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> it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies. There is no controversy. It’s just plain wr

> it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies. There is no controversy. It’s just plain wrong.

dchhugani 8y ago
Respect that you see it this way, but I disagree, for all the reasons discussed here. If you're a candidate who goes to a 3rd tier school dreaming of getting a top-tier Wall Street job, you have no alumni to reach out to, half of your cold emails don't result in anything, and you're applying online with a poor resume, preparation, and no insights. What's the solution? You can definitely grind it out on your own for months googling, cold-emailing, trying to catch a break. However, I've seen first hand from my own school and friends that a few targeted & tactical conversations with the right people can catapult you ahead way beyond any textbook, course, bootcamp, and more. The conversations I had that helped me land my jobs were way more valuable than what I paid for in school or even in tutoring or others.
- seige 8y ago
  As someone who went to a 3rd tier school and spent the next 5-7 years grinding to get to a top tech company in a country that I had just immigrated to, I want to say Thank You for addressing this problem. I cant speak about banking/finance industry but in tech, most jobs should be level playing fields for everyone who knows how to program but they are unfortunately not. Nepotism is ripe in tech and in SV, that means you need to be from the ivy leagues. There is a definite market here and as long as you keep the supply side of high quality, buyers will come. Also, read your story of being a solo non-technical founder. Kudos to you man!
  - dchhugani 8y ago
    amazing to hear your story! and thanks so much for the kind words. we'll try to move into tech asap :).
GavinMcG 8y ago
It might be wrong to charge for filling positions but there's plenty of "recruiting-focused" activities that I'd be happy to pay for.
- dchhugani 8y ago
  Exactly - we're not a "pay to get a job" site. There's plenty of those. We just think that the insights people have inside companies are incredibly valuable and if you want to make them free, then you'll have the same pitfall every "mentorship platform" has today: it doesn't scale. I'm a mentor who helps 5 people a month for free + everyone else in my network I already agree to help. What about when that reaches 10 or 15 people? Do you still keep doing it enthusiastically out of the goodness of your own heart? I'm sure some would, but I'd rather they get compensated and do a good job of helping everyone. Some of our best insiders ask us for 7-10 calls a week, and before adding the monetary incentive, I couldn't get my friends to take even 2 calls in the same week because "they're busy".
ztratar 8y ago
Care to try to explain more, Ronilan?
- dchhugani 8y ago
  Would also love to learn more about your thinking. Also happy to chat offline if you prefer, I'm at deepak@thelobby.io
- ronilan 8y ago
  It should be one of those things that are self-evident, but since YC backed this “thing” I guess it is not. So in the shortest possible form: There exist an imbalance of power between the people “on the inside” (or “on the couch”) and the people on the outside. Generally speaking, a business meant to exploit the imbalance is wrong. One that does so at the expanse of the outsiders and for the benefit of the insiders is just plain wrong. Specifically, job seekers are, while seeking, a “vulnerable” population (just as an example, so are renters and migrants). These are people, who for a certain period of time, and due to certain circumstances, find themselves, on the outside looking in, at that very thing they desperately want or need. Charging a jobseeker for the job (via commission on future salary for example) is wrong, but debatable. Charging, a jobseeker for the “hope” of getting a job is just plain wrong.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    What about charging someone for education? Isn't that what this is? Education about the job from people who actually do it. Personally, I don't have the idea that this is for people that don't currently have jobs - I see the main target as people that are unhappy with their current position and are looking to switch into investment banking. There are a lot of those but it's hard to know how to do something like that or who to talk to, particularly when you may have very specific questions about retraining or the consequences of shifting industries.
    - dchhugani 8y ago
      I really like this answer. This is something else we struggle with. It's not really "job seekers" it's for people who want to consider other roles, companies, or careers, which slowly is becoming every working professional who isn't planning on staying at their current role or company forever. Thanks for making this distinction!
Anderkent 8y ago
Disagree. Main reason why I don't talk to recruiters is the incentive mismatch - they work for the company, not for the job seeker, and I can't really trust their advice. In a model where a recruiter is paid by the jobseeker; i.e. he's the agent, this problem mostly goes away. A recruiter who say takes 5% of my next years salary if I accept a job, and therefore is incentivised to find me the best job possible... That's a different story.
- dchhugani 8y ago
