I'm confused. Is there some aspect about a person being laid off that makes them more/less desirable that they need a specific service to help them find a new job? I know some people who have been laid off might be dusty with job hunting skills and there are services to help anyone that specific area.
Also seeing a trend of niche job websites popping up... Fragmentation in this industry seems counterproductive.
Yes. The job seekers are more desirable to sourcing teams if they are systematically filtered to be sincere about taking a new role, local, and experienced in a given role. Layoffs tend to produce a gold mine in that respect from a talent acquisition perspective.
Good point on fragmentation seeming counterproductive. It certainly is, but that’s the way it is since different candidates and different employers have different preferences (e.g. an engineer might prefer maintaining GitHub over LinkedIn, so sourcers can’t just use LinkedIn). Also, people who have been laid off tend to value a specific package of help — not just job leads, but also resume reviews, fast-track processes, and sometimes creative (non-traditional / part-time) leads that fill any potential gap.
> I'm confused. Is there some aspect about a person being laid off that makes them more/less desirable that they need a specific service to help them find a new job?
Yes. There are stigmas. People solve this by just having their perpetual consulting company on their resume, or put back on their resume when convenient. There is bargaining power when you can feign disinterest, as in you're 'open to opportunities' but not 'looking for a job I'll start next week' like a new college grad. Less relevant for engineers in this job market but not irrelevant.
> Also seeing a trend of niche job websites popping up... Fragmentation in this industry seems counterproductive.
But that buyout isn't counterproductive.
Also recruiters either earn a tiny referral bonus or like 20% of the agreed upon salary. The company doesn't pay it from the employee's salary, they just pay that additional amount equivalent to what 20% of the salary is.
That presupposes that it is inaccurate which doesn't have to be proved or disproved since its irrelevant either way:
It undermines the stigma of 'gaps', 'hopping around', and also shows relevant experience as much as other roles, if that's what you want it to do. If you actually had clients then consider listing them too
The value-add from this service, I'm assuming, is less on the candidate side and more on the company side.
For context, it is really hard for companies to build a pipeline of candidates for technical roles. If your hiring for a technical role, 99% of the ideal candidates you'd like to hire are already employed.
Big layoffs at tech companies release a ton of qualified, immediately-employable technical candidates into the market all at once. For recruiters, and 3rd party recruiting platforms like this one, these candidates represent a massive opportunity. Any engineer who has been laid off in a big round has had to deal with marketing/outreach from recruiters and recruiting platforms (Hired, AngelList, Vettery, etc.)
From what I see, this platform won't give you, as a candidate, any advantage another platform won't.
As a company, we work closely with those laid off to help them find their next job. We don't charge candidates for this service.
Given our extremely technical backgrounds, we can help people and companies based strongly on technical experience, past projects, and future interests. We understand how important it is to work on not just exciting projects, but interesting technology.
So you're a recruiting company that targets layoffs? Why would I use a service like this over, for example, Triplebyte, which also accommodates the same scenario? From both perspectives -- The company and the candidate.
One thing that has always felt wrong/broken/dirty, is how little people get to know about you when applying for a job. In order to correct this, we schedule a call to learn the following:
Understand experience.
- Learn more about recent projects and you're personal involvement; role
- Understand what technologies were used and your depth of those technologies
Understand what you're looking for in terms of:
- Problems excite you
- Technology and architectures
> So you're a recruiting company that targets layoffs?
A better way of looking at it is, we're a networking platform for candidates and companies to find one another. In addition to this, we do provide a concierge service for companies in which we will send out a curated list of candidates we spoken to personally along with a write up of that persons experience.
> How extremely? In what way?
Our professional background is in software development. We love talking tech! What technology do you use?
What's the benefit of targeting only people who have been part of a high profile layoffs? Seems like a smaller pool on both sides-less people to recruit, and less recruiters who specifically are interested in these types of candidates.
If it's as a proxy to quality of candidate, isn't there a better way to measure that?
We feel like keeping a very niche focus allows us to do a fantastic job at helping candidates find their next job. It will enable us to work closely with the candidates and work on a process that can eventually scale.
Does 'high profile' matter? My layoff months ago closed an office locally (25 people laid off) in a country-wide effort affecting about 200 people. It wasn't in the news, there was no PR around the action. Further layoffs followed around the world, and still no news (publicly traded company - doesn't The Market love a layoff?) The former parent company (who had created the spinoff 9mos previously) wasn't aware (you'd expect networking between execs to maintain a grapevine, right?)
Interviewers were often incredulous. I feel like this was a factor in being declined an offer in a few cases.
> Does 'high profile' matter?
Not at all. There's really no discrimination based on how big company or layoff is, we'll work with you. This was placed here to appeal to companies. We want to create as much "liquidity" as possible to help people bounce back.
I would love feedback on what do you think would be a better phrase?
> doesn't The Market love a layoff?
The market does love layoffs; but there's no centralized place for companies and candidates to find one another. That's what we provide. We'll also help in the process if you like.
When I was younger, I went through this process and really wished I had someone to help me through it. Watching all of these recent layoffs made me want to do something about it.
