Startup Agents, bringing startups and talent together

Many individuals dream of working for a startup and striking it rich, but never seem to find the right opportunity for which they would be willing to leave the security of their current employer. On the other side of the spectrum are startups, which might have great ideas, but whether by choice or not, are little known and struggle in finding the right talent. For these individuals and startups, the major job-sites usually return less than satisfying results: Finding startups on these sites is not easy, and similarly the quantity of resumes received by startups is likely to trump the quality of the applicants. A few months ago we profiled VentureLoop.com, which by now has amassed over 5000 jobs from about 700 venture-backed companies. VentureLoop’s strength comes from having many of the top venture capital firms as their clients, thus gaining access to jobs at startups that might not be available elsewhere.

Now, VentureLoop has a new competitor in town, namely StartupAgents.com. The brain child of Lee Diamond, StartupAgents intends to bring startups and agents, meaning individuals interested in working for startups, together with a social networking twist. Think of StartupAgents, as a LinkedIn with a startup focus and a few extra features. As usual, after registering, one has the option of setting up a profile similar to most social networking sites. All the basics are there such as location, experience, education, languages, etc. A more interesting feature is the inclusion of a video resume in the profile if you choose to do so. I suppose, many people will shy away from this, but a few confident and creative individuals might use this to set themselves apart from others. Of course, weather startups looking for talent will watch these videos is an entirely different matter. Another interesting profile section is the work-preferences which in addition to selecting positions of interest and sectors of interest also enables you to specify top values such as innovation, integrity, etc. Finally, connections, rather than friends or acquaintances, are intended to be people with whom you would want to work in the future. The idea being, that startups ought to be able to utilize these connections to hire entire teams of people that want to work together in the first place, thus quickly creating harmonious and efficient teams – If you’ve ever worked on a team where not all members are looking in the same direction, you know exactly how important this is.

Before you get too excited, there are some reasons that StartupAgens is still in beta. First of all, you have to get past the registration. No, I’m not insulating your intelligence by doubting you will get past the mathematical captcha authentication. It simply might be the case that the registration server will not like your email address. I had to try three different addresses before I finally obtained a registration email! Another major limitation is that at this point only startups are allowed to search for talent, and not the other way around. Reverse functionality is promised in future releases, but for now all you can do is setup your profile, invite friends, and then wait. Maybe, StartupAgents is waiting to sign-up enough startups so that there is actually something worth searching through. All in all though, the interface is clean and user friendly, and if you are looking for a startup gig setting up a profile will most likely not hurt your chances.