What is localbacon? As they put it…
localbacon.com solves fundamental problems for both job seekers and employers by flipping the traditional model upside down. On localbacon.com, job seekers receive benefits that no other job board provides including guaranteed feedback, handpicked standardized, full-time available opportunities, and real-time updates about their applications. (Learn more)
What does this mean? Well, it depends on who you ask. LocalBacon launched in September 2009 at TechCrunch 50, where there was plenty of press coverage of the new startup, their odd name, and their ambitions:
They do accept feedback from their users in a public venue, and although some of the questions are obviously staged and activity is low, it does give some interesting insight into the company’s philosophy. When asked why the site isn’t free:
There are plenty of free options out there, localbacon gives candidates the ability to send their application to employers through a spam free channel as well as receive premium services such as seeing the status of their application as well as receive feedback from employers.
Note: I’ve yet to find out how they’re able to make their channel spam free.
Getting down to the nitty-gritty of the service, there are really 4 factors that need considering:
- The service charges $1 for each application (you get discounts when you buy in bulk). The promise is that you’ll get feedback on every application – though there’s no example of what that means.
- The service is only available, at present, in NYC. Their growth is planned city by city, with Chicago probably next; you’ll need to wait for this train to come to your station, and it’ll be a long time before its in anything other than a major metro.
- Their application process involves uploading a Word doc for your resume, and another for your cover letter, and then letting a 3rd party (Scribd) handle it from there. Though I appreciate being able to send employers my resume as I intend it, I can’t imagine many employers will adopt this since they expect applications to arrive in a unified format.
- The site still allows recruiters to post jobs directly, so there’s no promise that your paid application is actually going to someone who’s offering a real job.
This site has a lot of rough corners (like their “Welcome to localbacon” email) and the company’s 4 employees are clearly still working hard on it. The week-to-week progress of it is impressive, and their leveraging of social media (such as the ability to login via Facebook Connect) shows they understand the direction of modern web development.
They’ve certainly seen growth since their launch:
… but keeping things in perspective, they’ve still got quite the hill to climb…
… and conversations about them on Twitter are non-existent.
To put it simply, this egg should still be in the incubator. LocalBacon’s sole point of existence is that if you pay them money and apply for a job, you’ll hear back from the employer. And although that is a noble goal and a worthy cause, there’s no proof of their promise, no insight into their process, and a scarce amount of jobs (most of which can be found on other free sites) to apply should you want to put the rubber to the road. So jobseekers, save your time and give something else a shot. LocalBacon is a young site, under heavy development, and I’m not saying count them out yet – just don’t count on them right now.
