Paid Interviews is a new site that claims to get you a signing bonus for finding a new job. The title of the site is a little misleading, because you don't get paid for interviews, you only get paid after you have worked for a new company for 30 days.

Their slogan is a little questionable as well. "Paid Interviews: For In-Demand People." The cynical side of me asks: what about the people who aren't in demand? What if you're just some average, 2.5 college GPA, three months of experience schmuck looking for a job? What then?

Like many of the sites I've reviewed over the past few months, Paid Interviews promises a job matching technology that uses a candidate's preferences and skills to match them with an ideal job. They even have a fancy name for this: Optimatch Technology (TM). Ahh, the "opti" prefix, always a good choice for naming new technology.

So how does the payment thing work? Who pays the money? Well, it's really like a normal signing bonus from a company. When the company offers a job to you, they are agreeing to pay the signing bonus. It's not clear from their Web site, but my guess is this is where Paid Interviews makes their money. They must take a cut from this signing bonus.

Other features include "The Watercooler" (an original name, eh?) where you can read up on other employee's opinions of companies that are courting you. And then there is the "widgetized" profile page, where you can control what aspects of your profile are prominent and upload things like videos, pictures, and examples of prior work.

My take - it's nothing revolutionary, but Paid Interviews may help you get a decent signing bonus from a new job. It can't hurt to try.

We salute any Web site that has the ambitious goal of bridging higher job satisfaction for the employee with  increased productivity and improved retention for the employer.  Lofty, perhaps.  Achievable?  We'll see.

This is a guest post by Steve Krager.