Show HN: Never Apply Again

It might be a lot quicker to find your model through cost exploration.

  1. Put up a landing page that talks about your service, and has a 'buy now' link at the bottom

  2. The 'buy now' price should be a price that you think is fair

  3. Clone that page and play with prices. One page could be priced half of what you thought was fair. Another page might be double. 

  4. Load balance those pages. If you see an even amount of people willing to pay $100 as $20, then you KNOW $20 is priced too low. Your optimal price point is after the point you start losing customers. If you can sell it for $500 to 10 customers or $50 to 100 customers, you will have made the same amount of gross revenue, but it is much easier to deliver service to 10 customers than 100 customers. 

Your best price point may be 10 times (or more) what you think is fair. It may be 10 times less. If more, well then you have opportunities for establishing an agency, as there's overhead to delegate the work and still make profit. Or you can discount it to those who need some help. Or you can play with different cost models (e.g., "I will get you hired in exchange for 10% of your first 10 paychecks" type of arrangements).

> That's my problem with recruiters. They get paid to place "someone", not "you".

That sounds good as a sales pitch for your service but I don't think it's accurate.

While true that recruiters get paid by the employer to place the right candidate, reputable recruiters generally do not submit multiple candidates for the same position at the same time. In other words, the recruiter is working to place you if you look like the best candidate.

If a recruiter "spams" their customer (the employer) with unqualified candidates their customers will stop using them. Employers who use recruiters expect the recruiter to screen and qualify applicants, separate the wheat from the chaff, then put their best candidate forward. Good recruiters will bypass the application and HR steps and get their candidate in front of the hiring manager. That's why employers use recruiters -- they're outsourcing the resume scanning and initial screening process.

People who have had bad experiences with recruiters often blame the recruiter and that whole industry when they should reflect on their own shortcomings. If multiple recruiters aren't putting a candidate into interviews that may indicate the recruiters are incompetent or that whole industry is parasitical and useless, or it could indicate that the candidate is not attractive or competitive for the available positions. I think it's obvious that recruiters will focus their efforts on the best candidates they can find because those people will most likely result in a successful placement. That's the only way recruiters get paid. They don't make any money submitting applications for candidates who don't stand out or get through a phone screen, or who can't write a competent resume tailored to the job. We have job coaches and counselors for that.

For me, the value of a recruiter is that they're well-connected and can help with negotiations. It's icing on the cake that the company is paying them, not me. I would consider paying for this service if you were able to negotiate for me, and then I'd pay a percentage of the negotiated increase to you.

I don't really place much value on someone just applying to jobs for me - that part isn't hard. Now if you could do interviews for me...

My advice: You need to clearly spell out the value you bring to the candidate. If you're going to ask for payment, what would I, as an applicant looking for a job, get from you that I can't do myself? Or I can't pay someone overseas $4/hr to do for me (submit a lot of applications)? What's your specific value proposition?

Saving time submitting applications for applicants has some value perhaps, but the goal is to get a job, or at least an interview, and that's probably only incidentally correlated to number of applications submitted.

I think there are opportunities in the coaching and resume/cover letter tailoring niches. You can find plenty of people offering that but they mainly come from an HR background, not a tech background (probably because tech jobs pay much better -- those who can, do, and those who can't do, teach, in other words).

If I was looking for a job I might consider paying someone who clearly had great industry/geographic contacts, inside tracks, and advice. But then I wouldn't have to pay for that -- I would try to identify the top recruiters and get them to place me.