NotchUp, Inc. was a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

–based start-up that was first to offer an on-demand recruiting service that uses

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...

combined with

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

and an advanced web-based technology platform. NotchUp is a privately held company headquartered in

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

, California. The company's service is based on the premise that the best people are already employed, but are open to exploring opportunities that offer a better value proposition than their current job. NotchUp finds passive candidates for job postings using a crowdsourced group of independent contractors called Talent Scouts. NotchUp posts positions on their web site and the 2000+ Talent Scouts use NotchUp's proprietary software to match their personal and professional connections in social media such as

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

MySpace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

. Companies with job postings rate the candidates and either independently take the next steps or use NotchUp's services to make connections and do additional screening. Talent Scouts are then compensated based on how accurately they matched candidates to the position. It created what Bloomberg referred to as a "spam snowball." NotchUp's proprietary technology monitors Talent Scout performance to improve candidate ratings, optimize work assignments, and provide feedback for enhancing scout accuracy and earnings. The company was started in 2008 by co-founders Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis and initially offered a Pay for Interview service. It was recently listed by

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

as one of the “20 Hot Silicon Valley Startups You Need To Watch" in 2010. The company has seed funding from Floodgate, Nueva Ventures and

Steve Blank Steve Blank (born 1953) is an American entrepreneur, educator, author and speaker. He created the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement. His work has influenced modern entrepreneurship through the creation of tools a ...

. The company was later known as JobFlo. The company was last active on social media in 2018.

References

External links

NotchUp, Inc.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Notchup Crowdsourcing Internet properties established in 2008 Recruitment software Social information processing