from Hacker News

Show HN: Get a better job offer, anonymously - my weekend hack

by ferrofluid on 2/6/12, 3:59 PM with 84 comments

• by ohashi on 2/6/12, 5:04 PM

  It struck me as odd that I would want to hire people this way. As far as I can tell everyone is just asking for more money (big surprise, I know) but it says nothing about what they want to do, are interested in, etc. Do I just blindly reach out to a bunch of people and hope they match my needs?

• by vyrotek on 2/6/12, 4:24 PM

  I don't know how you did it, but I'm pretty sure you were spying on me. I was literally talking to a friend about this exact idea this weekend. We're trying to hire some developers and wondered if anything like this existed since its becoming very difficult to poach. I almost built the same thing this weekend.

  Edit - I'm curious. Have you thought about how you will tackle the potential spam problem? Recruiters are going to go crazy over this. We tossed around a few ideas such as charging to contact the individual and making it more expensive based on things the jobseeker could do. Those things might be paying to have JobPoacher contact referrals, coding tests, etc.

  Good luck with everything.

• by damon_c on 2/6/12, 5:05 PM

  I got contacted by a recruiter within 20 minutes of posting.

  Suddenly, I'm thinking that it IS kind of strange that if I reply to their email, I will be beginning a relationship with someone who already knows my approximate salary.

  On the plus side, they contacted me knowing that information full well. No nonsense with lowballing. Maybe it's a great starting point!

• by rfrey on 2/6/12, 4:52 PM

  Wow, I can't believe how quickly this site activated my inner voyeur.

  I'm a CTO (Rails), and I currently make $20,000 in San Francisco. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a Rails Engineer that pay at least $100,000 in The Bay Area.

• by jonnathanson on 2/6/12, 5:42 PM

  The "Poachees" listings should be searchable and sortable if they're to be of real value to would-be recruiters or hiring managers.

• by illumin8 on 2/6/12, 5:35 PM

  I hope you can keep out the script kiddies - I just saw one of these:

  I'm a <script>alert('lulz')</script>, and I currently make $40,000 in <script>alert('lulz')</script>. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a <script>alert('lulz')</script> that pay at least $120,000 in <script>alert('lulz')</script>.

• by rch on 2/6/12, 5:43 PM

  This is nice, but could you add an option to indicate that I only want to deal technically proficient people?

  In fact, I would pay a few bucks up-front if you could somehow assure that I would only be put in contact with technical people that actually work for the company doing the hiring (no recruiters at all). And I'd pay to validate that I satisfy that requirement from the hiring side as well.

• by dan_yall on 2/6/12, 5:28 PM

  I hope this results in some "Piña Colada Song" situations where employers end up contacting their own employees.

• by gte910h on 2/6/12, 4:36 PM

  Why would people disclose the current salary they have?

• by sown on 2/6/12, 6:45 PM

  Minor bug report:

  I tried to fill it out with the 'links' browser. I didn't see the captcha so I did not get a confirmation email but the app did seem to retain my email address so I cannot delete the old one to resubmit when I use a GUI browser.

  As an aside, I really like this because of how people don't talk about how much they make. When I see someone makes $164000 as a pen tester in Mountain View and I make a smaller amount, I feel like I could be working on interesting problems and make a bit more coin. oh, well. :(

  Minor suggestion: I wonder how much other people like my ad? Perhaps that's part of the mystery. That info, perhaps shouldn't be available to poachees but only poachers? I dunno.

• by bluedevil2k on 2/6/12, 5:22 PM

  This is really awesome, so awesome I think that you should think about how to monetize it and make some serious money. (I know that's seemingly against the "hacker ethos", but it's not often that you think of million-dollar ideas).

• by elliottcarlson on 2/6/12, 5:15 PM

  The most important feature is listing by locality IMHO. Without being able to filter out candidates to where I am, it would be easy to miss them, especially when having to search for variations (NY, New York, Manhattan).

  I see in a comment you will be adding a search field which would help with the above; however the variations could still be an issue. A simple helper could be a predictable typing field for the location that allows people to select already existing locations so that there is consistency?

  Good job otherwise!

• by araneae on 2/6/12, 5:29 PM

  I wish it allowed you enter an hourly wage, since that's what I make.

  I could annualize it but I don't actually work full time so that wouldn't be accurate.

• by noobface on 2/6/12, 4:44 PM

  After posting and reading all the other listings. I've realized I'm one of the few hardware guys on HN.

  Any other hardware/low-level guys out there?

• by SoftwareMaven on 2/6/12, 5:02 PM

  It really needs a small "experience" section. It should be small, so a recruiter can still scan; but I really want to be able to differentiate at least between junior and senior people.

