poachable121It’s a familiar conundrum for many employees: Exploring new career opportunities sounds appealing, but having your current employer find out about a potential new gig probably isn’t the most ideal situation.

That’s where Poachable wants to help.

The newest creation from Seattle-based Yabbly is designed to help passive job candidates find new jobs — in private, and anonymously. The tool is a mix of existing tools like LinkedIn, Tinder, Weave, and CoffeeMeIn.

“You don’t want to officially ‘look’ and get busted by your boss, but waiting for the random recruiter to email you on LinkedIn seems to leave too much to chance,” explained Yabbly CEO Tom Leung.

Here’s how it works. Interested employees first list their private requirements for changing jobs. From there, they can browse curated job matches and anonymously “favorite,” the ones they like.

Tom Leung
Tom Leung

Then the app applies a Tinder-like model. When an employer — one that you’ve already favorited — likes your anonymous profile, you’ll be sent a notification that allows a communication line to open up between the two parties.

Leung noted that Poachable differentiates from competitors because of its focus on an incremental method of applying to a new job without much risk involved.

“Information is revealed step by step, so people don’t feel like they’re officially applying for a job — they’re just saying ‘maybe’ a few times and potentially doing an informational interview many steps later,” he said. “They also have the option to cut off the conversation prior to unveiling their identity without feeling like they’re burning a bridge.”

Leung added that Poachable is built for developers, marketers, product people and designers for high-growth companies in the tech industry.

The Yabbly homepage.
The Yabbly homepage.

Poachable is certainly a far cry from Yabbly’s original business idea, which centered on product-oriented reviews and Q&As. The startup pivoted earlier this year when it debuted a website similar to Reddit’s Ask-Me-Anything platform in which individuals field a variety of questions online, dishing the inside scoop on a diverse set of topics.

Leung said that the AMA side of the business is “going great,” and will continue to operate as Poachable launches.

“Yabbly as a company has always been focused on how people connect and communicate with each other online,” he said. “We’ll always be a place that is running cool experiments and build neat stuff. In some ways, we’re still in the Yabbly Labs mode.”

Leung noted that he now realizes why everyone says “startups are hard.”

“That’s probably one of the biggest understatements you can make,” he said. “However, we’ve hit a lot of milestones, shipped more cool products than we had at all our previous gigs combined, people seem to really like what we build, and our investors have been incredibly supportive and patient. I think this year could be our year.”

Yabbly, which was previously featured as GeekWire’s App of the Week, has raised cash from former Qpass CEO Chase Franklin; Nike Vice president Dave Song; former Twango CEO Serena Glover; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu and others.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.