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Mentat helps people land their dream jobs
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y agoI thought this was about someone making the fictional Fallout drug real.
- nicolashahn 10y agoIt's called Adderall. You may have seen the 2011 documentary about it, Limitless.
- rhizome 10y agoHmm, if it was Adderall I would have a lot more money right now. Maybe Modafinil?
- neverminder 10y agoIt was about Modafinil.
- rrecuero 10y agoAh, those Mentats... They increased Charisma right? :)
- davidjnelson 10y agoGrape mentats increase charisma by 5, regular mentats increase intelligence by 1. At least in fallout 4. :-)
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y agoInt and Per +1
- DiabloD3 10y agoA Mentat is a fictional type of human, presented in Frank Herbert's science fiction Dune universe. In an interstellar society that fears a resurgence of artificial intelligence and thus prohibits computers, Mentats are specially trained to mimic the cognitive and analytical ability of electronic computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentat
- walrus01 10y agoCould also be a reference to Mentats in Fallout(1,2,3,4) which are an addictive drug. Recursively, also a reference to Dune.
- solipsism 10y agoThat's not how "recursively" works.
- shorodei 10y agoHe means that the Mentats in Fallout could themselves be a reference to Dune.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mahmud 10y agoThat's still not how recursion works. They would be mutually recursive if Fallout's was a reference to Dune, and Dune's a reference to Fallout. This is just a simple reference, perhaps indirect, but not recursion.
- saadrizvi 10y agofounder chiming in: company name is a reference to Herbert's Dune. Been a huge fan forever and think the concept of flipping artificial intelligence towards giving humans computing power is super cool.
- edoceo 10y agoYet another "hiring is broken" play
- lj3 10y agoThat would be less disheartening if any of the "hiring is broken, let's fix it" companies actually tried to fix it instead of just streamlining and/or automating the existing, broken systems
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoFixing it is hard, and the fix as a product doesn't scale, as you're working directly with/against internal politics.
- lj3 10y agoI didn't say it would be easy, but if they're not even going to attempt to fix the issue, they should stop saying they are.
- TrevorJ 10y agoIt really depends on which end of the transaction you are talking about. If you are willing to insulate the job seeker from the broken stuff then you've 'fixed' that half of the problem from their perspective. In a perfect world, a total rethinking of the whole process would be much better but unless you can get N number of companies to buy in to that, then solving the problem through an abstraction layer might be the best bet.
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoThe abstraction layer requires the company to buy in (politically, not just monetarily). If you've been around the Fortune 500 at all, it's very common to have large-ish, very powerful HR organizations. Taking something very fundamental away from them - the candidate pipeline - would be really unpalatable and controversial because it takes away about half the organization and a good chunk of the supply side. You aren't wrong, I'm just stating why it's not happening.
- J_Darnley 10y agoHeh. I wonder just what the guarantee is in "Mentat guarantees job interviews, with a 99% success rate on more than 1,000 job applications." Would I get my $249 back when they can't get me a job.
- orky56 10y agoThey don't guarantee a job, just an interview.
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoGetting to the interview has always been the hard part for me. I'm curious about this - I'd imagine you can really up your interview rate if you fit the resume to the job posting, including all of the things you've never actually done that are in the description. If there's a more honest way, I'd be open to it. I'm only now getting to the point where interview = offer is no longer true, but it's been for executive level positions where I don't know that they realize I'm on the early end of 30 until they see me. Still, if I could get that interview percentage up, that'd help my odds.
- monkey88 10y agoI get to the interview and bomb it on the cultural fit. At any rate, the $249 is still deductible from taxes.
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoCultural fit is very important. A lot of my hiring often comes down to it - I won't bring someone in who's a bad cultural fit even if they're brilliant because odds are they're going to be unhappy and leave, even if they're not the type of poor cultural fit that would negatively impact the rest of the team. I'm a sample of one here, but I have to hire good cultural fits because I have to try and retain in the long term, if not on my team, in the organization, because we're not in a top tier market for technical talent and it's hard enough getting good people over. Anyhow, I'm telling you that to lead into this question - do you know what about the cultural fit isn't going well? All of us are bad cultural fits for some organization or another, but if you're getting that consistently, start looking bigger picture about yourself, and also the types of organizations you're looking to work with. There's going to be a pattern somewhere. If this is happening with multiple interviews and organizations of various size and type, your best bet is to try and identify the factor and see if there's something you can change about yourself to whatever degree that's acceptable to you and/or possible. If you're primarily applying to the same kinds of organizations (let's say small tech startups in the bay area, just to give an example), maybe you'd be happier or more successful looking at a different industry/size/location.
