Radical niche job board on the way

7 Comments

Comment by Teena Rose on January 30, 2008 at 11:53am

"Pay candidates to interview" is likely reference to NotchUp, a career site in BETA that enables job seekers to be paid for interviews.

Although an interesting concept, I wonder about its lifespan. The "carrot," in my opinion, would need to be accessibility to candidates that companies wouldn't have access to otherwise.

Companies particularly don't like job seekers being in the driver's seat, and I wonder if services such as these, although very creative, increase the job seeker's options and put the hiring company in the (even if only perceived) needy position.

After all, it's always been the job seeker holding his breath waiting for the company to call -- not the other way around. Now, this service expects the job seeker to wait for companies to pay for interviews?

I can't imagine companies lining up for such a thing. But then again, what do I know?

Comment by Matthew Sitelman on January 30, 2008 at 11:59am

Might work for very senior candidates...tapping that tier of candidates that just doesn't populate job boards, but relies on retained search contacts and the personal network. My biggest concern with NotchUp as a business model is that candidates would game the system, essentially becoming professional interviewers. Looks like they built in some safeguards for that...check out the way they overcome my objection in their FAQ section... http://www.notchup.com/?q=why-it-works

Comment by Teena Rose on January 30, 2008 at 12:17pm

"... candidates would game the system, essentially becoming professional interviewers."

Good point!

What has always concerned me is this "on the hunt, all the time" mentality amongst job seekers. I tell my clients to focus on quality, not quantity. The massive amount of job seekers, whether passive or serious about a new position, are somewhat constipating the system ... and I don't really see NotchUp being any form of Ex-Lax.

Comment by tom mcewan on February 1, 2008 at 12:22pm

Funnily enough I have been involved with a company in the UK , looking at doing the same thing except charging the recruiter when the exchange of information (between candidate & rec agency ) reaches a certain ( via email or something similar) level they would be charging the recruiter a fee wether the candidate was hired or not or even worse didnt want to pursue the details of the job after a bout of intense emailing .


on a budget of £10k , for them its not gonna happen , as we have to build the site from scratch this is due to the type of service this company want to supply.

In this clients case gaping holes have appeared at the outset as the ideal site would cost them £100k plus from the outset.

However it does show that people are thinking about how do we change how a job board works .. interesting !

tom.

Comment by Ed Taaffe on February 4, 2008 at 6:04pm

What happens to these business models when the pendulum swings the other way and there's lots of candidates chasing fewer jobs. This swing need only be very small to appear very big. I'm old enough to remember.

Comment by Matthew Sitelman on February 4, 2008 at 6:37pm

hahaha - good point Ed. What happens is that we all go back into the career marketing or corporate outplacement business. NotchUp is definitely a "sun is shining" proposition. ;-D

Comment by Bill Bargas on February 6, 2008 at 10:23am

I wonder if the target group was switched to attracting volunteer workers instead of job seekers would paying for interviews be more appealing to non-profit orgs. There must be a cost associated with recruiting volunteers and maybe paying a prospective volunteer to interview might be less of a cost and/or would give the non-profit recruiter a better basis for building a relationship and to get referrals.. Don't know..just a thought.

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