Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired • Hacker News Board

Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#1

Post by dchhugani » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

Hi HN! I’m Deepak, founder of The Lobby, from YC’s W18 batch. We’re building a marketplace where you can buy mock interviews, resume reviews, and coaching calls from company insiders, starting with top finance roles. (https://www.thelobby.io/)

I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus. As a result, it was really hard not only to get interviews and job offers, but also to figure out what these companies were looking for in candidates in the first place.

I got lucky and landed jobs at big banks and it was always because I somehow found someone on the inside who was willing to coach and mentor me in a very personalized way. I used that experience to help 50+ friends from similar backgrounds land jobs at top firms, and that’s what inspired the idea for The Lobby.

We have some incredibly happy users who’ve already landed jobs, and a very high repeat purchase rate both amongst students and career switchers because of the value in speaking to people in the specific teams and companies they're interested in vs. generic company-wide advice.

It has, however, been challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach. Even though people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college (to ultimately land a good job), it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies.

We’ve had 2 schools buy packages of calls where they subsidize the costs for their students, and are thinking through ideas to pass the cost away from students, even though this service is not just meant for college (our best users are career switchers). We’ve also received a lot of interest from companies who are interested in getting access to our best-rated candidates because they’ve been pre-screened by real humans who’ve done the job, vs. recruiters who have not.

Any feedback and ideas from the HN community on how to convey the cost/benefit of what we’re offering to students, recent grads, career switchers, parents, and even schools is much appreciated.

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#2

Post by michaelt » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

Do you also charge the companies?

Seems to me that would turn you into a regular, standard hiring website - but it could be remunerative if you could capture the 20%-of-first-year-salary companies will pay for recruiters.

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#3

Post by dchhugani » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #2

Do you also charge the companies? Seems to me that would turn you into a regular, standard hiring website - but it could be remunerative if you could capture the 20%-of-first-year-salary companies will pay for recruiters.

Hello! Today we don't charge the companies. We only want to charge them later on when we can just send them the candidates that did best on our calls (a.k.a qualified candidates).

If we charge companies today, the only we could do that is to let them choose who does these calls on their end, and that defeats the purpose because you get company-filtered advice.

We're going for a more personalized version of Glassdoor. Does that make sense?

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#4

Post by seibelj » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

This is awesome! FYI - I entered my email at the top of the page and clicked "Get Started", and nothing happened.[0]

Would love to know when the jobs expand to tech. Junior-level software engineering positions are becoming more difficult to get as the number of CS majors has exploded, and allowing them to practice with CS managers would be very helpful.

[0] The javascript error in the console:

  Uncaught TypeError: window.fbq is not a function
      at HTMLFormElement. (custom.js:1)
      at HTMLFormElement.dispatch (jquery.min.js:3)
      at HTMLFormElement.r.handle (jquery.min.js:3)

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#5

Post by lifeisstillgood » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

I sit squarely in the "insider" role here, and normally would be very interested in anyone who is proactively calling me up and saying "i want to work on your team" - but to avoid breaking any protocols / laws we would want the interviewee to come in the front door as usual.

All I suspect that is happening here is if I sign up as one of your insiders, you drop me interesting candidates and then they have to go through the normal channels. So I may be missing the point but if an individual reaches out through LinkedIn looking for a job that's a plus sign, of a recruiter does it, that's just the usual noise. What is being added?

Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot be to pay me (the insider) cos that breaks many ethical and probably legal rules. And if they are successful I am guessing you get a cut?

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#6

Post by maxtynan » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

What a great idea, Deepak.

I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus.

Many, many of us went to schools like this. Thanks for championing this cause.

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#7

Post by 0898 » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I sit squarely in the "insider" role here, and normally would be very interested in anyone who is proactively calling me up and saying "i want to work on your team" - but to avoid breaking any protocols / laws we would want the interviewee to come in the front door as usual. All I suspect that is happening here is if I sign up as one of your insiders, you drop me interesting candidates and then they have to go throug…

> Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot be to pay me (the insider) cos that breaks many ethical and probably legal rules.

Why?

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#8

Post by dchhugani » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #4

This is awesome! FYI - I entered my email at the top of the page and clicked "Get Started", and nothing happened.[0] Would love to know when the jobs expand to tech. Junior-level software engineering positions are becoming more difficult to get as the number of CS majors has exploded, and allowing them to practice with CS managers would be very helpful. [0] The javascript error in the console: Uncaught TypeError: win…

Thanks for the kind words! Thanks also for the bug - we're working on fixing it asap.

We want to move to tech later on - we think the right move is to win in one industry and move onto others. Also, this is the industry we have more domain expertise in and that has seen much less innovation than tech for example.

But we're definitely planning to expand soon!

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#9

Post by dchhugani » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

maxtynan wrote: post #6

What a great idea, Deepak. I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus. Many, many of us went to schools like this. Thanks for championing this cause.

hey maxtynan! appreciate the kind words. I'm glad you see the problem we're trying to solve, most of our users tell us the same thing and you'd be surprised how many users even in target schools need more help.

This is the most important decision of your life at any given time (maybe except for who you marry) and we still rely on generic forums, our own networks, or spamming people on LinkedIn. We hope this makes it more efficient & accessible.

Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

#10

Post by dchhugani » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I sit squarely in the "insider" role here, and normally would be very interested in anyone who is proactively calling me up and saying "i want to work on your team" - but to avoid breaking any protocols / laws we would want the interviewee to come in the front door as usual. All I suspect that is happening here is if I sign up as one of your insiders, you drop me interesting candidates and then they have to go throug…

Thanks for the feedback. I should be a bit more clear - the calls today are not really meant as a way for you to refer the person to your company. We started that way, and learned it was both shady and really ineffective (i.e. what are the odds that if I choose to speak with someone at team A in Goldman Sachs that they will want to refer me, and that that referral will result in an interview or a job).

Instead, today this is mainly coaching and practice. Later, we're aiming to get insiders to "Rate" the candidates they speak with and have the best-rated ones get sent over to 10,20,100 companies that we partner with as qualified leads.

This helps candidates get noticed more and "credentialize" themselves because someone (or many) in the industry screened them over 30m calls and thought they were a good fit. This lets companies see an added signal that is not their resume, their school, their GPA, or their LinkedIn.

It also helps companies discover diverse & non-obvious talent, something we know first-hand is an important issue to them. Even for the companies who don't care about diversity in the traditional sense, they need to diversify their pool because everyone is going after the same 2% of "good-on-paper" candidates from Harvard and Stanford, because no one can cost effectively vet candidates from the much larger rest.

Interviewees pay because this is time-consuming and valuable insight from the insiders, and because otherwise we rely on altruism which we feel does not scale.