Hunt Club makes recruiting profitable for everyone

Here’s a pretty common thing that occurs as you progress in your career, a friend at another company is doing some hiring and asks you if you know anyone who may be a good fit. You make a recommendation or two and one of the people you recommend ends up getting hired. That’s great, right? Sure, you helped a friend find a highly qualified new hire, but aside from your friend’s gratitude, what do you get out of it? That’s the problem this company which I was recently introduced to is looking to solve.

Hunt Club is a high-level (think VP, CXO, Manager roles) referral network. The idea for Hunt Club came to co-founders, Nick Cromydas and Sami Ahmed, after Nick made his 30th intro that resulted in his recommended candidate getting a job. The two believe because of this misalignment and the fact that the pretty much everyone in the recruiting industry uses the same playbook (read: mass messages on LinkedIn to people who may or may not be actively or even passively looking for new opportunities) that Hunt Club can shake things up for the better.

What makes Hunt Club better

The backbone of Hunt Club’s success relies on the number and quality of the influencers who use their platform. In an effort to ensure that their platform maintains a high quality pool of candidates, Hunt Club reviews each and every new influencer to sign up for the platform. Interestingly, it’s not just about who you are that matters to Hunt Club, it’s the value of your professional network so upon registration you are required to upload a list of your LinkedIn connections to be examined as part of the review (I’ll also note here right now that Hunt Club will not reach out to anyone in your network without consent).

The company has built internal tools that can assess the value of person’s professional network. Additionally, their technology will look at schooling, work, other social indicators–all with the intention of identifying the best possible match for an open position they’re looking to fill for a company. 

When you pair how selective Hunt Club is about who’s allowed to be on its platform alongside with the internal tools they have built to identify potential candidates, those two things alone sound promising, but there’s more to it.

Influencers receive compensation for candidates that they recommended which make it into the interview phase and/or receive an offer. I’m told by Hunt Club co-founder Sami Ahmed that if your candidate gets an interview you can earn $200 to $300 and if your candidate lands the job you can expect to receive anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000. That’s a pretty nice chunk of change for making a recommendation.

But it’s not all about the technology either. Hunt Club uses their technology to identify potential candidates and then humans will take over from there to ensure that the recommended candidates are actually a good match, are excited about the position, and know what to expect salary wise. By having humans handling this aspect of the recruitment process Hunt Club is able to get candidates for their customers who have been referred, verified, and vetted. 

To date, Hunt Club customers include companies in various stages, including Pinterest and Dollar Shave Club. I’m told by Mr. Ahmed that they typically work with smaller to medium-sized startups that usually don’t have a dedicated HR department yet. 

How it works

For people who make it through Hunt Club’s review process, there are two main ways you can utilize Hunt Club. The first is by proactively referring people in your network to jobs listed in the Hunt Club influencer dashboard. The second is more of a sit back and relax approach, Hunt Club’s technology will serve up referral recommendations and all you have to do to initiate the process is just click Yes or No.

As I mentioned before, Hunt Club will never reach out to anyone in your network without consent. If you do recommend someone for a role, Hunt Club will contact them on your behalf and reference your name in the message so the candidate is aware it’s coming from you.

The future of recruitment

As of this time, Hunt Club is specifically designed for employers, however, I’ve been told that there are plans to work with candidates too at some point. 

I think the idea behind Hunt Club is a good one, I certainly like it better than more traditional recruiting. And even if you’re not “in it for the money,” it’s still nice to be compensated for helping someone find a great new hire–think of the compensation as an extra benefit of doing something awesome–or maybe just donate the extra cash to a good cause.