
Mentat helps people land their dream jobs - dwaxe
http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/07/mentat/
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DiabloD3
A 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)

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walrus01
Could also be a reference to Mentats in Fallout(1,2,3,4) which are an
addictive drug. Recursively, also a reference to Dune.

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solipsism
That's not how "recursively" works.

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shorodei
He means that the Mentats in Fallout could themselves be a reference to Dune.

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mahmud
That'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.

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saadrizvi
founder 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.

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p4wnc6
I'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).

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2muchcoffeeman
I thought this was about someone making the fictional Fallout drug real.

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nicolashahn
It's called Adderall. You may have seen the 2011 documentary about it,
Limitless.

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rhizome
Hmm, if it was Adderall I would have a lot more money right now. Maybe
Modafinil?

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neverminder
It was about Modafinil.

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nsedlet
I'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.

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moron4hire
As the recruiter, why aren't you taking care of that stuff for people?

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pm90
There'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.

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nsedlet
I 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.

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dexwiz
Recruiter 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.

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vemv
Wow, 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.

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saadrizvi
Thanks for the feedback - keeping quality up is a top priority!

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edoceo
Yet another "hiring is broken" play

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lj3
That 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

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SmellTheGlove
Fixing it is hard, and the fix as a product doesn't scale, as you're working
directly with/against internal politics.

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lj3
I 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.

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TrevorJ
It 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.

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SmellTheGlove
The 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.

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cloudjacker
Role into interviews with +2 Int

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civilian
It'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.

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J_Darnley
Heh. 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.

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orky56
They don't guarantee a job, just an interview.

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SmellTheGlove
Getting 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.

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monkey88
I get to the interview and bomb it on the cultural fit.

At any rate, the $249 is still deductible from taxes.

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SmellTheGlove
Cultural 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.

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nornagon
> “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.

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ryandrake
Noticed 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>!

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throwaway26960
You get jobs by being unique.

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lj3
Reminds 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!"

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pklausler
And 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.

