Hello,  I’m an early member and am excited to be a part of this.  I do wonder though,  how do you see yourself when comparing to other job recruiters?  Where do you feel you stand apart?

Ooh, thank you so much for asking this, H!

First, I should start by saying that I've worked with a lot of recruiters over the years... I found that many of them are very expensive and don't actually add much value to the process -- they are often incentivized to fill a role as soon as possible. They also don't actually follow your entire career path or help with coaching.

This is particularly bad in data science, where people's backgrounds and experiences aren't always as clear cut. There are many recruiters who only look for specific keywords of backgrounds and simply lack the technical know-how to fill the roles.

So how are we different?

First, our aspirations are different. I would love to get to a place---and a community---where people actually help each other... I'd love to have this be a place where when you decide to change your job or career path, you feel compelled to let us know because we actually add value.

This means we're actually trying to change the way recruiting might work. What you'll see in the coming weeks and months is a lot of experiments around this.

Second, our business model is different too. We aren't getting paid to fill the roles on our site, and in fact we are very open to figuring out a new business model. Andrea (my cofounder) and I are both still seeing what makes the most sense. We're both not being paid to do this, and have felt fortunate enough during COVID-19 and 2020 to try and give back in this way.

If you think there's something we should do, or an idea or experiment you'd like us to try, we are game to explore it! Just let us know.

Thank you.  That helps a lot!