Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#41

Post by rco8786 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

akuji1993 wrote: post #30

tom_mellior wrote: post #29

I looked at your comments to find your position posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149582 . I'm not your target group, but still... Here's the introductory sentence: "Service Partner ONE is the technology partner for modern office management in Europe." OK, sounds fine. I don't know what office management is, but there are a few more sentences coming up that will surely explain. Next: "Our platform supp…

In addition, their company name couldn't be much more boring.

Eh, picking a job based on how cool the name of the company is probably won’t get you too far

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#42

Post by BigJono » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #23

stult wrote: post #8

My company had the same trouble. The demographics here trend too hard toward the Bay Area (we are located in a different, large, and tech heavy US city). Overall candidates tend to be younger and less experienced, oftentimes with boot camp backgrounds. Posts here also apparently tend to attract applicants who specialize in trendy, fad of the moment stacks or more "light" languages and frameworks, when we are looking…

I think your recruiting pains in finding senior/enterprise positions can probably be explained by the following: 1) out of the 325 million US citizens, maybe 10,000 people at most meet your qualifications 2) most of them are already employed 3) most of them probably don't read that thread if they even post here at all 4) it might be wiser to hire them as a consultant and have them train a proficient and loyal dev to…

It could also be that you're committing some common flaws that make your job listings much less actionable than your competitors.

I'm not overly specialised or senior, but even at my level I find that when I'm actively looking, I get way more interest than I can possibly follow up on with the time I have available. So any mistakes you make will end up with your listing being filtered out.

If you're targetting people that receive 50 recruiter e-mails a day, things like not listing salary, overly long JDs, spewing a bunch of marketing bullshit in the JD, etc, will pretty much result in an instant pass. Other comments here have called OP out for those exact things, maybe GP is making the same mistakes?

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#43

Post by arandr0x » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

piercebot wrote: post #25

As a senior software engineer who has successfully contributed to startups that were subsequently acquired, and with over 9 years of experience across a variety of technologies, "Who's hiring" is probably not the first place I would go to look for job if I needed a change of scenery. I love it for keeping an eye on the market, to see where trends are going, and for looking at what's local. If something REALLY interes…

I agree with this, and I'm somebody who's actually relocated for jobs before. Also, I am European, and the HN culture is very different from engineering culture in Europe (not always a bad thing). So the candidates that are in your country, or may easily relocate, probably aren't on HN every month, even if they're fluent in English. If you're looking for less junior people, hire a headhunter or send a not-too-desperate email to the 15 smartest people in your college class begging them to pitch your job to their own contacts.

I definitely use who's hiring for broader market trends. The clarity of writing in the job postings is much better than the sanitized generic HR stuff from Indeed and Linkedin and the location and remote/visa status (salary when listed) gives a hint as to how hungry companies in various markets are for people.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#44

Post by maxxxx » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:14 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #26

Slightly off topic, but can anyone chime in on their experience hiring for non coding roles from HN threads? Especially marketing and biz dev?

We tried to do that, but we the people on HN are normally not the right type of people for such positions

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#45

Post by fjahr » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #29

I looked at your comments to find your position posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149582 . I'm not your target group, but still... Here's the introductory sentence: "Service Partner ONE is the technology partner for modern office management in Europe." OK, sounds fine. I don't know what office management is, but there are a few more sentences coming up that will surely explain. Next: "Our platform supp…

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I have mostly improved on marketing material that was already there but I can see now it should probably be rewritten completely for this purpose.

And I will try to convince them to include salary ranges. I have tried before but did not get permission. It is not required by German law to post the salary and instead sharing these numbers is even less common than what I have seen from US startups, even if their salary levels are actually very good.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#46

Post by weliketocode » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

Not going to add too much, but I love how well HN tackles this important yet so often skewed discussion.

In my opinion, companies that struggle to find great candidates almost always aren't competing for talent:

- paying well

- offering great benefits

- taking time to write great job descriptions

- recruiting through a variety of channels

- putting thoughtful effort into every step of the recruiting process

A lot of the top comments point to OP missing the mark on some of the above points.

From there, the discussion delves into some of the finer points I hadn't fully considered:

- EU vs US differences for comp and readership

- Seniority/stack expertise on HN vs elsewhere

- Hiring for non-technical roles on HN

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#47

Post by fjahr » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

4dahalibut wrote: post #15

You link to the German versions of your website. I don't know German. You don't talk about your development practices or team experience. Your industry isn't shiny. You don't list salary. Incidentally, I was just talking to the guy who posts for a Boston manufacturing startup who says they have hired many solid engineers from here

Thanks, for the feedback. I will improve this and link to the english version next time as well as include info on team and salary.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#48

Post by anoncoward111 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

BigJono wrote: post #42

anoncoward111 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your recruiting pains in finding senior/enterprise positions can probably be explained by the following: 1) out of the 325 million US citizens, maybe 10,000 people at most meet your qualifications 2) most of them are already employed 3) most of them probably don't read that thread if they even post here at all 4) it might be wiser to hire them as a consultant and have them train a proficient and loyal dev to…

It could also be that you're committing some common flaws that make your job listings much less actionable than your competitors. I'm not overly specialised or senior, but even at my level I find that when I'm actively looking, I get way more interest than I can possibly follow up on with the time I have available. So any mistakes you make will end up with your listing being filtered out. If you're targetting people…

Definitely. It's a labor sellers market in that space. Ironically, for lower skill labor, candidates have to jump through hoops :)

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#49

Post by swaggyBoatswain » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

fjahr wrote: post #45

tom_mellior wrote: post #29

I looked at your comments to find your position posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149582 . I'm not your target group, but still... Here's the introductory sentence: "Service Partner ONE is the technology partner for modern office management in Europe." OK, sounds fine. I don't know what office management is, but there are a few more sentences coming up that will surely explain. Next: "Our platform supp…

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I have mostly improved on marketing material that was already there but I can see now it should probably be rewritten completely for this purpose. And I will try to convince them to include salary ranges. I have tried before but did not get permission. It is not required by German law to post the salary and instead sharing these numbers is even less common than what I have seen from…

Its lacking a mission statement honestly.

"Someone called us wework without walls?". Were you thinking of something like "engineers without borders", when this statement was written?

I looked into your company. Its not wework, wework is realestate, your company doesn't seem like one. Its a german Cintas, but you outsource things instead of using inhouse resources. https://www.cintas.com/

Checkout cintas's statement

"Cintas leads the industry in supplying corporate identity uniform programs, providing entrance and logo mats, restroom supplies, promotional products, first aid, safety, fire protection products and services, and industrial carpet and tile cleaning. We operate more than 400 facilities in North America—including six manufacturing plants and eight distribution centers."

Re: Ask HN: Do you get good applications from “Who is hiring?”?

#50

Post by olavgg » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

I'm a senior full stack developer with data science experience living in EU(Norway). I have not applied for a position that has been advertised in 6 years. All the offers I consider these days comes from cold calls from recruiters or the companies them self. They have to sell them self, as I am the interviewer.

Where I work now, we really struggled last year with recruiting developers, so we changed the recruitment process by searching LinkedIn for profiles that could be a good fit and called them with a sales pitch about why we are better place to work at than your current company. That worked much better, but surprisingly we also learned that many is very happy with their current position and is not looking for a change. You know, there is risk involved with changing work, especially if you are happy where you are. The saying, don't fix it if it ain't broken applies to recruitment too.

And I would like to add, some of our best hires we got from Berlin ;-)