Doostang

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.

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 250,000 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.

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 in the Wall Street Journal's StartUpJournal profiled the site's founder along side Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In August of 2007, Doostang was featured in BusinessWeek in an article entitled , comparing it to Xing, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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