- throwaway26960 10y agoYou get jobs by being unique.
- lj3 10y agoReminds me of the Life of Brian. "You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourself! You're all individuals!" (crowd, in unison) "Yes, we're all individuals!"
- pklausler 10y agoAnd then, as an ad lib, an extra held up his hand and said, "uh, I'm not." The Pythons, bless them, recognized comic genius on the spot, and kept the line in the movie.
- cloudjacker 10y agoRole into interviews with +2 Int
- civilian 10y agoIt's _probably_ more like +3 Cha. I feel like one of the things that a recruiter (or really, any separate person, like a good/pro-active reference) can do is actually tout your abilities. When we tout our own abilities, it often sounds way too self-serving or obnoxious.
- nornagon 10y ago> “If I ever needed a job, I’d definitely use Mentat,” says Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator. Says rich man who's never had to look for a job.
- ryandrake 10y agoNoticed that too. Incredibly tone deaf. Kind of like a CEO saying "If I ever had to worry about cleaning my house, I'd choose e-Maids!!" EDIT: And just to soften/clarify, I think the service sounds like a great idea--there is plenty of room for any attempt to make the horrible hiring process work better. Just terrible wording on that quote--<head shake>!
- nsedlet 10y agoI'm in the recruiting space. An enormous part of the disparity in applicant success comes down to "job-hunting skills". Will their resume, as presented & formatted, speak to the employers they're after? Are they applying to enough jobs? Do they tell the story of their career trajectory in a compelling way? It's very exciting to see a company trying to level the playing field the way Mentat seems to be.
- moron4hire 10y agoAs the recruiter, why aren't you taking care of that stuff for people?
- pm90 10y agoThere's a limit to what recruiters can do. In general, good recruiters have been incredibly helpful to me in understanding exactly what opportunity they are looking to fill, to match expectations etc. But after a certain point, its gotta be a conversation between the applicant and the company and that is something that recruiters can't affect much.
- nsedlet 10y agoI agree - it's about focus and time. Recruiting is already a very manual process, and it's hard enough for most recruiters to identify candidates and get them interested in the role. The conversion rate from initial outreach to interested candidate is abysmal. Adding a layer of advising / resume help just doesn't fit with their model and would make them uncompetitive with other recruiters. At HireArt we certainly do try to do this, but we're still a small part of the recruiting market.
- dexwiz 10y agoRecruiter as as Service? All of these things seem like services provided by a Recruiter/Headhunter. I guess Recruiters only start providing these services once you reach a certain payband. External Recruiters are sales people for HR, and the higher the sale (% of your salary), the more services they are likely to add. Mentat looks like they will be targeting young professionals that haven't made it to that level yet. That being said, people are woefully uninformed about the hiring process. Your resume is not a life story, its a flyer with keywords that convinces the Recruiter to pass your name to the Hiring Manager. Also networking is way more effective than any tool/trick/strategy when getting a new job.
- p4wnc6 10y agoI've been unemployed for just about 16 months now, due to a serious family tragedy that required me to not only leave a past job, but also relocate from the east coast to a rural part of the midwest with no nearby tech job centers. The rural area also makes it borderline impossible to conduct Skype calls, because the tower-based internet service this far out is spotty and unable to handle video streaming. I'm back on the job market and able to consider relocating, and I would be very interested in considering their services as a job seeker, but I can't tell anything from their website to suggest any way they might actually help me. Plus, I'm pretty idealistic in terms of my expectations for my next employer, and seriously won't compromise about some of the stuff. It's a shame. This is nearly the sort of thing that would be worthwhile, but I don't know if I can justify almost $300 without more up-front information about whether they will be compatible with my search standards and exactly what effort they will put in. If they just offer a resume make-over and then they troll Indeed and LinkedIn so you don't have to, that hardly seems worth it. The importance of resume formatting is extremely overstated (I know from being part of tech hiring teams within several past jobs).
- vemv 10y agoWow, I had this very same idea (get applied to jobs on one's behalf) like one week ago. Not from a startup point of view, but as job hunter. Actually I went as far as writing up my requirements and searching for some freelance recruiters near me. (I already work for an awesome client, btw. Just wanted to experiment) I had planned to keep my operation secret because if the employer discovered that I didn't personally apply, that could be an immediate discard reason. Also, if you're already a good professional / job hunter, making sure the agent is equally good/consistent can be as demanding as doing the thing yourself in the first place. Probably Mentat should keep those in mind - applying-on-behalf is a double-edged sword.
- saadrizvi 10y agoThanks for the feedback - keeping quality up is a top priority!