This is great!
One way to offset the cost for job seekers is to take some part up front, and the rest in ~90 days when they get hired.
Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
111–120 of 167 posts
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#112[deleted]
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#113This sounds like a really interesting idea outside of just jobs. For example, I would really love to use this service for market or industry research. I tried to sign up, but there's a form that requires me to enter a bunch of info related to job-seeking. I'm not sure why that's necessary if all I want to do is pay to talk to people in companies? Also a few nitpicks: The frontpage sign up didn't work for me on Firefo…
Thank you! We are changing the onboarding flow to make it simpler to just book a call and not have to give us all that data unless you're about to book it. However, we are laser-focused on job hunting because otherwise we'll suffer the same fate of everyone who's tried similar ideas: losing focus.
There are 1,000 things you can ask professionals inside companies - by starting focused on careers it's easier to market and attract the right audience and get our supply used to those kinds of interactions as well. Industry & market research is more like GLG - and that can be much more complex from a regulatory standpoint (i.e. insider trading).
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 comm…
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."
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).
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
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…
amazing to hear your story! and thanks so much for the kind words. we'll try to move into tech asap :).
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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…
repasting what I addressed above.
My point was not that the advice is generic, but that you don't require super specialized knowledge to give it that needs extensive "quality control." The Telecom, Media & technology group at Goldman Sachs will have specific bankers, preferences, and things they look for in candidates, as well as industry-specific things you need to study to truly prep. But any analyst WITHIN THAT group is capable of providing that information, and they already are when they interview candidates, help their friends/alumni, and more.
To reiterate - the information of how to land a job in a specific group is very unique and not easy to commoditize across an entire industry or with generic blog posts, but the complexity of that knowledge is very low, hence many are qualified to accurately give it without having to have some crazy "quality control" monitor.
Additional comment: I meant rocket science literally, not metaphorically.
This knowledge is exceptionally valuable, but it is not hard to deliver if your personal experience & network has given it to you. Those without that network & experience don't have it.
If you really think the only knowledge worth paying for is rocket science, then every university degree in the world except for that one is worthless.
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#117[Slightly off-topic] There are a lot of people here talking about how it is impossible to find a job at one of the top investment banks without any connections. Why do you need to have connections to land a job? Why aren't the best candidates filtered from the job application pipeline like it happens at all of the big tech companies? By requiring connections to get in, Investment Bankers are biasing their employee to…
"Why aren't the best candidates filtered from the job application pipeline like it happens at all of the big tech companies?" I am sorry but this simply not true. Referrals based hiring is the norm in SV tech companies and I am not talking C-level, this is prevalent in even the rank-n-file roles. We are happier not rolling the dice on the stranger, skills be damned.
exactly!
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
In our process of booking a call, we ask you to specify your objectives, just write "mock interview" there and any other relevant info (behavioral, technical, etc.). Does that make sense?
So, you are essentially paying for 30 min of time to do with whatever you want - got it. Thanks Deepak
Yes! We are working on segmenting the calls but really up until a few months ago, it was still all MVP and the different use cases helped us realize they need to be segmented differently (and sometimes even priced) differently. For example, having someone tell you about their job can probably be done in 15m and at a lower cost than someone who goes through the trouble of prepping for a mock interview. Working on it!
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#119Advice: tell this story! Create a video where you describe this same thing, and promote it on the right channels. You can even add production value by showing b-roll of specific points of your story, such as footage from on-campus recruiting. Perhaps include interviews/testimonials from those happy customers that you mentioned. Your point about spending thousands on education while simultaneously having an aversion t…
Another part of the story that I didn't see in your launch HN summary that you should definitely play up:
Companies _desperately_ _want_ to hire people from schools they don't cater to with career fairs. They don't want to be perceived as monocultures where they only hire from the same three schools. At the same time, they can't feasibly do career fairs at the next 50%ile of schools. Great candidates from "top 100" schools get passed over all the time.
... Well the monoculture observation is at least true of tech companies. For finance companies, hiring only from Harvard/Yale might be an explicit goal. I have no idea.
Re: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
#120This is an awesome idea. Any plans to allow someone to pay for this based on their success of landing a job? (taking a % of their future salary kind of like Lambda School).
Isn't % of first year salary how most recruitment works? Except the employer pays.