If they sue me, come to visit in jail. If they come for my family – know I’ll revenge.
But heck. This smells so bad, I had to share what I think.
For a stealth website, NotchUp are doing a hell of a job. I got something like five invitations in the last 12 hours. Some from people I hardly know, and some from people having little to do with the web. The site is going viral like crazy. And for a reason. People are greedy.
The idea is simple. You’re a qualified professional, right? You’re not really looking for a job, but are willing to hear interesting offers? You’re not really being interviewed, it’s YOU interviewing prospect employers? So why not get paid for it? If you’re such a hot shot (which of course you are), make them pay just for meeting you! I’m so good actually, They’ll actually LEARN from interviewing me. It’s like consulting.
So here comes NotchUp. A job site (novel idea, no doubt), where you set a rate for just being interviewed. The default payment stands on $500 but why not make it $1,000? Now that’s new. How come I never thought of that? Why did I agree to be interviewed for free all my life? Darn. Not anymore! I’m going to charge from now on!
Oh. Small problem. It will never work. No employer with little brains to spear (and little experience) will pay. Trust me. I’m a recruiter. That’s (part of) what we do for a living (but don’t just trust my word on that).
Little math: For every open position we have, we’re getting potential candidates in the hundreds (qualifying for the job requirements). Sometimes thousands. We filter and interview tens. Double that by aprox. $500 per interview and you get tens of thousands of dollars paid just for recruiting. Add the first months drop-rate (not fitting after all, or found a better job), and you end up with astronomical recruiting expenses.
So where’s the catch? I’m guessing NotchIn are not at all a job site. They’re aiming to compete against LinkedIn. And they found a way of migrating all of LinkedIn’s database. Using the greedy mob itself.
In the NotchUp signup process you’re offered, for the sake of comfort of course (who has the patience to retype one’s CV?), to enter your LinkedIn user name and password and Voila! All your data is “comfortably” imported to NotchUp, ready to be searched by the stupid, yet rich, employers.
Oh, and of course, if you invite friends (using our comfortable “send to all your LinkedIn contacts” feature) you’ll be getting 10% of every interview they will be paid for (Oops. Now we also have all your friend’s emails. Oh sorry. We had it at hello. When you gave us your LinkedIn user name and password. Did anyone hear “selling your friends”?).
Right.
Ladies and Gentlemen. The king is naked. It’s a hoax. There’s no way any employer will use this service. They are ripping your LinkedIn information.
Nice UI though.
P.S.
I might be missing something here. Please tell me if you think I have. I’ll be more than happy to discuss.
Wow.
I have a few things to say and not necessarily about the subject matter, so you may delete this comment, and ‘unpost’ it, if you like.
First – Your writing style. Hello? Blow me away – whydontcha? It’s amazing. I would also have to say, it’s somewhat reminiscent of my own.. not to blow my own trumpet – perish the thought… but 1. There are definite simliarities in style… could my writing have been an influence? 2. After all that self appreciation on my own behalf, whatever your style – similar to mine or otherwise – its OUTSTANDING writing for a non mother-tongue English speaker.
Holy Cow.
Lastly, ‘you had me at hello’…
… FABULOUS use of that ol’ chestnut.
Great copy. GERRRRREAT copy. (Copy as in text, of course)
Really. Hat’s off to ya.
Pod
That’s one of the nicest things anyone told me for a long time. Honest.
I’m blushing here…
Good analysis. Although we’ve been clamoring for LinkedIn’s API for a long time, of course there are sites that just want to abuse it.
I do think companies would be willing to pay for contact information. Like any sale though, they need to believe it’s worth doing. It probably won’t happen for most people, and almost for sure not for people just starting out.
Agree with paying for leads. That’s something (we calculated) around $10 (US) per CV.
Yay!
I’m happy to see some people finally starting to get it about this place!
You made it farther than I did–read their Terms of Service and see why; I couldn’t agree to those terms!
More on that at:
http://www.userglue.com/blog/2008/01/27/notchup-privacy-down/
I just don’t see the value in giving up all that warm, cozy privacy that LinkedIn offers me. But apparently, tons of others do.
Unfortunately, that’s the story that people are missing from my POV.
Further, check out how “similar” their site is to that of GrandCentral.com’s.
http://www.userglue.com/blog/2008/01/30/notchup-vs-grandcentral-design-by-uh-someone-elses-design/
–Russ
You are right.
The plot thickens…
(And so – I take back what I said about their UI)