Ask HN: Replacement for Stack Overflow jobs section?

as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30134135#30160083

I'd also like to see cover letters replaced by something more useful for both parties, like a small set of direct questions to answer.

When an applicant applies for a job, she's left to make her best guess as to what information the company might find useful, and has to find a way to cram that into an awkward, stiff, rather bullshitty epistolary format. The hirer is then left to try to parse and interpret that to arrive at some guesswork notion of whether the applicant might be a fit.

If the hiring company were to instead come up with a list of guided questions, they'd communicate and request up front what information they need to determine whether a candidate is worth meeting (and thereby would be forced to figure this out themselves before beginning interviews—an important step often skipped). Seeing these questions, the applicant would first make a quick judgment on whether she's interested in a company or role that wants to know these things, and then if she is, proceed to answer them, demonstrating her ability to communicate in a much more contextual, engaged fashion, versus modifying her own cover letter template or laboring over the blindfire of a custom one.

I see only advantages to this approach. It helps companies avoid an inbox full of inappropriate applicants who didn't even read the job description, and it enables applicants to learn more about the company and role up front while breaking the monotony of the application grind and having a greater opportunity to put their best feet forward by applying their personality, knowledge, and experience contextually, rather than packing it into a shotgun shell and blasting the job board with buckshot.

This may ask for more of an applicant's time than the current approach, especially in an era where every job site is trying to make applying into a one-click process, but as someone who has spent a truly unbelievable amount of time and effort looking for jobs (and a fair amount of time hiring), I can confidently say the dragnet application approach is ineffective, inefficient, and demoralizing compared to preparing fewer, better applications for jobs that actually interest you.