[geofftrojans]

Love the idea and I definitely see the problem and need. If you are able to answer, I have a few questions:

1) You say that you will track every data point to hold yourselves accountable. What metrics do you intend on tracking to prove the value of your service to potential customers?

2) Do you screen the customers prior to accepting them into your program? If so, what kind of characteristics are you looking for in an applicant?

3) What experience/skills/connections, etc does the company bring to the table for the customers?

[kevintxwu]

1) Some of the metrics we are currently already tracking:

Response and follow up rates from cold emails

Response and follow up rates from referrals to hiring partners

Technical interview score over time (measured by internal rubrics we design to be very close to what is actually used at companies)

Success rate per interview over time (hard to see trends for an individual, but kind of starting to see trends for a batch)

The classic feedback form, 1 to 5 in how much did you learn after every session

Average gain from negotiation compared to the base offer and to industry standards

Pretty basic stuff for now, but still able to prove value. For example, like I mentioned we're seeing a response rate from under 5% to over 20% after applying cold emailing techniques. This is theoretically already a 4x difference in the number of opportunities you receive. Another example is average raise as a result of negotiation through the program can be thought of as literally money we get you.

2) Yes. We mainly look for a fundamental conceptual understanding of your field (since we don't do technical training besides interview prep) and a high level of motivation.

Surprisingly, we haven't found the need to look for anything else. This lets us ignore something that might increase implicit bias like trying to evaluate culture fit. We can focus on finding each individual candidate the company that's the right culture fit for them instead of the other way around.

3) We have about 10 hiring partners right now as well as an advisor and alumni network we use to make referrals on behalf of students to top companies like Facebook, Google, etc.

In terms of experience: my co-founder and I are unique in that while we have past founding experience and have worked at top companies like Facebook, Salesforce, and Yelp, but we are also young enough that we are not decades separated from the problem of figuring out your early career.

There aren't many people working on career services that understand both sides of the table when it comes to what it feels like to be a university student looking for a job and what it feels like to be a hiring manager evaluating a university student. This would describe us though.

We like to think we understand what a student is going through and how to help them better than anyone else because of this.

[sharemywin]

I know working as a consultant(salaried full-time for 5 years) helped me get experience to get another job. Seems like a temp agency for only college students would be interesting for companies to bite on. So, they can minimize legal risk from hiring(and firing quickly)

[geofftrojans]

Awesome, thanks!

You said you are measuring gain from negotiation as one of your metrics. Will you be teaching the customers about negotiation techniques or actually negotiating on their behalf?

[kevintxwu]

Both! We oftentimes tell students what to say and how to say it behind the scenes, but they will always do the actual communication themselves.