It Took 3 Days of Customer Development to Realize My Idea Sucked.

As an engineer in the Bay Area, I routinely receive cold emails from recruiters expressing excitement in my technical background. Messages often start out with the unfortunately familiar “I see you know Javascript! I'd love to chat more about your interests” And of course I don't respond--clearly they either didn’t look very deeply into my background to comment with more insight, or they lack the technical know-how to say anything more.

But what if they knew that I may not be as technical as my engineering degree from a top school indicated? Would they have still reached out? With that whiff of opportunity, I decided to test out a new startup idea.

Hypotheses:

• Many recruiters lack the necessary technical skills or industry experience to effectively evaluate a candidate’s skills. 
• Identifying quality talent would optimize time and energy spent on placing and promoting a candidate and thus help recruiters make more money. 

Business Idea: I’d use technical experts in the crowd to perform resume checks or introductory phone interviews on a recruiter’s candidate. This would function as a third-party certification to add credibility when recruiters promote qualified candidates to companies, and help them allocate time on the right candidates.

Armed with a gorgeous signup page, a list of questions, and half a dozen phone meetings lined up, it was time to see if all of Steve Blank's rants actually mean anything.

THE FEEDBACK

Turned out that all eight recruiters I spoke with said they’d never use it, and here’s why:

• Certifications weaken trust - One recruiter likened skill checks with white papers--they do nothing except “manage risk.” Recruiters want lasting relationships with companies, but a hiring manager asking for credentials is the same as saying “I don’t trust you. Give me proof.” 

• Most companies don’t want the best people -This probably sounds ridiculous in Silicon Valley, where talent is perpetually lacking. However, most larger companies are not highly innovative and use old technology. A qualified engineer would propose a better product that would involve revamping the system, which often means fixing what isn’t (obviously) broken. These companies tend to prefer sacrificing skill for stability. The engineer who is competent and willing to operate and maintain legacy systems and stick around for a few years is worth more than the genius who’d stir trouble by modernizing. Plus, they don’t pay enough to attract or retain the best.

• Some recruiters actually want to be good at their jobs - The best recruiters want to train themselves in whatever industry they focus on to adequately vet candidates. Whether or not they actually succeed is another story, but reliance on third-party certifications is like admitting that they don’t know the subject. 

• Darwinian filtering works - Because the bar to be a recruiter is exceptionally low, many are inexperienced and underqualified. These recruiters would benefit the most from a technical skill vetting service, but they also tend to underperform in other essential skills (networking, keeping candidates engaged, etc.) that they’d leave the industry anyway within a year or two.

• Matching is hit or miss - The best and the worst candidates are easy to recognize, so vetting services are only really useful for those inbetween. However, there is so much variability that a candidate may have botched an interview simply because he was tired that day or didn’t know that one question. One company might say the client too “arrogant” to be hireable, while another might say he is charming and meshes with the team perfectly. It’s often more insightful simply to throw the candidate at a few companies and test the responses.

THE REAL PROBLEM

Turns out I didn’t even bother sharing the website with a single recruiter I spoke with. I also wasted three days designing and coding a pretty landing page to collect signups: www.aidrecruit.com (if it's still up). I did not speak to in-house corporate recruiters or small businesses, so there may still be an opportunity there. I focused this as a value-add tool for agency recruiters and agency contractors.

The underlying goal of customer development is to figure out the real pain point and then build the right solution. From all my chats, the recurring problem was not evaluating candidates, but engaging them. This involves a few steps:

1. Identifying when/if they are in the job market
2. Somehow convince them to come to meetups, beer nights, coffee meetings, etc.
3. Once they are emotionally invested, get them to talk about their background or interests and answer a few preliminary technical questions.
4. Actually propose jobs they'd be excited about

As of right now, the best way to figure this out is also the slowest--long term, in-person relationship building.