A Quick Word About NotchUp (it's not Quechup) [en]

[fr] Si vous avez reçu une invitation NotchUp, pas de souci: ce n'est pas comme quechup. Il s'agit d'une véritable invitation. En deux mots, NotchUp est un site de chasseurs de têtes, où l'on met sa propre tête à prix. Vous décidez combien une entrprise désirant vous interviewer doit vous payer (500$ par exemple).

Histoire que ça se propage, on nous promet 10% des gains que feront les gens qu'on invite (ça explique probablement les 8 invitations de la part de vos contacts LinkedIn, qui trainent dans votre boîte de réception). Donc si vous voulez en être...

First, no worry. I really did select your name to send you the invite. And yes, the invite is poorly worded and looks [quechuppy](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/12/quechup-spammeurs/). They’re so beta you can’t change the wording of the e-mail, which is sad, because I think it makes them look bad.

Their site is very slow, and I’m wondering if this is because they underestimated how fast they would spread, with unlimited invites per user and “load your LinkedIn contacts” feature.

What’s NotchUp? I’d say it’s an electronic head-hunting service. With added bonus: you get paid when a company wants to interview you (talk about incentive). You sign up, import your LinkedIn profile or edit your details by hand, decide how much you want to be paid if a company wants to interview you, and there you go.

If you got an invite from me, it’s not necessarily that I assume that you’re desperately looking for a job. You might be like me, happy where you are, but willing to consider interesting offers (like when Google tried to recruit me last year). Or I might simply not know, and I took a guess.

NotchUp Beta

A little feedback, as this is a beta.

– the site is slow — if this is a scaling issue, fix it fast.
– it’s a pity there is no obvious way to send feedback, as it’s a beta.
– allowing people to edit the invitation mail would be a top-priority thing for me, as I think it’s damaging to them — I thought the first friend of mine who invited me had been Plaxo/Quechup scammed (sorry…) and hadn’t meant to send me the invite.
– [internationalization](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/2219285344/), please. I don’t live in Springfield, Massachusetts. We don’t all have 5-digit zip codes (mine is 1004, so I cheated, and entered 01004).
– secure [security questions](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/2218489085/) would be cool.
– I don’t fit in the [calculator template](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/2218505939/).
– it looks too good to be true: get money to be interviewed, get 10% of what the friends you brought into the system make over the next year by getting interviewed… how will NotchUp make their money? A little insight about the business model might help take it more seriously.
– **Edit:** please **don’t** make us give our LinkedIn password to import data. [Giving away passwords a bad thing to teach your users.](http://adactio.com/journal/1357) Encourage [responsible behaviour](http://www.disambiguity.com/design-ethics-encouraging-responsible-behaviour/) instead.

If you haven’t got an invite by now (it would be surprising!) and you want one, don’t hesitate to let me know, of course 😉

**Edit:** a few other reviews of NotchUp I found (pretty positive, I’d say)…

– [techradar: NotchUp: A brilliant Jobsearch Startup with an Idea that’ll change the Business Value Chain](http://techradar1.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/notchup-a-brilliant-jobsearch-startup-with-an-idea-thatll-change-the-business-value-chain/)
– [TechCrunch: Stealth Job Site NotchUp Makes Companies Pay To Interview You](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/22/stealth-job-site-notchup-makes-companies-pay-to-interview-you/)
– [CheezHead: NotchUp Review](http://www.cheezhead.com/2008/01/23/notchup/)
– [CenterNetworks: There Are Great Ideas, There Are Poor Ideas, Then There’s NotchUp](http://www.centernetworks.com/notchup-pays-you-to-interview)
– [Gautam Ghosh: Will NotchUp catch up?](http://gauteg.blogspot.com/2008/01/will-notchup-catch-up.html)
– [poetticcode: Vote No For Aggressive Viral Marketing](http://poeticcode.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/vote-no-for-aggressive-viral-marketing/)

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3 thoughts on “A Quick Word About NotchUp (it's not Quechup) [en]”

  1. I’m floored by the number of people who love/hate the concept but don’t spend a moment of time reading–carefully–the Terms of Service.

    Compare it to LinkedIn’s TOS/Privacy Policy.

    There’s a couple of points I think are getting over-looked:

    1) You cannot see what your privacy settings might be until you register and agree to the TOS
    2) They’re not responsible for what recruiters / third parties do with your resume or email address
    3) If you cancel your account it’s “marked as deleted” in their database. Not deleted. Marked as such. Got it? Good.
    4) If they sell your information, they’re not responsible for anything that happens to it downstream; the only way you can get off of those mailing lists, etc. is to contact whomever they sell to, and whomever they sell to, and so on and so forth. Plus, those people may all have “cached” versions of your information, so if they get a data snapshot of NU today, you cancel tomorrow and they get a new snapshot and sell it–guess what? Those companies will do a merge to remove duplicates–they’re not going to go out of their way and REMOVE you unless you know how to track them down.

    There’s money in the list they’re generating.

    5) Yep, it’s easy to use that LinkedIn slurp they’ve got set up for you. And, of course, all of your information that is respected and protected at LinkedIn… Well, different set of rules now.

    Pay attention to the TOS and decide if giving up your information is really worth it.

    http://www.userglue.com/blog/2008/01/27/notchup-privacy-down/

  2. I'm floored by the number of people who love/hate the concept but don't spend a moment of time reading–carefully–the Terms of Service.

    Compare it to LinkedIn's TOS/Privacy Policy.

    There's a couple of points I think are getting over-looked:

    1) You cannot see what your privacy settings might be until you register and agree to the TOS
    2) They're not responsible for what recruiters / third parties do with your resume or email address
    3) If you cancel your account it's “marked as deleted” in their database. Not deleted. Marked as such. Got it? Good.
    4) If they sell your information, they're not responsible for anything that happens to it downstream; the only way you can get off of those mailing lists, etc. is to contact whomever they sell to, and whomever they sell to, and so on and so forth. Plus, those people may all have “cached” versions of your information, so if they get a data snapshot of NU today, you cancel tomorrow and they get a new snapshot and sell it–guess what? Those companies will do a merge to remove duplicates–they're not going to go out of their way and REMOVE you unless you know how to track them down.

    There's money in the list they're generating.

    5) Yep, it's easy to use that LinkedIn slurp they've got set up for you. And, of course, all of your information that is respected and protected at LinkedIn… Well, different set of rules now.

    Pay attention to the TOS and decide if giving up your information is really worth it.

    http://www.userglue.com/blog/2008/01/27/notchup-privacy-down/

  3. Pingback: How Much Would It Take For You To Sell To Your Friends; Apparently Very Little!

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