The problem with most job sites is that the people companies really want to hire don’t put their resumes on them because they are happy in their current positions. If you are a star manager, chances are your employer knows it and is treating you well so that you don’t even think about leaving. Who wants to bother looking for a job anyway if you don’t have to? That’s right up there with looking for a new house in terms of time-sinks to avoid.
The folks at NotchUp, a stealth startup based in Los Altos, California launching later this month, have a better idea. Founded by two Peerflix refugees, Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis, NotchUp tries to lure talented-but-complacent workers and managers into its recruitment pool by turning the job search on its head. Instead of desperate out-of-work employees going hat-in-hand to companies begging for a job interview, on NotchUp, the companies have to pay to interview you. This is supposed to bring out those passive job seekers every company really wants to find.
The site lets you set whatever price you like per interview, but also provides a calculator that takes into account your current position, experience, education, and salary to come up with a number. What I like about this approach is that it uses economic incentives to try to bring a better inventory of talent onto the market, just like Zillow does with its “Make Me Move” feature that lets people make unsolicited offers on houses that are not officially on the market. If a company is willing to pay you a few hundred or even a thousand bucks just to interview you, chances are they are pretty serious and it is not going to be a waste of time. It acts as a filter for both the employer and the prospective employee.
According to the site, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Powerset are all corporate beta testers using NotchUp for recruitment (well, maybe not Yahoo). NotchUp is still in stealth. The only way to get into the site right now is to be invited by a current user, which is how I learned about it.
Setting up a profile is easy, especially if you already use LinkedIn. NotchUp just imports your LinkedIn profile, you set your price, and you are ready to go. Any friend you refer to the site who gets an interview earns you a 10 percent referral fee. As employers search the site, they can make offers to interview you, which you see in your inbox. You can choose to only get offers from corporations, or from headhunters as well. And you can block recruiters from any particular company (like the one you currently work for) from seeing your profile. The service is free for job seekers, and companies pay NotchUp a fee for each resulting interview.
NotchUp is a really good idea. It turns job hunting into something more people will want to do in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. Even if you don’t get the job, you get paid for your time.
I will post my resume, then i have COO of yahoo, Director of Google. pay me 3000$ to inverview me. once I get the 3000, “oops, i meant yahoo of smallville and google of sri lanka, i dun think we are good fit. thanks for your 3000$ btw. “
Here’s a thought….will this create an army of would be employees whose sole job will be to get interviewed by all these companies and make a living?
They could probably avoid this by having companies publish some feedback on an employee….but wait which employee would like this on their profile that they interviewed with 5 companies and got zero to 5 offers?
nice…. time to take on 8 aliases with 8 fake jobs
@2. won’t work. no company wants to tell the world that they are trying to steal ppl from other companies. and by looking at the ppl they are interviewing, they could leak their corporate secret.
I could certainly see some issues here already. What type of criteria needs to be met to receive payment? I wonder…. With such incentives, will surely come jobseeker fraud and the potential for a new breed of professional NotchUp Interviewees. Interesting idea, though. May I get an invitation to test?
Clever. But what is stopping people from making a living off simply going to job interviews?
This is a weird model and I can’t see this actually working out in the long run, to open for abuse, unless they have some good anti-abuse features built in.
I mean Too* open for abuse. Sorry to um yeah im done.
#5 – That can easily be taken care of of an escrow service like a lot of freelance website. I’m not a beta tester, but myabe thats what they are doing or hoping for.
Isn’t this why companies hire really excellent and focused executive recruiters? To find the people, who aren’t necessarily looking?
I mean why pay $600 to interview one person, when you can hire a company to find the candidates for you, and where much of the fee structure is geared so you dont pay a lot of money unless you hire one of the candidates they gave you.
This is really cool you know
they can be better
My last two 6 interviews and 2 jobs came from unsolicited interviews. People found my resume somewhere, read my blog, etc and contacted me offering an interview. I have turned down many more opportunities, mainly because it’s time consuming. Count me interested.
There is a feedback/reputation system as well that lets employers rate you on how seriously you took the interview. It’s kind of like eBay. Anyone with a bad rating is less likely to get an interview offer in the future.
But anything can be gamed.
I’m sure they are using some sort of escrow service to withhold payment until certain criteria are met for the interview. What would stop a valuable employee from doing interviews just for the extra cash though?
@Erick
Want to send an invite my way?
some interviewers from different company always ask dumb questions like.
age, marriage, social status… It’s bunch of waste of time. shaking hands.
Some people have OCD. They don’t like to shake hand either and not call back.
I just got in as well. To the people asking what is to stop people from just trying to make a living doing interviews part of your profile is the results / feedback from potential employers about your seriousness, etc. Also the number of interviews, etc. So potential employers can see quickly if you are just a player.
It’ll be interesting to see the official offering, but I fear this thing could be wrought with tire-kickers hoping to make a quick buck with no real interest of leaving their current job. And employers will cool quickly if positive results aren’t obtained early in the process.
One problem what about telemarket. Only f*cks use people resume and send them third party rings. This happens.
There is such thing is corporate bully.
This may work or may not work Idea but interesting concept specially for high profiles individual…
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
I would post a comment, but you can’t afford it.
I like the concept. This puts employees in control of the interview.
Normally, a job seeker going into an interview has to sell himself because he wants the job. This turns the table and requires the employer to sell themselves because they want the candidate.
What’s the best way to get an invitation?
I don’t think employers are willing to go that far.
We’re going to be competing with sites like this soon and our idea was to start offline walk-in centers and having a nation wide offline component to building your career where employers and employees can physically meet.
Nobody in VC wants to venture into the offline world because of the expense, so there’s real room for growth there.
As for the pay per interview feature as is, I have doubts.
