Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#171

Post by bitsweet » Tue, Jan 08, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

gunmetal wrote: post #170

I stopped at entering my name, company and position. Why can't I try this out anonymously? The stakes are too high for most people to willy nilly add their personal info to a conduit for recruiters.

We don't share your information with recruiters, that's part of the proposition as we are a conduit to companies that you decide who to share your information with.

We match jobs to your goals AND to your relevant experience, if we didn't collect information about who you are we couldn't accurately do our part.

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#172

Post by codva » Tue, Jan 08, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #152

randomdata wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the intent was really the other way around. To someone who is truly interested in what you have to offer, a buck or two is just a rounding error on the salary they will eventually pay you. To someone who is harvesting contact information to fire spam your way, $2 * n-number-of-contacts starts to add up very quickly.

But that's the point. It's supposed to be a no brainer for someone who actually wants a real contact with the applicant but prohibitive for a spammer. A recruiter who is genuinely interested in you for a job opportunity wouldn't mind paying the $2 but a spammer who is emailing hundreds or thousands of people just trying to build an interest list would suffer. Still, this hinges on the person actually responding so th…

I see your point. He really didn't ever get enough usage on the site to know if the refundable upfront fee would have been a sufficient anti-spam tactic or not. Several sites with the same basic idea all launched around that time. His was bootstrapped, at least one of the others had millions of VC behind it. I don't think any of them made it.

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#173

Post by eru » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:07 AM UTC

Lewisham wrote: post #106

3825 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the overheard to hiring Did you mean overhead? Moreover, it seems like you don't validate your form input at all. (Sorry about the entry. My email address is not really aa.)

Validating email addresses via anything but verification links are a road to hell.

Why? Just restrict your validation in the UI to a warning.

For email addresses, most deviations from a simple pattern are mistakes.

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#174

Post by DGCA » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 11:41 PM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #124

DGCA wrote: post #87

$25k is ridiculous, unless you make some guarantees, which you don't seem to do (wouldn't know, there's no relevant info for employers without signing up).

It's not $25k upfront for every potential hirer, it's $25k to the company that actually hires somebody .

I know, it's too high.

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#175

Post by eru » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 8:58 AM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #36

codva wrote: post #4

Interesting - kind of reminds me of a site a friend built a few years ago. It was a resume site with contact info hidden. In order to contact you the recruiter had to pay you - at whatever price you put on a contact (usually a buck or two). If you didn't respond in a reasonable time the money was refunded. But he was trying to solve the same problem - recruiter spam. Unfortunately he launched right in the deepest pit…

If I'm looking for a high paying job, a few dollars isn't going to interest me. Your friend probably had to create a ton of code to allow for the applicant to store and eventually withdraw his few bucks. If I'm really looking for a job, how many recruiters could possibly contact me? 10-15? at $2, that's $30 at the end of the process. Seems more like a distraction from my job hunting. It seems more like a distraction…

> I can see charging the recruiter to email people (sites like Elance do that) but that's where it should end. The money will never be interesting enough for an applicant to care and it confuses the process.

Just make the applicant choose a charity. (Have a list to choose from, and allow them to add one for themselves, too.)

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#176

Post by droncancio » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:26 PM UTC

storborg wrote: post #107

bitsweet wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's pretty steep. Maybe that's just a west coast thing. I don't think most developers realize how much recruiters are getting paid for placements. 25% is pretty standard across US, we're less then that with our flat rate. Where I live (Ohio) that's 50% of the salary of a developer with 5 years of experience. This is why we built this product - assuming you are even remotely decent at programming and write cod…

Have you considered the possibility that charging a flat fee instead of a percentage of annual salary makes your service inappropriate for most areas outside of silicon valley or NYC?

I agree that charging a % would be better for example for companies hiring not in US,

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#177

Post by droncancio » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:35 PM UTC

negrit wrote: post #162

bitsweet wrote: post #2

Hi HN. We were tired of recruiters so we built this because it was something we wish existed. We had "satisfying" jobs and liked who we worked with but we were not naive and knew there could be a better job out there. Either building a product more aligned with our personal interests, making more doing something we enjoyed even more, or work with a team that challenged us further. It was too time consuming to activel…

YES ! Beside the fact that ask for uploading a resume is not a good move. Resume can be very quickly outdated, why not asking to link a linkedin account instead ?

+1 i only update my resume when im planning to change position, since this tool is not to actively look for jobs i would care less to keep a resume updated

Re: Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam

#178

Post by theoj » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 7:09 PM UTC

ruswick wrote: post #143

veritas9 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just launched HackerX, where we bring 50 great developers and put them in a room with 15 awesome companies. Absolutely no placement fees, no BS, give us a try :) www.hackerx.org

This is tangential, but I'm curious about your partner "startups." Most of the listed companies are established, monolithic organizations that are notorious for onerous and extensive interviewing processes. Do these companies employ different practices in your "speed dating" environment? If so, why? If not, how does this service offer distinct functionality beyond an exclusionary set of abbreviated interviews, which…

I'll second this. The HackerX pitch is "Where developers meet startups" but all the partner companies shown in the logo section (namely eBay, Amazon, Groupon, Google, Disney, YouTube, Quora) are very much established companies, not startups.