michaelkeenan comments on Who Wants To Start An Important Startup? - Less Wrong

41 Post author: ShannonFriedman 16 August 2012 08:02PM

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Comment author: michaelkeenan 14 August 2012 09:35:11PM *  15 points [-]

Business/website idea: OKCupid for jobs, or possibly just for co-founders.

Different workplaces have different cultures. There are probably a wide variety of cultures that work, but mixing different cultures in a workplace leads to conflict. For example:

  • Suits or jeans?
  • Hands-on management or delegation?
  • Flexible telecommuting or rigid office hours?
  • Work 60 hours a week or 35?
  • Prefer to keep social life separate from office or integrated? Office romance approved/disapproved?
  • Is highest status given to engineering or sales or management or who?
  • Is the focus on maximizing profit or creating value for the world or what?
  • Is the focus on an exit (like an IPO or acquisition) or a lifestyle business?
  • Risk-averse or risk-seeking?
  • In software development, programming-conservative or programming-liberal?

An OKCupid-like system of asking questions about one's preferred work culture might lead to good matches between co-founders and possibly between workplaces and employees. (Though, of course, there are many non-culture-related considerations that this kind of system doesn't evaluate. While that's true for dating too, it might be even more true for work, making this system less effective.)

Comment author: patrickscottshields 14 August 2012 11:19:02PM 12 points [-]

Path.to is a startup that appears to be doing a lot of this already.

Comment author: dbounds 15 August 2012 02:41:50AM 3 points [-]

Patrick, thanks so much for mentioning us.

Comment author: ShannonFriedman 15 August 2012 02:59:32AM 1 point [-]

How much of what Michael talks about are you doing, and/or interested in implementing? Any interesting thoughts about what he says and how it relates to you guys? What are your next steps and needs?

Comment author: dbounds 15 August 2012 03:07:02AM 5 points [-]

Quite a bit (I'd say all to some degree) though we may not be executing it exactly how Michael specified. We launched the service in April and it's evolving quite rapidly as we continue to learn and grow with our customers/users.

This is what we're working for: http://twitter.com/thejameskyle/status/234105524277346304

Comment author: ShannonFriedman 15 August 2012 03:20:13AM 0 points [-]

Very cool :)

What is next for you, and what/who do you need?

Comment author: ShannonFriedman 15 August 2012 03:03:48AM 0 points [-]

Sorry I was too fast - reading your response below now :)

Comment author: dbounds 15 August 2012 02:58:44AM 7 points [-]

Hi Michael,

Great suggestion! Like Patrick mentioned, this is really our focus, though I typically refer to it as 'eHarmony for hiring'. :)

We pair a more intimate understanding of a professionals education, experience, personality and interests with a deeper understanding of a company, their culture and what it takes to be successful in a particular role. We use this data to come up with the "Path.To Score" which is a 0-99 measure of how compatible a particular individual is with a specific role at a specific company, which we use to market positions to the right candidates and provide introductions between businesses and potential employees.

Without getting into too much detail we use a number of signals to inform and evolve the scoring. These range from basic Q&A to semantic analysis and natural language processing of local and external data sources likes Facebook, Twitter, GitHub and Dribbble.

It's been fascinating thus far and I'm really excited with the road ahead.

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