If there's anything you feel like could be done to help those affected by layoffs, I would love to hear it.
I agree high profile shouldn’t matter, but it helps to grab the attention of recruiters who often pay attention to high-profile consumer companies like “Uber” but not to smaller, more enterprise-facing startups. It’s not necessarily a logical disconnect, but it is real.
So far seems to be a data mining effort. I create an account and then I'm whisked away to a form that want's my information to build a profile. At this point, I have no idea what the service will specifically do for me, other than compile my information.
Sorry, it's not a data mining effort. We're taking sign-ups now and will start scheduling calls with people. To best help us, getting some information makes this process move faster.
Thanks bkfunk. All — I launched layoff-aid.com for SF tech talent in 2017. Love the initiative here and happy to help push it forward or do whatever else I can to better solve the problem. Email is Adam@ , mention HN
Recruiting is a big, fat, inefficient market. If you have N people contacting M companies, and M companies contacting N people, there's a whole lot of inefficiency there. Then you have ridiculous interview processes, a lack of communication about how to improve all around, overloaded in-house recruiters who get swamped and work below peak efficiency, high costs to access premium services like job posting & LinkedIn, and so on. Eventually you throw your hands up and pay big fat fees to people who send you candidates. Any nominal optimization or gimmick can charge a lot of money. Eventually someone will figure out a way to remove all the friction and drive the cost of hiring the old way down.
An even more basic point is that most people don't like sourcing, including recruiters. If you try to outsource and/or throw money at a problem to make it someone else's problem, you'll never get close enough to the actual pain points to be aware of them. And when a sourcing superstar does rise above the rest, they will find no one cares to learn what they've learned, let along practice it.
Some areas feel easy to fake-innovation-as-consulting due to high throughout or concierge: recruiting, ads, etc. You do a normal job, maybe handhold, and market with something fresh. Can get some level of sales proportional to marketing and services effort. But ultimately nothing truly differentiating or sticky vs the next AI/niche/whatever startup, and investors move on as the startup fails to keep growing past $1M/$10m/whatever. The consultancy/services gets bought at consultancy/services-level terms for consultancy/services-level value.
It took me awhile to notice the pattern of businesses that can get to some revenue quickly, but hit a ceiling soon after. Sample sign: a few top principals are drive most of the early deal value, and revenue scales at bad multiples after them.
We're not a recruiting firm, and we'll make this distinction very clear on the website soon.
The primary purpose of the website is to help people bounce back from being laid off. Given this is our primary mission, we don't do the following:
- We don't charge companies a % of a candidate's salary. This feels dirty to us, and it's not in the candidate's best interest.
- We don't prevent companies from discovering people who have been laid off. Profiles on the website will be visible to companies, much like LinkedIn.
Since we're technical, we want to speak with you. Understand your background, technical expertise, and what you're looking to work on.
We are focusing on a niche market and this allows us to focus our energy on actually speaking to each candidate in-depth about their technical experience; we'll be able to represent you and get you that interview quicker.
>Recruitment refers to the overall process of attracting, shortlisting, selecting and appointing suitable candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary) within an organization.
It appears this is indeed what your organization is, based on your own words: "we'll be able to represent you and get you that interview quicker."
Are you avoiding the recruitment buzzword, or are you truly something different? I'm having a hard time telling it apart.
The reason for avoiding the usage of the word "recruiter" is certainly intentional. We don't feel like that term lends itself well to what we're trying to do honestly.
We're not sure exactly what term best expresses this, but more on the lines of a concierge service. The business model is structured in a way that ensures we do what's best for both candidate and company.
Please don't slap me for using an "X for Y" analogy, but we're CarMax for Hiring. We need to work on translating that into words.
CarMax has fix prices and aims to ensure that your experience as a car buying isn't tainted with a feeling that you got ripped off. We want candidates to know we're on their side and are not motivated working against their best interest.
I didn't see an email in your profile or on layoffs.at, so responding here:
I help candidates ace technical interviews and negotiate offers. If you're interested in some kind of partnership or collaboration send me an email: lusen@dangoormendel.com
My business partner and I work with candidates in a variety of ways:
- 1on1 customized consulting - we're like agents or "the team that has your back" for candidates
- hourly consulting, ie you have a few offers and need some instant tips
- one-off webinars and workshops
- interview and negotiation skills accelerator program: https://www.dangoormendel.com/november-accelerator
I tried something similar with "rejected.dev" (https://coderfit.com/rejected-dev) but no one was interested. There is some kind of stigma attached to being rejected, it seems. If another firms throws you out, even if it is not your fault, there is still some loser touch attached to you and the perceived value of you drops, sadly.
Seems to have been hugged to death. Also, some of the header links seemed to not work, possibly due to overzealous ad blockers? Not sure, I clicked on something else and got a 502 after that.
Job markets are mostly national, so the site would benefit from stating their coverage on the front page. Especially if they are (mis)using a country top level domain.
Also seeing a trend of niche job websites popping up... Fragmentation in this industry seems counterproductive.