@rrhoover Thanks Ryan! I remember Hire My Friend well - I went looking for it specifically during our initial research. I'd love to hear more on what worked/didn't work.

@rrhoover @chrisdary the hardest part was turning what sounds like a behaviour that people might have into a real business. Passive candidates like this are super hard to advertise to to get them to sign up. After the initial tech crunch piece we were using paid channels to get people to sign up. The company side wasn't so hard – everyone wants talent. But getting enough quality people to make a profile and actually be serious about being approached was really expensive. In the end Nick tried to pivot it into a more direct approach that didn't rely on passive, slightly disinterested users. I wasn't too involved after the initial three-week hack and it was Nick's baby so I'll leave him to comment if he wants to. I think we made it very easy to make a profile, and we perhaps learnt that actually the friction of "I am seriously applying for a job and putting effort into it" is quite a big, useful thing in recruitment. Once you've been through that barrier you're much more likely to attend an interview and go through a recruitment process. Saying "I'm kind of interested if the right thing comes along" just isn't high enough friction, so you end up with a platform of "meh, maybe. Kind of too busy to reply" people, which might frustrate the companies who send messages and don't hear back. My advice, spend a lot of time talking to both sides and find data that you can use as a proxy for finding the people who really want to get a gig, and the companies that are going to do a good job of attracting them. Then use those learnings to find a way to get people to sign up (who really will use it) and for a per-user price that actually works (!) What'll probably end up happening is that you think you can automate all this and then it will get super messy and manual somewhere along the way. Recruitment is hard! Good luck.

@rrhoover @stef Wow, this is gold. Thanks very much. We've been very cautious/curious about the friction question as well. We ask fairly pointed questions that require thought in our form while also trying to make it transparent what's expected up front. We're hoping that this gets at the right kind of folks who are invested enough to spend some time answering some important questions about role. Additionally, we're keeping a close eye on reveal accept rate to try to suss out if we're overloaded with passive-and-disinterested folks. Right now we're around 70% which we think is good, but we're going to be keeping a very close eye post these launch days. Thanks so much for your thoughts, @stef.

Thanks for jumping in, @stef! Great learnings.

@rrhoover @chrisdary No worries, happy to help! Best of luck with it... we all spent a lot of time thinking about it all and went on to other projects ultimately. You might have more headway given the whole HR-tech explosion since then, and folks being comfortable trying new things.

@guus_hoeve i know right? ;) interesting things to come!

@chrisdary Hey Chris, thanks so much for launching this. It came at the right time for me personally. I love the concept, the design, and all the helpful prompts along the way. I appreciate the fact that it's anonymized, so everyone get a chance. All in all, it made me think about aspects I hadn't realized were an asset in the job hunt! I have a few general thoughts / questions about the product, and the hiring process itself. My experience of it so far is that it's like a stab in the dark essentially. If you don't know anyone (yet, as in my case), there's little transparency in the process from the company's side. Anything to help with that would be appreciated. As a candidate, it's hard for me to tell how many people are on Limbo from companies, if any, or what their activity is. I have a profile that I hope someone will respond to, but that's it. Other services aren't great at this either: LinkedIn has hundreds of recruitment managers, making it super confusing, and on Angel List there's a name on record, so at least you feel like your application is seen by a specific person. Two, how do you make sure that this doesn't become *another* channel to keep on top of for the recruiting manager? I've seen the same job opening posted in at least 3 different channels (AngelList, LinkedIn, company site). However, some recruiters I've met socially told me off the record they're listed on some platforms but "haven't checked them in weeks" (!) Lastly, other platforms like Lever now have some built-in forms and quizzes for applicants, which can be a nice way of breaking the ice and differentiating yourself beyond a note or statement. Is this something you'd consider, if companies want candidates to put in a bit more effort? Thank you! :)

@diemkay Thanks much for your thoughtful feedback! > As a candidate, it's hard for me to tell how many people are on Limbo from companies, if any, or what their activity is. I have a profile that I hope someone will respond to, but that's it. For sure - some of this is just a factor of us just recently launching so not having lots of metrics to share since we were starting with closed beta data only. Expect that to change quickly now that we have launched. :) Some of that is also by design: Serendipitous matches with great companies you didn't previously know about are a good thing! We've also considered tracking stats on a profiles visibility. Times you show up in a search result, what the search was, when you get a view, etc. That's probably a little further down the line but would help to understand where folks are seeing you. > Two, how do you make sure that this doesn't become *another* channel to keep on top of for the recruiting manager? It is another channel ultimately, but meaningfully different from job boards with resume flow, since the hiring manager is the one acting first. If you reach out first, it is pretty likely you'll want to hear back and will act if you do. So there shouldn't be much slack in the system on that end ( and on the other end, it's part of our code of conduct that candidates are expected to be timely in their responses to requests, or they will be banned: https://www.limbo.io/about/condu... ) > Lastly, other platforms like Lever now have some built-in forms and quizzes for applicants, which can be a nice way of breaking the ice and differentiating yourself beyond a note or statement. Is this something you'd consider, if companies want candidates to put in a bit more effort? Absolutely! We've tried to strike the balance of a meaningful form that is also short enough to not be crazily intimidating, but we would love to add more questions like this to get a better sense of candidates. Given the reception we've seen so far which has really surpassed our expectations on the candidate side, we think there's probably room for a lot more here to make really compelling profiles. Thanks so much for your thoughts!

@diemkay @chrisdary Love the idea and the initial implementation but I agree with Andreea about the need for some stats to show candidates activity on the platform. Serendipity is a wonderful thing, when it happens. However, in the absence of any statistics or activity flow, the candidate might leave the platform assuming no traction for their profile. BTW, I signed up and created a profile. Let's see how it goes. :)

@yozzozo Hey Matt - we fully agree. That's why the model is pay-on-request. Every time a company wants to reach out to you, they need to pay $30 (the first one is free). This is intentional friction to reduce low quality leads. We think this will take care of 90% of the problem, as companies are now incentivized to be focused in their requests. Beyond that, if we see a particular hiring manager or company has a consistently very low accept rate, we'd probably look into whether that form of outreach is allowed on our platform.

@jamie_ross Thanks for looking - yes, better support for international is definitely on the docket. We had a bunch of reasons for focusing on the US on launch but remote-without-sponsorship is a pretty simple win. Thanks much.

@richardvanwijngaarden Great question. As you say, people are stalked by recruiters often! It often feels like a waste of time for both sides, and the roles are usually pretty poor fits. We think this is a result of an inefficient system. Cold sourcing techniques are often a numbers game: send 100 messages to folks at no cost and hope one of them writes back. With Limbo, we've baked two important things into our model that go against this: 1. Unlike LinkedIn, you're precisely expressing your ideal *next* role. This means hiring managers have more to go off of in determining if you'd be a good fit. 2. On top of that, hiring managers have to pay a small amount to contact you. $30 each - the first one is free. This means that they are not incentivized to play the numbers game. They're incentivized to find good possible fits, and reach out carefully with custom pitches. The result is that the leads you get in Limbo will hopefully be high quality roles that match your values. Sorry for the novel - hope that makes sense!