  I also would like to have an "interest". I don't want to contact somebody wanting to do games for my web startup. That just wastes both our time.

• by joedev on 2/6/12, 4:34 PM

  If a hiring company were look at this they'll naturally see the "I currently make" amount and consider that market rate. After all, it matters not what people want to make, but instead by the amount for which people have demonstrated that they are willing to work.

• by rg81 on 2/6/12, 8:07 PM

  The recruiter that got back to me was more direct and less spammy than other random recruiting emails I get from those who see my profile on linkedin etc. I'm wondering if this is an accident or a change in the way the recruiter views these postings.

• by samstave on 2/6/12, 7:06 PM

  I find it odd that people would put such a wide discrepency between current and desired salary.

  If you are making 30K, as a webdeveloper and are seeking 60K as a web developer, I dont see why anyone would read this and think "Hey, here's a guy who wants double what he is making now, lets go get him"

  Like the manager in UAE who states 130K current and 180K desired.

  50K is a lot, even though its a smaller % than the 100% - Why do these people feel that if they are worth twice what they are making now, that advertising via this site is a good idea.

  Maybe I'm confused?

  Like this one:

  "I'm a Generalist, and I currently make $120,000 in San Francisco. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a Generalist that pay at least $140,000 in San Francisco."

  This tells me absolutely nothing.

• by jason_shah on 2/6/12, 5:55 PM

  Cool idea.

  Small UI suggestions (realizing this was just a hack) - 1. Add some margin-left to the copyright notice at the bottom 2. Autocomplete on the cities (and other fields, like Occupation) will help standardize your dataset for search and sort later

• by samstave on 2/6/12, 7:10 PM

  This one is funny though:

  "I'm a Very Unhappy Facebook User, and I currently make $10,001 in creating Facebook's content. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a Happy Facebook User that pay at least $10,002 in creating awesome content."

• by v33ra on 2/6/12, 4:26 PM

  Feature request: What happens when there are hundreds of listings? Would people be reading all those listings line by line?

  A search box with filters for each input data you are collecting would be a nice fit.

• by cheald on 2/6/12, 4:50 PM

  I like this, because it's difficult to get honest numbers about salary for a given position/location. Entirely apart from the "job seeking" part of the equation, the raw data is very interesting to me.

  There will be a fake/fudge factor to account for, but it's so hard to get people to talk about their salaries honestly that it's very interesting to see some raw data there.

• by joshaidan on 2/6/12, 5:09 PM

  I like the idea. A nice start to something I'm sure will grow into something pretty neat.

• by sakopov on 2/6/12, 6:18 PM

  It's an interesting idea, but pretty much unusable at this point. Definitely needs filtering, searching and a better UI with clean separation of submissions (think StackOverflow).

• by rpledge on 2/6/12, 4:52 PM

  Interesting idea. I'd like to see some stats when you get enough data, stuff like number of responses, number of people who found a job through the service, etc....

• by danberger on 2/6/12, 5:17 PM

  One of the unintended uses for this tool is for founders to figure out what the competitive market salary is for positions they're trying to fill.

• by zekel on 2/6/12, 5:18 PM

  Suggestions:

  -Filter by job, location, salary (as suggested by others)

  -RSS

  -A "find other poachees" like this one button. (Could use ranges with the filter feature to make it even more convenient.)

• by benvanderbeek on 2/6/12, 6:27 PM

  Error when trying to delete: We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

• by ilcavero on 2/6/12, 4:42 PM

  how are you going to avoid head hunters' spam, either as fake candidates to discover new clients or with fake offers for CV mining?

• by zeratul on 2/6/12, 4:50 PM

  Maybe instead of "and I currently make ___" you should have "and I have ___ years experience in ____". Or at least have both.

• by fam on 2/6/12, 5:34 PM

  The footer would better if centered or placed inside the 940 grid (rather than stick to the left with 0 margin) - IMO.

• by johnbender on 2/6/12, 5:25 PM

  Any chance we could see a freelance/contract version of the form? About the only difference would be $/hr support.

• by benharrison on 2/6/12, 11:50 PM

  I think a great feature for this would be a map to visualize the results in your area.

• by functionform on 2/6/12, 5:15 PM

  Whoa, this is a scary good idea. Wondering if I should post tonight. I feel dirty!

• by ednc on 2/6/12, 4:32 PM

  nice. Where are you getting the recruiting traffic from?

• by dps on 2/6/12, 5:49 PM

  Do you have plans for how to get rid of spam?

• by PaulAnunda on 2/6/12, 6:06 PM

  op, i just reserved @jobposter for you on twitter. email me and i'll transfer ownership to you.

• by playhard on 2/6/12, 4:19 PM

  twitter bootstrap?