Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly enough, 10 point "employees" can and do have trouble differentiating themselves. MIT Ph.D. admission, for instance, is rather selective. There is much research available demonstrating that there is a huge qualitative difference between consummate achievers and great minds. Unfortunately, most businesses and schools have far too many applications for employment and need some easy metric to reduce the set…
What happens to the popularity of the software when the hiring managers or HR people are rated poorly or even "just average"? Think about the newest social games. They metric is progression. There are no downers. If you have a low score, it's because you're new to the game or haven't played enough. You always "gain" experience points, gold, whatever. In order to get past the chicken and egg problem in the social spac…
While the perception of a 1 to infinity scale reduces the immediate negativity of being obviously below average... that illusion only works for a short period of time. When you start playing WoW 10 gold coins is a lot of money, you can delude yourself and harbor odd ideas about your worth. However, once you compare yourself to _anyone_ else, it becomes immediately apparent that 10 gold coins is practically worthless. As far as the "misdirection" is concerned, perhaps I ought to note some aspects of the UI.
Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, the site doesn't revolve around the user. As such, when you visit the site or login, you are not presented with your profile. Rather, the site is devoted to finding and comparing applicants. As such, the main page is a search page and most users will likely spend much of their time sorting through candidates. In fact, the only way a user could see their own data is to search for themselves. My guess is that that'll be a fairly common practice. My hope is that people will identify their weaknesses and either improve them or re-evaluate their career goals.
I know it seems harsh. But, the hiring practice is harsh. I sit people in a little, unfamiliar, echo chamber and send in a string of people to scrutinize and judge them. I'm not trying to get everyone hired on at obscene salaries and stroke everyone's ego. My goal is not to paint the world with a rainbow facade of unicorns and fairies. I want to enable Harvard, Yale, MIT, IBM, Microsoft, Google, et cetera to have a tool which quickly and accurately separates the wheat from the chaff. If an individual's skills are average or worse, they're not likely to be working at a company which receives so many applications that so sort of automated elimination is requisite. Rather, they're probably looking for average people for average work at an average company. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Here on HN, there are a lot of startups with a different sort of problem. No applications, but strong desires/needs for well-qualified employees. In that case, this tool would also be useful. If a startup wants to rely on friends from college and guys met at HN meetups, that's fine.
Again, I appreciate any and all feedback and am aware of the cold start and related problems. I have a few solutions that I'm not interested in discussing here and now; but, I understand that this is a major concern and certainly appreciate people pointing it out.