Here’s a twist on recruiting promising candidates: Pay them to interview with you.
That’s the premise behind Notchup.com, a recruiting Web site that launched this month. It promises to deliver quality, passive candidates, the kind of worker who is happy where they are, but who, like any smart networker, is open to new opportunities.
The quality part of the candidate equation comes from Notchup’s screening process that lets in only candidates who “will be attractive to companies and receive offers to interview,” or so says the Web site, which goes on to explain that the criteria includes graduation from a top U.S., international or other highly regarded school, experience with a Fortune 500 company, fast career climbers and workers at startups backed by first rate venture capital firms.
Once in, the candidate gets to set their interview fee with the help of a calculator. Just how that works is nowhere explained, but we suspect it takes into account standardized headhunting fees for the candidate’s industry and career position.
Will companies use the site and pay candidates for interviews? Notchup claims that among others, Google and Yahoo already are. Though with the site officially in Beta chances are good the listed firms are getting comped to test the system.
Meanwhile, judging from the response to an article on TechCrunch about the launch, potential participants are already thinking of how to game the system. One poster, representative of several comments, observed: “Here’s a thought….will this create an army of would be employees whose sole job will be to get interviewed by all these companies and make a living?”
We didn’t get to speak with anyone from Notchup.com, however, there is a description of a feedback and rating system. Recruiters rate candidates on how seriously they took the interview and on the accuracy of their resume. Presumably, serial interviewers will get tagged as such and won’t be pursued.