That's the proposition behind the self-funded startup NotchUp.com. Its founders, Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis, say the site will fill a void between recruiters who charge 30 percent of a new hire's salary and résumé agglomerators such as Monster.com.

Their audience, they say, is ''happily employed professionals'' whom they call ''passive job seekers.''

Here is how it works. You plug your industry, job, pay and experience into a calculator on the site to help you set your pay for an interview. (NotchUp recommends a range of $200 to $500.) Then you submit your profile to the site.

If a hiring company is interested in you, it deposits the money with NotchUp and talks to you. If you seem like a real, engaged candidate, NotchUp will transfer the money to your PayPal account once the interview is over. The site makes money by charging a transaction fee, which it estimates will be 15 percent to 20 percent.

Companies including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Facebook are recruiting on the site, which bears a striking resemblance to Facebook. NotchUp was being unveiled at the DEMO startup conference, which began Monday in Palm Desert, Calif.

So far, the response from would-be job seekers has been warm. The site officially launched Monday, but it went from 445 members to 10,500 in the five business days ending Friday, despite being in password-protected, invita- tion-only mode, Ambras and Ellis said. The traffic shut down two servers.

''I learned years ago that the best people you want to hire are the people who aren't in the job market,'' said Ambras.