply. I would appreciate your help concerning this matter.
You could contact me at marcuskhong@gmail.com .
Thanks,
Marcus Khong