annawangx

Validating the references are a top priority for us. By anchoring the reference to a job context and verifying the referencer through work emails or Linkedin profiles, we hope to address most of the fake review problems. This is a feature that we will develop further as we grow.

Thanks for the feedback! We find that Searchlight is most helpful for hiring managers who are time-strapped and have high inbound applicants. We realize that this may lean more towards non-technical, early to mid-level roles more so than engineers.

Resumes are statements of past performances, and our mission at Searchlight is to help candidates gather support around these statements.

AI helps us analyze the references, and will be developed more as we grow.

Sorry to hear about the trouble! We'll address that soon.

We haven't run into many causes where a referencer's employer has a "no reference" policy. Our terms and conditions has language that the reference's opinion does not reflect their employer, but we will continue thinking about this as we develop our product.

Thanks for sharing your experience. That will help us with product development as we think about how to support other use cases when people request references, even when they're not actively job-seeking.

Thank you!!!

Thanks for sharing! We think more about capturing reference feedback outside of the active job-seeking context.

From the references that have come through our system, we’ve seen that quantity doesn’t outweigh quality. We’ll make sure that this stays true as we grow. Our goal is to elevate candidates who aren’t self-promotional through the feedback collected on Searchlight.

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.

We're aware of this possibility, and we flag it to the candidates and the employers.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble - it should work now

Candidates can invite other employers to view their Searchlight recommendations. We haven't yet decided on the revenue model for this use case.

This is a good point about reference checks in general.

The references submitted to Searchlight are saved and available for the candidate to use and share, and referencers are not asked to speak to a particular culture. This means that the references don't change per position, which makes sense because a candidate's top strengths/personality shouldn't change for every potential employer.

I hear your points. The feedback on Searchlight is kept private to the candidate, and only shared with employers the candidate has chosen.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences with the job search. Great to hear that you're getting a lot of inbound interest.

> So I'm not sure recruiters and hiring managers need more coddling and new tools to target candidates.

At Searchlight, we don't help companies target candidates. Rather, we help them surface the best candidates within their applicant pool.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's hard to build a product that suits everyone, but we try to be as inclusive as possible. In your example, the introverted engineer probably has standard professional relationships with a manager and/or a direct report that he can invite to speak to his capabilities.

I hear your opinion that a hiring process should stay between the employer and the candidate. Unfortunately, the reality is that most hiring processes today depend on a more human element, like a referral. We hope to make it possible for people without this access can also gather support around their candidacy.

Thanks for sharing. We allow references to decline a request for this reason. Also, by pulling references earlier in the process, we mitigate the causation between the feedback and a negative outcome.

One question that we ask is: "We are all learning every day. What was an area of development for this candidate back when you worked together?" An example of a less open-ended question is asking the reference to stack rank strengths that the employer wants to learn more about.

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.

Thank you for the pointer!

Thanks for that perspective. This is a challenge for reference checks in general, and we are cognizant about the legal implications as we develop our product.

The legal aspect is another interesting part of this problem. We have reviewed the legal statutes by state and our terms and conditions make sure our references comply with the law. We require that our references give their feedback without malice and to the best of their knowledge.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing your approach. We give references on Searchlight the option to decline for this reason.

> I looked at your sample report, and it seems very much like an expanded "linkedin", where it's just about the positives.

Thanks for pointing that out! Our sample is just an example and does not show the answers to questions about developmental areas.

> Me just saying "oh yeah, they're great", or only talking about the positives doesn't really help as much as a full set of questions which also include honest downsides/weaknesses.

That's great product feedback, thank you. Our questions do pull out these details, and we'll emphasize that more in the future. For example, our questions include: "What colleague would best complement this person" and "How would you help a future manager set this candidate up for success?"

Thanks for the question. Our process can plug in during the resume screen or after an initial screen. Once the references are completed, we provide high level summaries and recommendations for which candidates have the strongest fit for the position. This gives the hiring manager better data while still saving time. The full references are available if the hiring manager wants to dive deeper.

These recommendations are based on on both quantitative ratings and open-ended questions like working style and ideal environment. We do use tools to help automate the recommendation calculation, but also currently human QA because we want to get these recommendations right when we're early-stage.

Our product centers around growth potential and the belief that every candidate is exceptional in their ideal environment. This means, that even if a reference believes a candidate did not have stellar prior performance, we ask referencers to contextualize their feedback and comment on how to set the candidate up for success in the future. This ties nicely with the example about romantic relationships - sometimes people just aren't right for each other at the time. But, prior rocky relationships are still great learning opportunities for what will work better for us the next time.

> You are as good as what you are aspiring to and putting in the work to become tomorrow

Yes, this is exactly what we believe!

Thanks for sharing your experience. We've found the fear of hiring under-qualified candidates is one of the primary reasons why hiring managers screen out candidates without recognizable line items on their resume.

By re-humanizing this process and getting better data around a candidate, we hope that hiring managers will qualify more diverse candidates and think more long-term.