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Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

So what's with all the recruiting companies?

Recruiting is a big, fat, inefficient market. If you have N people contacting M companies, and M companies contacting N people, there's a whole lot of inefficiency there. Then you have ridiculous interview processes, a lack of communication about how to improve all around, overloaded in-house recruiters who get swamped and work below peak efficiency, high costs to access premium services like job posting & LinkedIn, and so on. Eventually you throw your hands up and pay big fat fees to people who send you candidates. Any nominal optimization or gimmick can charge a lot of money. Eventually someone will figure out a way to remove all the friction and drive the cost of hiring the old way down.

You're so on point with this comment.

Core to our belief is keeping costs low, do our diligence with the companies and candidates, and work on improving how this business is done.

Most people don't know recruiting hasn't changed much since Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. I found an interesting article that you might find interesting.

https://www.ere.net/history-of-recruiting-part-i/

An even more basic point is that most people don't like sourcing, including recruiters. If you try to outsource and/or throw money at a problem to make it someone else's problem, you'll never get close enough to the actual pain points to be aware of them. And when a sourcing superstar does rise above the rest, they will find no one cares to learn what they've learned, let along practice it.

Some areas feel easy to fake-innovation-as-consulting due to high throughout or concierge: recruiting, ads, etc. You do a normal job, maybe handhold, and market with something fresh. Can get some level of sales proportional to marketing and services effort. But ultimately nothing truly differentiating or sticky vs the next AI/niche/whatever startup, and investors move on as the startup fails to keep growing past $1M/$10m/whatever. The consultancy/services gets bought at consultancy/services-level terms for consultancy/services-level value.

It took me awhile to notice the pattern of businesses that can get to some revenue quickly, but hit a ceiling soon after. Sample sign: a few top principals are drive most of the early deal value, and revenue scales at bad multiples after them.

We're not a recruiting firm, and we'll make this distinction very clear on the website soon.

The primary purpose of the website is to help people bounce back from being laid off. Given this is our primary mission, we don't do the following:

- We don't charge companies a % of a candidate's salary. This feels dirty to us, and it's not in the candidate's best interest. - We don't prevent companies from discovering people who have been laid off. Profiles on the website will be visible to companies, much like LinkedIn.

Since we're technical, we want to speak with you. Understand your background, technical expertise, and what you're looking to work on.

We are focusing on a niche market and this allows us to focus our energy on actually speaking to each candidate in-depth about their technical experience; we'll be able to represent you and get you that interview quicker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruitment

>Recruitment refers to the overall process of attracting, shortlisting, selecting and appointing suitable candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary) within an organization.

It appears this is indeed what your organization is, based on your own words: "we'll be able to represent you and get you that interview quicker."

Are you avoiding the recruitment buzzword, or are you truly something different? I'm having a hard time telling it apart.

The reason for avoiding the usage of the word "recruiter" is certainly intentional. We don't feel like that term lends itself well to what we're trying to do honestly.

We're not sure exactly what term best expresses this, but more on the lines of a concierge service. The business model is structured in a way that ensures we do what's best for both candidate and company.

Please don't slap me for using an "X for Y" analogy, but we're CarMax for Hiring. We need to work on translating that into words.

CarMax has fix prices and aims to ensure that your experience as a car buying isn't tainted with a feeling that you got ripped off. We want candidates to know we're on their side and are not motivated working against their best interest.

I didn't see an email in your profile or on layoffs.at, so responding here:

I help candidates ace technical interviews and negotiate offers. If you're interested in some kind of partnership or collaboration send me an email: lusen@dangoormendel.com

My business partner and I work with candidates in a variety of ways: - 1on1 customized consulting - we're like agents or "the team that has your back" for candidates - hourly consulting, ie you have a few offers and need some instant tips - one-off webinars and workshops - interview and negotiation skills accelerator program: https://www.dangoormendel.com/november-accelerator

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