annawangx

Validating the references are a top priority for us. By anchoring the reference to a job context and verifying the referencer through work emails or Linkedin profiles, we hope to address most of the fake review problems. This is a feature that we will develop further as we grow.

Thanks for the feedback! We find that Searchlight is most helpful for hiring managers who are time-strapped and have high inbound applicants. We realize that this may lean more towards non-technical, early to mid-level roles more so than engineers.

Resumes are statements of past performances, and our mission at Searchlight is to help candidates gather support around these statements.

AI helps us analyze the references, and will be developed more as we grow.

Sorry to hear about the trouble! We'll address that soon.

We haven't run into many causes where a referencer's employer has a "no reference" policy. Our terms and conditions has language that the reference's opinion does not reflect their employer, but we will continue thinking about this as we develop our product.

Thanks for sharing your experience. That will help us with product development as we think about how to support other use cases when people request references, even when they're not actively job-seeking.

Thank you!!!

Thanks for sharing! We think more about capturing reference feedback outside of the active job-seeking context.

From the references that have come through our system, we’ve seen that quantity doesn’t outweigh quality. We’ll make sure that this stays true as we grow. Our goal is to elevate candidates who aren’t self-promotional through the feedback collected on Searchlight.

Great question. We get the referencer’s contact information, their position and work title, and require that they agree to a follow up with employers. We are developing features for real time identity verification, like 2-step auth with work emails.

The experience and knowledge of the referencer factors into how we calculate the strength of the recommendation.

We're aware of this possibility, and we flag it to the candidates and the employers.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble - it should work now

Candidates can invite other employers to view their Searchlight recommendations. We haven't yet decided on the revenue model for this use case.

This is a good point about reference checks in general.

The references submitted to Searchlight are saved and available for the candidate to use and share, and referencers are not asked to speak to a particular culture. This means that the references don't change per position, which makes sense because a candidate's top strengths/personality shouldn't change for every potential employer.