This is novel, interested to see where this goes.
http://p2plendi...r.blogspot.com/
As an employer, it’s way cheaper than using recruiter. I can hardly wait until it works in Canada. This idea rocks! And I’m not saying that because Rob and Jim are good friends. Good luck at the Demo Conference next week guys!
Whats the best way to get a beta invite?
Adamhman AT gmail
I see a few problems with this:
a) How many companies are willing to pay $600 to interview one person?
b) How do the companies know the person’s resume is legit? Whats stopping someone from writing up bullshit resumes?
c) Since most profiles will be brand new, chances are that the feedback system will be useless, since people can just make another profile afterwards
d) Whats stopping someone from going through the process, and then stopping at the last moment? Get your $600 and then say, sorry but I don’t think I’d be interested in something like that
e) Job sites are all about volume, and since they are new, how do they plan to get a large pool of talented people AND a large pool of companies that are willing to pay up?
The image/design of the homepage is a direct ripoff of GrandCentral.
Recruiters are insanely expensive especially for executive positions, minimum cost is usually around $50K…..companies and in house recruiters are desperate to find new, cheaper ways to reach quality candidates in these days where job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, etc are only useful if you want to throw money out the window.
Great idea….has potential if done right.
Pay to interview people who don’t want to leave their current job. BRILLIANT! And the more they don’t want to leave, the more I pay! MORE BRILLIANT.
Headhunters know where to find me, these guys know where to find the profiles they can ’sell’. If a job description sounds good to me, i don’t think i’m going to tell the headhunter anything like “go to that site and pay … my rate is 500 bucks per hour for a normal interview, and 1000$ for a more complete interview”. lol
Just signed up. No way I could find to see what companies are really looking around, but it was quite easy to import from linked in. It will also try to import you contact list form linked in and email them. It was easy to opt out of that, which I did.
Most people would probably get paid $50 to $100 for an interview.
I earn 72k a year and I’m very happy at my job, but for $100 I’d go to an interview.
And if I went, I’d take it VERY seriously.
If they’re that serious about interviewing me, they might offer me an even better job.
I’ve interviewed as many as 15 people for one positiong. I had all their resumes and verifications done before I interviewed any of them. This is an absolute joke in my opinion. How many of you have been one of the ” many” who have interviewed for a position only to find out they were talking to a dozen or so people about the same job ? ROFL.
this will go down the drain like peerflix…what a joke….good employers always get good talent…no need to bribe them for interview
notchup is good name for non-profit though
This is ripe for abuse on both sides.
You know the old story about just interviewing people for free consulting help, right? So this is the problem we face, how would you solve it? Thanks for your time, we’ll be in contact…
Or better yet, select candidates at your competitors. Maybe scope some intelligence on how the competition is doing, what you don’t like, where you think your company is going wrong? All framed innocently to make you seem really interested. Well worth $100-$200!
Another sign the bubble is upon us. Paying people to interview. I would still rather pay someone else to “find” good people because if they show up I know they are somewhat interested, not just looking for $100 or whatever. Stupid.
When hiring people is that tough we are usually at the top of the market (which is tanking every day FYI). Employment will get tight again and this site is dead.
Here is the kicker from their T&C:
“If You are contacted by a Company on NotchUp and appear for an
interview at the request of such Company, the Company will be
responsible for paying Your Interview Fee to You within thirty days of
such interview. You agree to hold NotchUp harmless for any failure by
the Company to pay the Interview Fee. The Interview Fee is the sole
responsibility of the Company. Your sole recourse for non-payment of
the Interview Fee is to contact the Company”.
what happened to peerflix to make these guys bolt??? looks like their site is still up and running???
Pretty sharp idea if they can overcome the abuse issue. Erick – please shoot me over an invite. Thanks!!!!
This is a brilliant and revolutionary idea that meets the needs of hiring firms and candidates alike.
If effectively developed, deployed and managed it could be a big step in traditional recruiting and hiring .
Comments? Thoughts?
Dlambert@dwasearch.com
P.S. I disagree with some of the comments previously posted…
This will not work. If these people who need paying are in such demand, what is wrong with headhunting – paid (normally on success, and done in confidence, not on reputation).
Who is going to build a reputation on how well they interview? Surely the reputation is whether they are hired or not.
Ridiculous.
These notchup guys are smart – many many many people will be attracted to the idea of getting paid to interview and whether or not any companies are actually willing to PAY you to interview, notchup has in the meantime just built up a huge list of job-seekers AND they’ve effectively mined a good percentage of LinkedIn’s database. They could probably care less if anybody is really getting paid to interview.
Recruiting need to be changed. There are no standards, ethical or otherwise. There are too many jobs and not enough talented professionals. There are countless terrible recruiters, recruiting firms and contract recruiters. Job boards are close to pointless. No solution currently on the market for hiring FTE’s is reliable or cost effective.
All that said, this, NotchUp, is not going to solve anything. This is noise created by a couple of dudes with what seemed to be a good idea when they were stoned or drunk one night.
I call dead pool in 8 mos.
Dan
by the way….
IF you sign up they spam your contacts
Oh no, the job boards are shaking in their boots!
Paying for access to a candidate is not something most HR folks are comfortable with. Sounds like a niche market at best.
http://www.jobboarders.com
If Peerflix was dumb, this is even dumber.
Why would a hiring manager pay a candidate to interview that candidate?!? “thanks for the $700 dollars, but I don’t think there is a good fit. Good luck to you, I have another meeting now. Ca ching!”
Too bad Uncov pulled the plug, this would have been a thing of beauty for them to spear.
this sounds interesting for a few seconds but isn’t really viable for many of the reasons already discussed.
pass the invite on the left hand side.