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Comment by tfehring | Hacker News Reader

I don't use LinkedIn, but I know it has a feature called "endorsements" that does materially the same thing as this, and my understanding is that those endorsements aren't taken all that seriously. What makes these more credible?

Also, looking at your landing page, it looks like this is company-driven, not candidate driven (that is, I send my resume to the company, which sends it to Searchlight). If I'm in the early stages of the interview process for a company, and they request that I invite a bunch of former coworkers to endorse me on a platform I've barely heard of, there's basically 0 chance that I'll be continuing the application process.

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We've heard from hiring managers that since LinkedIn endorsements are public and not contextualized, it's hard to understand endorsers' motivation and honesty. Searchlight references are private (hidden to the candidate but viewable to employers that candidates give permission to), tied to a specific work experience and specific work relationship, and ask specific questions.

Regarding our landing page, that's a great point! We are a candidate driven product, but we are first focused on employer adoption. That adds legitimacy to our platform when Searchlight reaches out to candidates. In the future, we plan to allow candidates to initiate the Searchlight process themselves - we have already gotten requests from current Searchlight candidates to build this feature.

I hear your hesitation to provide references early. It's a new hiring approach. But we've seen that with our positive messaging and candidate engagement process, candidates see Searchlight as an opportunity to stand out. We try to minimize the burden on candidates and references by saving the answers so references don't have to do it again. As our credibility grows over time, we hope that everyone will feel comfortable making a Searchlight profile.

Some day you may want to look into the impact of privacy legislation such as GDPR when it comes to your position of "Searchlight references are private (hidden to the candidate but viewable to employers that candidates give permission to)".

IANAL, but I have spent many unpleasant days reviewing GDPR and I think it's likely that such data is the candidate's personal data and they are allowed to see it.

Thank you for the pointer!

Came here to say this; don't try to operate in the EU.

California has its own version of the GDPR known as the CCPA that is probably more immediately relevant.

https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa

Also, I'd imagine there would be a huge defamation liability.

What measures do you have to prevent a candidate and their reference from collaborating and sharing information resulting in the linkedin status quo? Why can't I just say to a reference to give me access to their searchlight account and write my own? Why can't I say to somebody "Hey, I'll write my endorsement, you can write yours, and we will post eachothers endorsements on our own account"

Furthermore how do you distinguish between a high quality endorser giving accurate information about candidates and a low-quality endorser trading favors to bolster their own number of endorsements? Currently on linkedin I can see somebodies endorsements which can raise red flags about them "trading favors". How will searchlight provide a similar ability to scrutinize endorsers?

Isn't that just a game of numbers? The more references the more legitimacy - I'm not sure one could ask favors from that many relevant and impactful references

Great question. We get the referencer’s contact information, their position and work title, and require that they agree to a follow up with employers. We are developing features for real time identity verification, like 2-step auth with work emails.

The experience and knowledge of the referencer factors into how we calculate the strength of the recommendation.

When writing recommendations, I prefer it if the subject writes the first draft. I won’t lie, but that way they can choose what they want to emphasize or deemphasize.

This space is gigantic and there is plenty of room for multiple solutions.

As others have pointed out, LinkedIn recommendations are public, which skews their content, and they are also subject to recommendation trading and general puffery.

Other interesting players are people like Xref (https://xref.com/) who automate the reference process - though to respond to your objections, these platforms are used later on in the process (e.g. on short-listing).

Many HR technologies are struggling to solve the problem you have highlighted.

They want to move from a per-employer solution ("Now that we're about to hire you, please give us 3 references") to an industry standard model ("you'll need to have a Searchlight profile to apply for this job - its a small hassle but you only have to do it once, then you can use it at any of the other jobs you'll be applying for").

Anyone who cracks that code stands a chance of becoming the next mini-LinkedIn.

> This space is gigantic and there is plenty of room for multiple solutions.

My concern is that references are a poor signal in general, not that LinkedIn has a monopoly on them. I don't request or look at references, and I haven't provided references to a potential employer since I was in high school.

We agree that reference checks as they are done today at the end of the hiring process are under-leveraged. With Searchlight, we believe that we can make them much more useful.

Why do you believe that? There are a number of problems with references, and bias (both positive and negative) is perhaps the most difficult to overcome.

> those endorsements aren't taken all that seriously

I've only ever heard them mentioned in a work situation in the context of endorsing people for bogus things (like a hard-core C/C++ programmer for PHP and Visual Basic).

Hmmm....maybe I should make a LinkedIn. Think our DBAs will appreciate it if I endorse them for Visio?

You can get endorsed for murder. It's supposed to be for lawyers who specialize in murder cases, but the tag just says "murder". I currently have three endorsements for murder.

Now I have to get this.

Yep. I've been endorsed for "Fierce Conversations", "Bees", and "Potatoes".

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