Job Hunters Are So Desperate They're Paying to Get Recruited

Someone shared this WSJ article with me and I had to pass it along.

The job market has flipped

For the first time since the pandemic, there are more unemployed people than open roles. The average search is approaching six months. Thousands from Amazon, Dow, and UPS are flooding in.

And candidates are now paying recruiters instead of the other way around.

What job seekers are paying

• 20% of first month's salary to a service called Refer, just to get an introduction to a hiring manager.
• $1,500/month + 10% of first-year salary to Reverse Recruiting Agency, which hired 15 people in Southeast Asia to mass-apply and send AI-generated messages posing as the candidate.
• $400 on Fiverr to apply to 50 jobs. Zero led to interviews.

One candidate, laid off from Netflix, had been searching for a year before he paid. Another said it was "refreshing not to be lost in a sea of candidates sorted by an applicant-tracking system."

Even the traditional recruiters quoted in the piece are skeptical. One warned that "job seekers that are vulnerable can be easily swayed" and urged people to ask who's handling their LinkedIn and Workday logins, and whether applications require them to affirm they're the ones submitting.

The best-performing service in the article? Placed 20 out of 44 clients. Fees tripled in a year.

This is the problem we're solving

Not by gaming the ATS with mass applications or impersonating candidates. By building something fundamentally different:

• Real fit scores. Know what's worth your time before you apply.
• Clear reasoning. Not just keywords - but why it fits.
• Better decisions. Not just more ways to spam.

People are desperate enough to pay thousands of dollars and hand over their credentials to strangers. We can build something better than that.