Show HN: Candix, a confidential, reverse recruiting platform (candix.com)
It's free for candidates, while we charge companies for access to the pool. They’re charged a subscription fee, not a traditional success fee, because it’s the only way to remain forever candidate-centric and not obsessed with placing profiles at any cost, like agencies are.
I'm opposed to the AI trends in recruitment. Recruitment is opaque and needs more humanity in the process, not less. Consequently, we're stubborn about keeping humans involved at every level, from onboarding to support. This results in high operational costs, which we are working hard to streamline.
Confidentiality is what truly sets Candix apart. It's a tricky concept in recruitment, though, as it needs to be balanced with recruiters' need to know about your background to make hiring decisions. Our approach is to protect access to the pool with NDAs and limit profile visibility to relevant companies only. Additionally, we limit points of access to one per company and thoroughly monitor all recruiter activity on the site to prevent any leakage.
For those who are not open to receiving offers, one interesting feature is the option to mark your profile as unavailable. Interested companies won’t reach out, but they will be able to place an alert on your profile to be notified when this changes, effectively boosting your future search.
We operate in the US and European markets, helping people connect with over seventy companies, such as OpenAI and Ramp.
What do you think about the tool and its positioning?
50 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 96.7 ms ] threadWhat is gold for me is the business model that doesn't charge end-users, although I can imagine this might become problematic when the pendulum of the IT field's supply and demand for experience swings back.
I also like that the form doesn't ask for a PDF resume, meaning no more marketing and social engineering work for the ever-decreasing attention span of recruiters and ever-increasing automation in resume screenings. Further kudos for the straightforward interface and main form of the website.
Question though: how do you plan to combat spam applications? It doesn't seem that difficult to be _completely_ dishonest in one's application, which granted, will be detected in later screenings, but will probably shadow honest profiles.
Feature proposal: integration with major competition platforms to import one's stats (think Codeforces, LeetCode, HackTheBox, etc).
I hope this takes off well!
> integration with major competition platforms to import one's stats
That's an awesome idea. The tricky part is making sure candidates truly own these accounts.
Thanks for your encouragements!!
Not sure about LeetCode and HackTheBox, but Codeforces' email account is public if I'm not mistaken. It also has an inbox feature, so you can perform some sort of email-like verification.
I successfully logged in (twice), but at the end received an error: <my email> is not allowed to access this application.
I like the idea, will probably create a profile the old-fashioned way.
Update: definitely not a fan of the date picker. Extremely tedious to click my way back through the years.
Update^2: and the date picker keeps converting a selection of January 2013 to December 2012.
Seriously, though, please allow candidates to simply type in the dates. Entering dates for 8 jobs over 30 years was almost enough to make me abandon the effort.
Or default to the last year the user entered, at least.
> Create, modify, and delete posts, comments, and reactions on your behalf
Why?
They prefer the illusion that their corporation is so desirable that everyone they could possibly want to hire is actively begging to be considered.
The cold start problem is really tough. Overcoming it will require things that are orthogonal to site design and business model design.
Actively and cleverly priming the pump on one side or both.
I somewhat dislike the idea that you're still essentially stuck with the recruiter in the middle. And I fear that like any other directory it quickly turns into a spam platform. Candidates bugged by unwanted phone calls, startups digging through piles of recommendations...
What CSS framework is used to create this type of UI?
Thanks for the recommendations.
Date picker is bugged, Aug 2018 converts to Jul 2018
Funny that you have some R1 universities but not others
Estimated pay needs to be a range, if i need to relocate to NYC then the pay needs to be a lot higher than if its remote
> Date picker is bugged, Aug 2018 converts to Jul 2018
Yeah, my bad. We identified the pb and are fixing it.
Yeah, I agree it's not ideal.
> As long as I'm not getting spammed by you [...]
No, we don't spam. No marketing emails of any sort. Only thing we ask is that you confirm monthly that your profile is still valid. It's one click from the email. You can opt out with one click too.
> [...] good balance between risk and payoff.
That's the idea. Once your profile is set up, there is nothing else you need to do. For many people on Candix, those few minutes spent on onboarding have well converted.
We don't do that on purpose. After you submit your profile, we sync the orgs with LinkedIn if they're missing. If you come back in a while they'll all be synced.
I think from the hiring side it would be awesome to just search for ideal candidates.
By way of example, UpWork gives some filtering options but seems limited to keyword matching.
I'd thought about building something in this direction; never had time. One thing I think would be useful is more depth on the profile. Like pre-answer a bunch of typical interview questions. A 60s video highlight. Perhaps some skills assessment too (UpWork is NOT good at that).
I think the billing has good alignment. On they but side I would not be an ongoing buyer. My hires are intermittent. Like one a quarter. Would I buys months till I find or maybe a flat OTC search till hired? Or N connects?
For simplicity, and because our model doesn't rely on it, we don't track hires. I'm not a fan of credit-based pricing, as it tends to create friction in usage.