JobPoacher.com Gets Head Hunters to Search For You

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — At first glance, JobPoacher looks less like a job board than a dating website. Anonymous users post details about how much money they make, where they live and what they’re interested in, and then wait for someone reading it to reply. The difference is that users on this site are trying to attract potential employers.

JobPoacher is essentially a career listing service in reverse: Rather than show a list of job openings for users to apply to, the site features a list of employed workers who are open to new job opportunities. As the site’s name suggests, the goal is to help those currently employed actively seek out head hunters so they can be recruited (or "poached") by another company.

Users on JobPoacher are not asked to submit resumes, cover letters or any other in-depth details about their employment histories. Instead, applicants are just asked to fill out a few keywords including their current profession and salary, where they live, what position and salary they are looking for and in what part of the country they want to work. This information is then used to generate a listing on the site.

To be sure, there is certainly no shortage of job websites that let candidates market themselves to potential employers, but what differentiates JobPoacher is that it specifically targets people who are already employed and keeps them completely anonymous so their current employer doesn’t find out that they want a change. The only identification users are asked to provide is an email address that recruiters can use to get in touch, but as with websites like Craigslist, the actual email address is not shown in the listing.

As MainStreet has reported before, it’s in one’s best interest to search for a job while already employed, since companies are often wary of unemployed applicants, but this requires a certain amount of sneaking around to prevent your current company from finding out. So while LinkedIn and Facebook may be great ways to highlight your career experience, you can’t explicitly state on these websites that you’re looking for a new job because anyone you work with can potentially see this. That’s what makes JobPoacher so attractive.

On the other hand, it’s unclear how effective JobPoacher will be in matching recruiters with job seekers. By default, users are forced to leave out any identifying characteristics, which means their listings have no personality. There is little to differentiate one “systems engineer” from another in the same city except by the salary they want. What’s more, employers really can’t learn anything about the candidates prior to e-mailing them, which means recruiters may not like the people they follow up with.

In a very real sense, this site makes the job hunting process more like a blind date.

Seth Fiegerman is a staff reporter for MainStreet. You can reach him by e-mail at seth.fiegerman@thestreet.com, or follow him on Twitter @sfiegerman.