  I agree with a lot of this. One thing to note is that with this model the recruiter is incentivized for you to take the highest paying job, maybe not the best job for you. As stupid as that may sound (because everyone generally wants to make more money), it also means the first high paying job offer you get, they will probably push very hard (against your own interest) for you to accept it. That's the only way they'll make money. If insiders (like at The Lobby) are just paid for their time and insights, then there's no added or alternate motive. I still think the % of salary model is very interesting, but there are probably challenges to it that aren't visible externally. Check out what happened to MissionU, a venture-backed free 1-year college alternative that took a % of your salary: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-30-acquisition-autopsy-details-and-questions-behind-missionu-s-4m-sale-to-wework https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-30-acquisition-autopsy-... They had the best possible founder to do this and $11m in VC-funding, but shut down after their 1st cohort.
  - Invictus0 8y ago
    To be fair, they didn't shut down so much as the founder sold out.
    - dchhugani 8y ago
      I don't know the details, will trust you on it :)!
    - mmt 8y ago
      I have trouble understanding what significance the "so much as" means, nor even the "sold out", since it appears to have been an acqui-hire, with the (cash) assets being returned to investors. The company did shut down. We can only speculate on the founder's motivation.
gwbas1c 8y ago
A phrase that often passes through these forums is, "if it's free, you are the product!" I encounter a lot of clowns when I work with recruiting firms. I'm open to new ideas where I'm treated as a valuable customer instead of a product. [Edit] This is because I'm finding that recruiting is turning into spamming. Every recruiter gets lucky from the few candidates they place so they make a decent income from their commission. [Edit] If I pay to work with someone who handles a high volume, would it streamline the process? Avoid the spam? I don't know, but I'm frustrated enough with the process to keep an open mind.
- dchhugani 8y ago
  agreed!!!
- eterm 8y ago
  If you read the privacy policy you'll realise you're still the product: "The Lobby may create co-branded webpages with our third-party partners or contractors and in connection with these relationships we may pass your personal information to these partners in order to offer these co-branded Services."
  - dchhugani 8y ago
    Like 99% of startups, we didn't write up each section of our privacy policy in an effort to be evil. We worked with templates and modified the parts that seemed more specific to us. Please don't villanize us for the wording here - it probably came recycled from others. We would never share important data without user's consent, and in the case of recruiting, they're usually joining because they want us to share certain data with employers (which we don't do at all today yet).
    - whatsstolat 8y ago
      You have to take responsibility for your privacy policy though, and make sure it reflects your actual policy.
RockyMcNuts 8y ago
Indeed, most companies' HR would ban their employees from monetizing their positions at the company in this fashion. If this works, how about vendors paying IT personnel for inside dope on how to sell to the company, or paying them directly to come in and make a pitch? Where do you draw the line? There are gray areas, how different is it to pay for a fancy night out to 'pick your brain' about networking? Or use 'expert networks' for research. Internships are another area that can be useful, or abused in the sense that people have to be able to work for free to even be considered. You'd have to make a very good case that it will improve hiring. But if it improves hiring, maybe the company should be paying, to improve their internal outreach and give their people proper incentive to spend time on the recruiting process.
- dchhugani 8y ago
  I agree that if not controlled properly - it can take all sorts of shapes and forms. The best we can do is work with good intentions, put measures in place to avoid bad behavior, and focus on driving more of the positive kinds of interactions. I think our model is worth trying because the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles. If you have ideas for how we could do this differently or put measures in place to avoid all the negative examples you gave - I'd love to hear them. deepak@thelobby.io. I don't think there's a black & white answer here - it will be nuanced and require good execution. Think of all the ways something like Airbnb could go wrong without security checks, going against landlord laws, etc. It still seems to be an overwhelmingly positive addition to the world - we think this can be the same.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles. As you yourself pointed out in another sub-thread, "this knowledge is not rocket science" and someone responded, essentially, that it stands to reason that it is already available on numerous web sites. Some of that knowledge may even be borderline proprietary (for, an admittedly shallow, example, how to prepare for puzzles in interviews), where the site offers anonymity and publishing in exchange for that information. As such, I'm not convinced that the status quo is how you say it is, unless you actually are trying to offer access to insider knowledge closer to the "rocket science" level.
WhitneyLand 8y ago
Sorry, I think this is a jackass comment, ironically even though I agree with the conclusion. I hate to be rude, but people are dedicating potentially years of their lives to these ideas. I don’t doubt at all you have valid arguments or wisdom to offer here. I just wish your comment could be a couple sentences longer so some of it could be more effectively extracted.

