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Doostang, Inc.
Type Online Career Community
Founder(s) Mareza Larizadeh
Pavel Krapivin
Headquarters Palo Alto, CA, United States
Industry Job Search Engine
Career Networking
Website www.doostang.com

Doostang.com (pronounced /duːsteɪŋɡ/) is an online career networking community that originated as a closed website for students and graduates of top-ranking U.S. undergraduate and MBA programs. The company was founded at Stanford University in 2005 by Mareza Larizadeh and Pavel Krapivin.

Contents

Company Information

The name for Doostang comes loosely from the Latin terms dos and tango, meaning to reach for talent.[1]

Doostang's CEO is Chuck Taylor, former VP of Business Development and Marketing at Affinity Circles and Director of Product Marketing for Yahoo!.[2] Doostang was founded by Mareza Larizadeh and Pavel Krapivin in July 2005 as a free, invite-only website designed to enable friends to share jobs and network with one another.[3] The website was opened up to students and alumni from several dozen undergraduate and MBA programs in September 2008 and expanded to open registration in July 2009.
Doostang is venture and angel funded. Its first angel investor and Chairman of Board is Andy Rachleff, Co-Founder of Benchmark Capital. Its Venture investor is Jason Pressman from Shasta Ventures.[4] Other angel investors include Mark Leslie (Former CEO of Veritas) and Michael Dearing (Former Head of Product, eBay).[5][6]

Features

The purpose of the site is to allow registered members access to posted job openings and connect with relevant contacts in their industry. As of August 2009 there are over 500,000 registered users on Doostang.[7] Members can search the site for positions by industry or by location, which are categorized as Premium and non-Premium listings. Premium jobs can only be accessed by Doostang Premium members, a commercial service introduced in January 2009.

The Doostang Networks feature allows members to establish relationships within a specific school, company, or industry by joining a specialized group. Groups function to create contact networks between individuals with relevant professional interests.

Membership

Basic membership

  • Members can create a profile searchable by community members and recruiters, view and apply to non-premium openings, and network with other members.

Premium Membership

  • Doostang's Premium Membership option was launched in January 2009. It was the first move Doostang made from being a free access site to a subscription site. It allows members to access all of Doostang’s 'Premium Jobs', jobs that are set aside as the best of Doostang and only visible to paid premium members. The fee for premium services ranges from $25 to $40 a month.[8] According to Doostang, this helps ensure the quality of applicants, as job seekers are more likely to pay if they are qualified for positions they must pay to access.[9]

Doostang for Employers

  • Doostang allows hiring managers and corporate recruiters to join the community, post relevant job opportunities, and interact with community members free of charge. Doostang does not accept job postings from agency recruiters.[10]

Doostang for Career Centers and Alumni Organizations

  • Doostang has formed relationships and partnerships with a variety of MBA Career Centers. To date, Doostang is working with the following schools’ career centers:

Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Wharton Executive MBA Program, the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, the Fuqua School at Duke University, the Johnson School at Cornell University, and the Darden School at the University of Virginia, and France-based INSEAD.[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ Businessweek Aug 2007
  2. ^ Chuck Taylor on LinkedIn
  3. ^ venturebeat.com
  4. ^ VatorNews Company Review
  5. ^ Six Degrees from Dave Interview
  6. ^ techcrunch article
  7. ^ Crunchbase Profile
  8. ^ Doostang.com
  9. ^ CNN
  10. ^ http://www.doostang.com/logins/hire
  11. ^ Businessweek Jul 2009

External links








Doostang is a free, invitation-only online career community. In applying network theory to the job marketplace, the site offers a mix of traditional job boards like monster.com, and social networking sites, including LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook. Since the network grows by invitation, all the contacts that enter the system are trusted by at least one or more members in the network. As such, it reflects and streamlines the realities of a job market in which the majority of recruiting is done through personal contacts and e-mail communication.

The service is limited and it is not available in many countries, such as India.

Doostang was founded by Mareza Larizadeh (Stanford) and Pavel Krapivin (MIT), whose initial goal was to fix the quality vs. quantity gap in online recruiting and job searching. Since the website's launch in the summer of 2005, it has grown to over 170,000 members from companies such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Bain, Nike, Apple, DE Shaw, KKR, Facebook, Chanel, Summit Partners, MTV and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among many other companies.

Features



Once invited to Doostang, a user can join, create a profile, upload a résumé, post and search for jobs, write testimonials, and invite other people to the site, free of charge.

Doostang has drawn ire from many users who provided their Gmail username and password, only to find that the site sent invitations to everyone in their address book. Since Gmail saves every address the user has ever emailed, this can lead to a very large mass mailing and become a source of embarassment.

In August 2006, Doostang introduced two new features, groups and forums. Beyond its appeal to job seekers and recruiters, Doostang's groups and forums enable individuals to easily connect with their friends, network with peers, and access valuable career information from the community. In groups, users are able to share job content and interact within smaller circles, including their college, company, or with shared interests. Forums provide another platform for interaction between members, enabling them to engage in discussion with the community through posting and responding to questions and discussion topics.

Doostang also provides a premium membership that gives the user access to "Selected Practice Groups" (SPGs). There are twelve SPGs where jobs can be posted. Only SPG members can view and apply for these positions through Doostang. This premium membership requires that the user add 20 new members to Doostang and either upload their resume or complete 75% of their profile.

Selected Practice Groups:

Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Private Equity & Venture Capital, Nonprofit, Education & Government, Media & Entertainment, Hedge Funds, Advertising, Marketing & PR, Operations & Finance, Wealth and Asset Management, Management & Strategy Consulting, and Investment Banking & Capital Markets.

Media Coverage



Doostang has also received some notoriety from the start-up community. A January 2006 article in the Wall Street Journal's StartUpJournal profiled the site's founder along side Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

External links

  • Doostang

















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