This all happened ~20 months ago, I’d just never got around to publishing this story.
Intro
Some time ago, I started looking for a new role in the US, having previously only worked in the UK (despite being a US citizen). It’s been an amazing experience and I hadn’t anticipated how substantially hiring platforms would improve my search.
Before I’d really started looking, I was approached almost out of the blue by a big tech firm about a role in Canada, which largely met my wish list. However after being told I’d passed the first technical assessment, the recruiter ghosted me (seriously!). I still don’t really know what happened there — perhaps I passed but not well enough. However the approach led me to have the conversations with my wife about relocating and when the recruiter vanished, I started to actively search in earnest.
Once I committed, I stumbled upon this excellent article on medium: https://medium.com/advo/all-the-hiring-apps-7f636498ad71. And decided to give a handful a try. The four which I opted to use were:
- underdog.io
- whitetruffle.com
- hired.com
- vettery.com
I’ll provide a quick summary of each, but spoiler: underdog.io and hired.com were the clear winners!
All of the initial hiring site applications were fairly simple. None took more than 30 minutes to fill in, though some did require a bit of painful fiddling in their site resume builder UIs.
Underdog.io
Within an hour of submitting my application to the site, I received an email from a staff member letting me know they liked my application and ultimately that I’d be included in an upcoming batch of candidates (it took a few days, but then I was live). The recruiter screening requests started coming in within hours after having gone live, it was great!
One of the coolest features from (my) candidate perspective was the profile activity reporting feature, which allowed you to see which firms had viewed your resume, linkedin profile, copied your email address etc.
Over the course of the four-ish weeks my profile was live on the site, approx. 50 unique companies viewed my profile / resume / linkedin and 8 reached out to start a recruitment process. Of these:
- 3 firms were really good matches for my skills and interests
- 2 firms were good skill matches, but I wasn’t keen on the company
- 3 firms I wasn’t really sure why they reached out to me given my skills and what they were looking for (but they were all nice)
Underdog also allows you as a candidate to express interest in up to three companies, but these all didn’t really seem to lead anywhere. Though perhaps I could have used these more wisely. I just clicked on companies I sort of liked, without thinking much about it.
I went right to the end of the process with 2 of the companies, and pulled out of the other I liked towards the end. Both of the companies I finished the process with gave me eye-wateringly good offers.
Whitetruffle.com
Haven’t heard a peep from them or the companies on their platform since I was told my profile went live two months ago.
Hired.com
Took longer to be included in a candidate batch (circa 2–3 weeks), but led to some excellent quality leads.
Six companies reached out, four of which were interesting and well matched. Of those:
- Four were really well matched roles with in house recruiters
- Two were some sort of hired.com approved agency recruiters advertising a role in a specific company. These felt like much more of a scattergun approach.
I had a really good experience with the four in house recruiters. I went to the final stage with three of these companies, all of whom made offers and I really seriously considered all three. The last was another genuinely good company, I was just slightly less interested in them than my top three on hired and so pulled out after the first technical assessment.
The experience with the agency recruiters was a bit poor. One of whom I never actually spoke to as they just kept failing to call me and seemed unable to use hangouts (which was crap). The other was better but not perfect and the process felt much more disjointed. Both the agencies felt like poorer matches and a lot more like regular LinkedIn recruiter noise.
I really enjoyed the Hired product experience, the UI (user interface) was clear and well designed. I think I preferred Underdog’s UI slightly, but Hired’s was still great.
One other observation about the hired companies was that they were mostly larger/wealthier than those I met on underdog.io and all prepared to pay the (substantial) travel and accommodation costs to meet them on site.
Vettery.com
From initial impressions, and the immense targeted advertising spend, I’d expected Vettery to be much better. I got three leads on vettery, none of which I particularly liked. The talent advocate was very nice and the experience felt quite personal. Mainly this meant I felt bad every time I told her I wasn’t interested in the opportunities coming up.
In Vettery’s defence, my requested salary was very low which may have made my profile look a little suspicious. I didn’t know the market rates well when I put it in and was trying to appeal across a number of cities with wildly different standard salaries.
Bonus: LinkedIn.com
I’d been on linkedin in the background too, and aside from the masses of (mostly agency) recruiters who’ve reached out seemingly without reading my profile at all, special mention needs to go to Linkedin themselves! I used their “EasyApply” feature to apply for a role at Linkedin itself two months ago, and still haven’t had even a single yes/no/maybe response back.
Despite the above , LinkedIn remains my networking platform of choice (like everyone else, I suppose!). It’s especially useful for reaching out directly to recruiters whom I’ve met at conferences etc. In this regard it works superbly well.
TL:DR…
If you’re looking for a tech role in the US, I strongly recommend underdog.io and hired.com.
