Hiring Online

Bidding for Top Talent

By Anca Gagiuc on Apr 3, 2015 in News

Hired.com is the first two-sided online marketplace designed to match technology talent with the most suitable job opportunities, while giving them control over their career decisions. Currently there are more than 2,000 companies engaging with Engineers, Data Scientists, Designers, and Product Managers for career opportunities; Hired says that it has facilitated over $6 billion in job offers to top talent from around the world.

The process switches up traditional hiring roles. In traditional employment, the candidate is the future employee; here the candidate is the future employer as companies compete for qualified talent. Hired.com is for those who have job offers piling up in their inboxes.

Those looking for new employment are vetted beforehand – around 200-250 new participants are admitted into the marketplace each month (out of over 5000 applicants). Two days after a personal profile is created, it receives approval (or not) to appear on the website. At that point the profile is revealed to employers over a one week; employers intrigued send a request for an interview, as well as position specifics.

Formerly known as DeveloperAuction, Hired is in fact an auction where developers and technologists are the assets. One of the major requirements is that the candidate is living or willing to relocate to one of the target geographies: San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and recently London. Another interesting aspect relates to privacy concerns: if a candidate know that the company he/she is currently working for also uses Hired.com, he or she can have their Talent Advocate hide information from that employer, or other companies.

Hired guarantees employers that all those on the platform are at least “interested,” while also giving the candidate the opportunity to maximize their negotiating power. According to Hired, 50 percent of the interviews are accepted.

The platform also released some updated compensation data from its marketplace:

• In 2015, starting salaries for software engineers rose by an average of 10 percent compared to the same time last year;
• San Francisco is still the most expensive market for hiring talent: candidates in San Francisco command a 7 percent higher salary, on average, than those in New York, and a 10 percent higher salary than those in Los Angeles.

Would you consider a competitive online marketplace for your next job search? What about to recruit talent for your own firm?