[robinjfisher]

As I'm in the industry, my thoughts on some of the recruitment-related companies:

10 BY 10 - I don't get it. Their website says they are a contingency search firm with a value prop of having resumes filtered by people with domain knowledge before submission to clients. Also that they deliberately hit a low acceptance rate on resumes because they try to submit a diverse field of candidates. If the goal is to get the hiring manager the right person, then the best resumes should be submitted without imposing some arbitrary diversity requirement.

70 Million Jobs - love the concept. Big believer that proper recruitment practices can help rehabilitation of offenders.

ShiftDoc - marketplace concept in the healthcare space. Not sure of regulatory environment in the US but in the UK, these models will suffer due to regulatory issues over the status of the workers.

Gustav - I like this model. Offers a platform for smaller agencies to compete with the larger players. Will be interesting to see how sustainable it is given the commoditisation in certain sectors as the 3% take seems very high given pressure on margins in staffing in the US.

[Lordarminius]

70 Million Jobs featured Show HN recently. I recall an expert asking them to change the depressing picture on their website front page. Appears they did not take the advice. Such little things matter.

[robinjfisher]

I've just skimmed a few pages of the site and frankly I'm amazed that they do not have 1) a video of an ex-offender talking about the the opportunity afforded by an employer using the service and 2) a video of the HR Director of Coca-Cola or AA or Facebook or...talking about how they found a great person through the service.

The recruitment of ex-offenders is such a story from both sides. Nobody really cares about the story of the top engineer getting a job at Google but there is a resonance with the story of the ex-offender who had looked for 6 months for a job and finally an employer took a chance on them using 70 million jobs etc...

[avs733]

and as of right now, there website seems to be down

[lkbm]

10 BY 10, going purely by your description, makes it sound to me along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell's pasta sauce realization[0]--if you want to find the perfect sauce for person X, you need to offer chunky, spicy, and "plain". None is inherently the best, so you offer three that are best in distinct ways.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauc...

[robinjfisher]

I'm not familiar with the video and will check it out when I'm at home.

If I was to say more on 10 BY 10 it's that I don't see the differentiator. Plenty of search firms are staffed by people with domain knowledge and the pre-screening of resumes by an expert or qualifying candidate interest prior to resume submission are not significant enough to differentiate in that space.

If I was to be cynical, I'd say that going through YC gives them access to a lot of prospective clients because I fail to see why any particular significant investment would be needed to start a search firm.

I see the TC article talks about a marketplace so perhaps there is a development down the line of what their solution looks like.

[mstroeck]

Co-founder of Gustav here. Thanks for the kind words :-) The 3% is of course a blended rate. There are positions/sectors where that would never fly, but others where 5% is feasible. Also we cover the full spectrum of what staffing agencies typically offer, including permanent placement type transactions. For those, our take-rate is closer to 20%.

Here's more info on the pricing: https://hellogustav.com/recruiters-and-staffing-agencies

[dagw]

If the goal is to get the hiring manager the right person, then the best resumes should be submitted without imposing some arbitrary diversity requirement.

I can see value in being offering 3 different 'types' of candidates instead of 3 different candidates of the same type, even if the latter 3 in theory have the strongest resumes.

[robinjfisher]

I take the point but by their own admission, resume acceptance is at 50% when it could be at 80% so on that score they are failing to convince the client of the benefit of that diversity.

If I am a hiring manager and I am rejecting 1/2 resumes as opposed to 1/4, I'd question what the search firm is doing.