[donretag]

Most of these new services trying to disrupt the recruiting market, such as Developer Auction and Pitchbox, are narrowly focused on Silicon Valley. Obviously, the issue is more acute in the Bay Area.

They are still curated with a manual selection process, in other words they are still recruiters. A true disruption would need to occur for every locale. Not everyone is looking to move to Silicon Valley and not only Silicon Valley companies are looking to hire.

[bitsweet]

Hey founder of Pitchbox here. We're definitely focused on more then just Silicon Valley. We are working with startups and interesting companies all across the US. We're even connecting developers with companies that support full-time telecommuting.

[hnwh]

whats the pitchbox website? pitchbox.com seems unrelated. I've refused several developer auction offers because they weren't open to full-time telecommuting

[bitsweet]

http://tryPitchbox.com

[edwinnathaniel]

The better model would be those "dev bootcamps" type that popping up locally almost throughout the major USA cities and Toronto.

Their business model is excellent:

1) Pay us $4k-$6k (let's say average $5k)

2) We'll train you for 4weeks or more

3) We'll find you jobs guaranteed with min salary $60k-$80k (whatever) or money back.

[Hidden] 4) Companies pay these guys "recruiting fee" between 10-20%

Some of the bootcamps were public about their recruiting fee but most of them are not (I'm not judging whether it's good or bad but merely pointing out the behind-the-public-business deals).

Let's say there are 20 potential candidates with 5 that will get the job (success rate 25%).

Income from Bootcamp = 5 x $5k = $25k

Income from Recruiting = 5 x $6k = $30k (10% of $60k)

Total Revenue = $55k for getting 5 people a job.

These are minimum numbers.

Loss occurs when either 0 gets hired or for certain threshold (I'm guessing pretty low).

These people are increasing the chance of replacement.

[hndude]

Can you link me to any of these? Would like to read more about them.

[xiaoma]

http://catalystclass.com/

I'm starting at Catalyst in two days. It's like Dev Bootcamp, but more hours, more weeks and focused more on JavaScript. Actually, I found them right here on HN! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4859844

The prep work for the course has been intense-- lots of jQuery, and some online classes on Coffeescript, Node.js and Backbone.js. And it's a fantastic feeling to be in! Getting accepted is honestly one of the happiest moments I've had since moving to SF last summer. It's also exactly the environment for reaching top goal from our HN 2013 goals thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4966522

If anyone wants to do blog interviews with me throughout the process, drop me a line.

[edwinnathaniel]

HN had this discussion a week ago.

http://devbootcamp.com/

http://www.appacademy.io/

http://www.gschool.it/

http://www.starterleague.com/

[mkoble11]

The Disruption Institute (http://www.disruptioninstitute.com ) just launched in Kansas City, focused on mobile development.

[timjahn]

I'm working on matchist (http://matchist.com/talent) and while we're focused on helping freelance developers find work they want (rather than full time work like Developer Auction and Pitchbox), we serve talent AND clients all over the US.

We're based in Chicago, so that might help. ;)

[dpritchett]

Yeah, seems like they'd need to do something more reddit-like, and with regional curators to keep quality up. Perhaps some sort of affiliate model for freelance recruiters to enter the system in order to source and vet talent would work.

[donretag]

I believe that any type of curation is still not the answer. The issue has always been passive candidates. How can you expose an opportunity to someone that is not looking? DA does not solve this problem. The only problem that it solves is negotiating salary. You are still dealing with active candidates, candidates that would have found about the companies without going through a recruiter.

I have thought about the recruiting business a lot in the past couple of years. I have a few ideas, but I do not have the time to implement them. They are not trivial and I am content with my day job.

[bitsweet]

Regarding passive candidates...I think curation really helps but the product also needs to be focused on quality over quantity and easy to turn on/off. Pitchbox was built more to be a low-commitment & simple private way for developers to tell us their goals around compensation/tech/team/product and then passively monitor what interesting opportunities might be out there...basically "Here is what I'm looking for, let me know only once you find it."

[liberatus]

Actually, DeveloperAuction is moving into other cities soon enough. After speaking with the team a bit, I got the impression that they see Silicon Valley as the testbed so they can perfect the process before taking it more universal.

I'm not really sure why this is so hard to see, the auction model is so weird, of course it'll take some time to figure out the kinks before "going global".

[Jabbles]

Paraphrased: "There's more than just Silicon Valley! What about the Bay Area!?"

Seriously though, I don't see anything wrong with concentrating on a specific location and expanding, Facebook style. I'm not sure how well this would succeed in places like London, but I guess competition is good.

[Matt_Mickiewicz]

It will definitely work in London... but probably not in Arkansas or Wyoming.

[Gmo]

Agreed, I'd go as far as to say that not everyone is located in the USA :)