> it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies. There is no controversy. It’s just plain wrong.

dchhugani 8y ago

Respect that you see it this way, but I disagree, for all the reasons discussed here. If you're a candidate who goes to a 3rd tier school dreaming of getting a top-tier Wall Street job, you have no alumni to reach out to, half of your cold emails don't result in anything, and you're applying online with a poor resume, preparation, and no insights. What's the solution? You can definitely grind it out on your own for months googling, cold-emailing, trying to catch a break. However, I've seen first hand from my own school and friends that a few targeted & tactical conversations with the right people can catapult you ahead way beyond any textbook, course, bootcamp, and more. The conversations I had that helped me land my jobs were way more valuable than what I paid for in school or even in tutoring or others.

seige 8y ago
As someone who went to a 3rd tier school and spent the next 5-7 years grinding to get to a top tech company in a country that I had just immigrated to, I want to say Thank You for addressing this problem. I cant speak about banking/finance industry but in tech, most jobs should be level playing fields for everyone who knows how to program but they are unfortunately not. Nepotism is ripe in tech and in SV, that means you need to be from the ivy leagues. There is a definite market here and as long as you keep the supply side of high quality, buyers will come. Also, read your story of being a solo non-technical founder. Kudos to you man!
- dchhugani 8y ago
  amazing to hear your story! and thanks so much for the kind words. we'll try to move into tech asap :).

GavinMcG 8y ago

It might be wrong to charge for filling positions but there's plenty of "recruiting-focused" activities that I'd be happy to pay for.

dchhugani 8y ago
Exactly - we're not a "pay to get a job" site. There's plenty of those. We just think that the insights people have inside companies are incredibly valuable and if you want to make them free, then you'll have the same pitfall every "mentorship platform" has today: it doesn't scale. I'm a mentor who helps 5 people a month for free + everyone else in my network I already agree to help. What about when that reaches 10 or 15 people? Do you still keep doing it enthusiastically out of the goodness of your own heart? I'm sure some would, but I'd rather they get compensated and do a good job of helping everyone. Some of our best insiders ask us for 7-10 calls a week, and before adding the monetary incentive, I couldn't get my friends to take even 2 calls in the same week because "they're busy".

ztratar 8y ago

Care to try to explain more, Ronilan?

dchhugani 8y ago
Would also love to learn more about your thinking. Also happy to chat offline if you prefer, I'm at deepak@thelobby.io
ronilan 8y ago
It should be one of those things that are self-evident, but since YC backed this “thing” I guess it is not. So in the shortest possible form: There exist an imbalance of power between the people “on the inside” (or “on the couch”) and the people on the outside. Generally speaking, a business meant to exploit the imbalance is wrong. One that does so at the expanse of the outsiders and for the benefit of the insiders is just plain wrong. Specifically, job seekers are, while seeking, a “vulnerable” population (just as an example, so are renters and migrants). These are people, who for a certain period of time, and due to certain circumstances, find themselves, on the outside looking in, at that very thing they desperately want or need. Charging a jobseeker for the job (via commission on future salary for example) is wrong, but debatable. Charging, a jobseeker for the “hope” of getting a job is just plain wrong.
- ameister14 8y ago
  What about charging someone for education? Isn't that what this is? Education about the job from people who actually do it. Personally, I don't have the idea that this is for people that don't currently have jobs - I see the main target as people that are unhappy with their current position and are looking to switch into investment banking. There are a lot of those but it's hard to know how to do something like that or who to talk to, particularly when you may have very specific questions about retraining or the consequences of shifting industries.
  - dchhugani 8y ago
    I really like this answer. This is something else we struggle with. It's not really "job seekers" it's for people who want to consider other roles, companies, or careers, which slowly is becoming every working professional who isn't planning on staying at their current role or company forever. Thanks for making this distinction!

