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Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

rolepad.com

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Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#1

Post by romanhn »

Hey folks. Rolepad is a product born out of my dissatisfaction with hiring processes - both as a candidate and as a hiring manager. Processes that are non-transparent, inefficient, and full of frustration for both sides. This early iteration has focused on the application tracking aspects with a few extra goodies.

These days it is common to apply to dozens of positions (some users track over a hundred opportunities). Without a record-keeping system, it can quickly become an unmanageable mess. Even the better-organized among us often end up juggling spreadsheets, emails, and various notes. Rolepad was built to keep this data (company facts, role details, interview stages, contact info, freeform notes, follow-up actions, and more) in one place. Some of the other neat additions:

- Forward emails to save@rolepad.com to save them as notes connected to specific opportunities. Forward recruiter messages to no@rolepad.com to have the system automatically reply with a decline response.

- Generate shareable Sankey charts of your progress like this: https://app.rolepad.com/metrics/6QEbaktB7bqR8glhuYR32

- Submit anonymous reviews and insights about application/interview/offer processes at a company . This is new and there aren’t great examples to share yet (https://rolepad.com/companies/brilliant.org is an early glimpse), and I didn’t want to create fake data as a matter of principle.

Oh yeah, and it’s totally free :) Creating an account is passwordless and takes seconds, but if you want to kick the tires even faster, I created test credentials for this occasion:

  username: test@rolepad.com
  password: hntest
With this release, I am also starting conversations with employers (https://rolepad.com/employers). A unified platform for candidates and employers can significantly reduce frustration for both in ways that email cannot. I should note that any solutions here have privacy implications and will require an exceedingly thoughtful execution.

And now for the tech stack. The main application uses React with Tailwind on the frontend, C# on the backend, hosted in AWS (App Runner, Lambda, RDS Postgres, SES), with auth provided by Google Firebase, and CI/CD via GitHub Actions. The home page is actually an SSR (server-side rendered) application built with vite-plugin-ssr (now vike) and hosted in a Cloudflare Worker that hits the AWS-hosted API. This is basically a best-of-all-worlds SSR configuration - very fast, zero cold start (!), and essentially free.

Any and all feedback is sincerely appreciated!

Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder
rolepad.com

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#3

Post by romanhn »

randomsofr wrote: post #2

Looks pretty good, i'm wondering how are you planning on monetizing this?

Through employers, not job seekers. Not sure how to put this without marketing-speak, but I do truly believe that there is a win-win proposition here where an amazing candidate experience can be highly beneficial to the hiring org. I wrote down some thoughts on https://rolepad.com/employers as well. As I mentioned in the original post, there is a lot of consider here privacy-wise but I definitely have some concrete ideas that I want to start bouncing off hiring managers and the like (which will likely involve sharing Rolepad job description links that add the position with a bunch of prefilled data to the candidate's account in one click).

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#4

Post by altdataseller »

romanhn wrote: post #3
randomsofr wrote: post #2

Looks pretty good, i'm wondering how are you planning on monetizing this?

Through employers, not job seekers. Not sure how to put this without marketing-speak, but I do truly believe that there is a win-win proposition here where an amazing candidate experience can be highly beneficial to the hiring org. I wrote down some thoughts on https://rolepad.com/employers as well. As I mentioned in the original post, there is a lot of consider here privacy-wise but I definitely have some concrete i…

What kind of competitive benchmarking would you offer?

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#5

Post by romanhn »

altdataseller wrote: post #4
romanhn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Through employers, not job seekers. Not sure how to put this without marketing-speak, but I do truly believe that there is a win-win proposition here where an amazing candidate experience can be highly beneficial to the hiring org. I wrote down some thoughts on https://rolepad.com/employers as well. As I mentioned in the original post, there is a lot of consider here privacy-wise but I definitely have some concrete i…

What kind of competitive benchmarking would you offer?

Compensation is top of mind for me. An applicant [EDIT: application, not applicant] tracking system is well-positioned to have a solid, up-to-date view into the compensation landscape, unlike sites like Glassdoor and Blind which are more lagging and self-selecting. Balanced with privacy, there is some real opportunity here. Outside of compensation - all sorts of analytics pertaining to interview process, how quickly competitors fill their roles, that sort of data.

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#6

Post by altdataseller »

romanhn wrote: post #5
altdataseller wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of competitive benchmarking would you offer?

Compensation is top of mind for me. An applicant [EDIT: application, not applicant] tracking system is well-positioned to have a solid, up-to-date view into the compensation landscape, unlike sites like Glassdoor and Blind which are more lagging and self-selecting. Balanced with privacy, there is some real opportunity here. Outside of compensation - all sorts of analytics pertaining to interview process, how quickly…

Why is an applicant tracking system have an up to date view of the compensation landscape? Would I be required to submit how much I was offered to your system? Why would that be necessary?

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#8

Post by romanhn »

altdataseller wrote: post #6
romanhn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation is top of mind for me. An applicant [EDIT: application, not applicant] tracking system is well-positioned to have a solid, up-to-date view into the compensation landscape, unlike sites like Glassdoor and Blind which are more lagging and self-selecting. Balanced with privacy, there is some real opportunity here. Outside of compensation - all sorts of analytics pertaining to interview process, how quickly…

Why is an applicant tracking system have an up to date view of the compensation landscape? Would I be required to submit how much I was offered to your system? Why would that be necessary?

That's a fair question - and no, almost all data is optional. But... people do enter this, and companies have roles with open compensation as well. I'm talking about an aggregated view into anonymized data here.

EDIT: Just realized I wrote "applicant tracking system" above. Total slip of the tongue, this is an _application_ tracking platform for job seekers, not an ATS used by companies. Though I do sometimes think of Rolepad as an ATS for the candidate.

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#9

Post by romanhn »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #7

Looks great and comes in perfectly in time for me. One concern: All my data incl. CV is stored plainly in the cloud, correct?

Thanks! I suppose the answer depends on what you mean by "plainly in the cloud" :) It is indeed stored in Amazon's RDS, which is a managed service. I approached this as a real product rather than a weekend project when it comes to security (application and infrastructure) and there is a lot in place protecting the data - Firebase's jwt auth, XSS and SQL injection protection, default passwordless logins, data encrypted at rest, database in private subnet, DB credentials in a secrets vault with automatic rotation, multi-factor auth for all of my access to infra, probably a bunch more. Are there specific concerns not addressed here?

Re: Show HN: A job application tracker with company reviews, recruiter autoresponder

#10

Post by iakh »

altdataseller wrote: post #6
romanhn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation is top of mind for me. An applicant [EDIT: application, not applicant] tracking system is well-positioned to have a solid, up-to-date view into the compensation landscape, unlike sites like Glassdoor and Blind which are more lagging and self-selecting. Balanced with privacy, there is some real opportunity here. Outside of compensation - all sorts of analytics pertaining to interview process, how quickly…

Why is an applicant tracking system have an up to date view of the compensation landscape? Would I be required to submit how much I was offered to your system? Why would that be necessary?

I can see value in tracking offers to see how negotiations are going. so if there's standard fields for this, then that's a way he could track comp data without requiring, and even get offer increase info which is probably even more valuable.
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