QuietAgent sends an email to millions?

I wonder how many people got this same email I got yesterday? QuietAgent a brilliant concept, although I do have questions about how successful their user interface (try signing up on their site - it's a bit difficult to navigate through) is in capturing profiles. Regardless, they seem to be the only company that's gone to the pay-per-qualified-interested-applicant model - and with their cost structure, it's worth a look when you have an opening.

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Dear David,

We know that 90 percent of alumni aren't looking for a job right now.

We also know that everyone will consider the right job offer, especially if they could do it in secret!
We're pleased to announce a new career service as part of your Glenbrook North High School Alumni Online Community, brought to you by QuietAgent. It's an anonymous Job Offer Agent that allows you to always be in the market for a better job.
QuietAgent's unique service is designed specifically for people who are happily employed. It's fast, it's free and most importantly, it's secure and confidential. You choose whether to engage with potential employers who think your profile is a perfect fit for their company. These potential employers won't know who you are until you respond to their inquiry.
To 'secretly' join in under 45 seconds for free, click here, or visit your Glenbrook North High School alumni community.
Regards,
Member Services at Glenbrook North High School Alumni Online Community
More Information:
QuietAgent is the only safe and anonymous way to always be in the market for better job. Even if you're happily employed, this is for you!

• It's free and takes just 45 seconds
• Nobody knows who you are
• Nobody knows you're looking
• You don't search for jobs
• You don't get any spam
• Your 'Job Offer Agent' does all the work for you

Click here, or visit your alumni website at:  http://www.GraduateConnections.com/olc/pub/GLHS to join.

Comments

[matt martone]

I don't think its brilliant.

In fact i think that anything anonymous just screams scam artist central.

If they had found a way to build a system that fostered trust between passive talent and recruiters, that would be brilliant. Anonymous? Not brilliant.

If they had found a way to build great bacon taste into their app, that would be brilliant. As it stands it has neither a great bacon taste or any other genius.

;)

[Rob]

Quiet A. is trying to give Harris Connect a "mutually benificial" rev stream.
http://www.quietagent.com/News/QA_HarrisConnect_Announcement_23Apr2007.pdf

And as Matt states...they kill the whole "anonymous" value prop at the same time..

The bigger downside w Quiet Agent is that they have no way to give users "super secret job offers"

No secret sauce. Or salt ;-)

[Rob]

Geeez I need a spell check!

[Bob]

I think Quiet Agent is a good concept in Theory, but will ultimately be a concept that will not gain much traction in Reality.

[Jason Kerr]

Hi Dave

Thanks for taking a look at QuietAgent.

Where we have got to with QuietAgent is to create a whole new technology and business model and then, with the help of recruiters, prove that it actually works. That is, it meets the goal we have stayed absolutely true to since we began building QuietAgent – “to allow job seekers and employers to get together in an anonymous, direct way when there is mutual interest to be connected, and nobody pays unless it works out”.

Yes, our community of partners is offered a revenue share, which is created when those they introduce to the community are successful. The data collected however is not and will not ever become part of that partnership. We knew from the outset that safety and anonymity of data was paramount, and while we have had many requests from potential partners to be able to communicate with people who signed up via them, this is against the rules of the QuietAgent community. As our privacy policy states –

“You will never receive any spam, marketing messages (either solicited or unsolicited), or any other communications except for 1) Invitations from Employers with employment opportunities that at least meet what you said you wanted, and 2) administrative messages from QuietAgent intended to maximize your success”

The reason Harris Connect saw value in QuietAgent was first and foremost because we take privacy as seriously as they do. Harris also has had may approaches over the past ten years from companies who were interested in partnerships solely to gain access to their user information.

Dave, we agree that our user interface needs work. In our current release, a lot of good people have given us great feedback, and we are now dedicating a lot of resource to fixing this. We are very excited about the next release of QuietAgent, It will look fresh, clean and be a whole lot easier to use. For us, the most important thing to first get right was the technology and the business model. Making it look fancy is the easy bit. We’ve seen others do it the wrong way around, and suffer.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from recruiters is that they get far too many of the wrong type of candidates – we know that this means the traditional ‘job posting’ doesn’t always work for them. There are no job postings on QuietAgent, and job seekers don’t bulk-email resumes to recruiters, simply because they think they are suited to a “hot job”. Rather, job seekers and recruiters come together in privacy when there is a real mutual match. So, the hot candidates will indeed be invited to the hot jobs. But all the others who simply create more work for recruiters – won’t.

We don’t know it all Dave, but we are listening and we are learning. As you can see by comments to your post, change is a very threatening thing. QuietAgent is dramatic change. We are willing to defer any revenue we may generate to the end of the process when the recruiter has had success. If we cannot help you, don’t pay us. I truly believe that QuietAgent is the right idea – our challenge will be to execute it correctly and make sure we serve everyone well.

I hope you stay with us on this journey with QuietAgent. We are always happy to hear your feedback about how the product works – (good, bad or even ugly!), as we know there are things we can always do better.

Best,
Jason Kerr
CEO, QuietAgent

[Chandler]

In my experience, majority of recruiters never divulge the client name until they speak with the prospect. So if they recruiter use their own company name while sending invitation, its possible that these recruiters belong to same employer as the candidate. How can you protect candidates' privacy with such loophole being there?

To truely protect privacy, you should force recruiters to reveal client name before sending invitations. Additionally, you should keep a tab on recruiters who violate candidates' privacy and bar recruiters who jeopardize candidate's current employment.

Until unless these type of measures are in place, it would be difficult to trust your claims.

[Jason Kerr]

Good points Chandler, you hit the nail right on the head.

Recruiters do not typically divulge the client name until well down the track, this is typically to stop a flood of candidates and try to protect the integrity of the process. With QuietAgent, the recruiter chooses who they engage, so the need to hide a client’s name becomes less important as a candidate who is not invited by the recruiter, cannot apply.

Also, the BLOCK MY EMPLOYER function in QuietAgent allows you to specify one or more companies who can never shortlist you, on top of you also being anonymous. This blocking function works at a recruitment agency level as well, so if you block a company called ‘IBM’ for instance, a recruitment agency searching on behalf of IBM will still not find you.

We do have a very small hole we will fix in the next release, which is that a recruitment agency can currently hide a client’s name when they invite you to engage. So as a job seeker right now, if you have not blocked your employer, it is possible to receive an invitation from a recruitment agency to release your contact details, and you not know who their client is. If you want to remove this chance, use the ‘block my employer’ function.

Also, thanks for the feedback on candidates ranking employers and recruiters. We have been toying with this for some time, and we will put this feature in soon. You will then be able to see how other candidates have found the experience when dealing with the employer/recruitment agency, before you accept and invitation to release your private details.

Best:

Jason Kerr
CEO
QuietAgent

[Lonnie]

I just reviewed QuietAgent and placed a call to their sales department. Found that they have only 100k resumes world-wide (All industries)with a $20 price per resume...its not very enticing. (Jobster is way better in my book)

[Lonnie]

I just reviewed QuietAgent and placed a call to their sales department. Found that they have only 100k resumes world-wide (All industries)with a $20 price per resume...its not very enticing. (Jobster is way better in my book)

[Garth]

But it does have over 8 million opportunities. A few of us talked about it the other night, and it seems none of us have had an invite, but are always getting "found in searches" .

Am I the only who thinks that some of these numbers and searches are not realistic?