Anderkent 8y ago

Disagree. Main reason why I don't talk to recruiters is the incentive mismatch - they work for the company, not for the job seeker, and I can't really trust their advice. In a model where a recruiter is paid by the jobseeker; i.e. he's the agent, this problem mostly goes away. A recruiter who say takes 5% of my next years salary if I accept a job, and therefore is incentivised to find me the best job possible... That's a different story.

dchhugani 8y ago
I agree with a lot of this. One thing to note is that with this model the recruiter is incentivized for you to take the highest paying job, maybe not the best job for you. As stupid as that may sound (because everyone generally wants to make more money), it also means the first high paying job offer you get, they will probably push very hard (against your own interest) for you to accept it. That's the only way they'll make money. If insiders (like at The Lobby) are just paid for their time and insights, then there's no added or alternate motive. I still think the % of salary model is very interesting, but there are probably challenges to it that aren't visible externally. Check out what happened to MissionU, a venture-backed free 1-year college alternative that took a % of your salary: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-30-acquisition-autopsy-details-and-questions-behind-missionu-s-4m-sale-to-wework https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-30-acquisition-autopsy-... They had the best possible founder to do this and $11m in VC-funding, but shut down after their 1st cohort.
- Invictus0 8y ago
  To be fair, they didn't shut down so much as the founder sold out.
  - dchhugani 8y ago
    I don't know the details, will trust you on it :)!
  - mmt 8y ago
    I have trouble understanding what significance the "so much as" means, nor even the "sold out", since it appears to have been an acqui-hire, with the (cash) assets being returned to investors. The company did shut down. We can only speculate on the founder's motivation.

gwbas1c 8y ago

A phrase that often passes through these forums is, "if it's free, you are the product!" I encounter a lot of clowns when I work with recruiting firms. I'm open to new ideas where I'm treated as a valuable customer instead of a product. [Edit] This is because I'm finding that recruiting is turning into spamming. Every recruiter gets lucky from the few candidates they place so they make a decent income from their commission. [Edit] If I pay to work with someone who handles a high volume, would it streamline the process? Avoid the spam? I don't know, but I'm frustrated enough with the process to keep an open mind.

dchhugani 8y ago
agreed!!!
eterm 8y ago
If you read the privacy policy you'll realise you're still the product: "The Lobby may create co-branded webpages with our third-party partners or contractors and in connection with these relationships we may pass your personal information to these partners in order to offer these co-branded Services."
- dchhugani 8y ago
  Like 99% of startups, we didn't write up each section of our privacy policy in an effort to be evil. We worked with templates and modified the parts that seemed more specific to us. Please don't villanize us for the wording here - it probably came recycled from others. We would never share important data without user's consent, and in the case of recruiting, they're usually joining because they want us to share certain data with employers (which we don't do at all today yet).
  - whatsstolat 8y ago
    You have to take responsibility for your privacy policy though, and make sure it reflects your actual policy.

RockyMcNuts 8y ago

Indeed, most companies' HR would ban their employees from monetizing their positions at the company in this fashion. If this works, how about vendors paying IT personnel for inside dope on how to sell to the company, or paying them directly to come in and make a pitch? Where do you draw the line? There are gray areas, how different is it to pay for a fancy night out to 'pick your brain' about networking? Or use 'expert networks' for research. Internships are another area that can be useful, or abused in the sense that people have to be able to work for free to even be considered. You'd have to make a very good case that it will improve hiring. But if it improves hiring, maybe the company should be paying, to improve their internal outreach and give their people proper incentive to spend time on the recruiting process.

dchhugani 8y ago
I agree that if not controlled properly - it can take all sorts of shapes and forms. The best we can do is work with good intentions, put measures in place to avoid bad behavior, and focus on driving more of the positive kinds of interactions. I think our model is worth trying because the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles. If you have ideas for how we could do this differently or put measures in place to avoid all the negative examples you gave - I'd love to hear them. deepak@thelobby.io. I don't think there's a black & white answer here - it will be nuanced and require good execution. Think of all the ways something like Airbnb could go wrong without security checks, going against landlord laws, etc. It still seems to be an overwhelmingly positive addition to the world - we think this can be the same.
- mmt 8y ago
  > the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles. As you yourself pointed out in another sub-thread, "this knowledge is not rocket science" and someone responded, essentially, that it stands to reason that it is already available on numerous web sites. Some of that knowledge may even be borderline proprietary (for, an admittedly shallow, example, how to prepare for puzzles in interviews), where the site offers anonymity and publishing in exchange for that information. As such, I'm not convinced that the status quo is how you say it is, unless you actually are trying to offer access to insider knowledge closer to the "rocket science" level.

WhitneyLand 8y ago

Sorry, I think this is a jackass comment, ironically even though I agree with the conclusion. I hate to be rude, but people are dedicating potentially years of their lives to these ideas. I don’t doubt at all you have valid arguments or wisdom to offer here. I just wish your comment could be a couple sentences longer so some of it could be more effectively extracted.