Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#11

Post by vthallam » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:02 AM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #10

vthallam wrote: post #7

Well, my favorite domain. As the standard saying goes, recruiting is hard. It mostly about matching candidates and company's expectation and they tend to wildly fluctuate. Hired, A-List, Vettery, Indeed Prime all fit in the same category. A market place for pre-filtered candidates with known expectations(salary range), Why more than one of these exist, I have no idea. There is nothing innovative in all these companie…

What could be done in innovation for job boards?

For a start, showing the most relevant details. Tech stack, whether they support Visa/Relocation, % of the people who heard back when they have applied(is it worth candidates time to even look at it). Also better filtering with multiple parameters, more personalization(beyond tags)

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#12

Post by lykr0n » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

blizkreeg wrote: post #9

For the past few years, I've mostly been on the employer side of this, recruiting engineers in my teams with a brief period where I had to find a job. It plain sucks. As the hiring manager, I wish I didn't have to deal with recruiters and their 20% fee. But sourcing candidates and reaching out to them is painful too. OTOH there is too much noise in applications that come through your job board/career page links. Usin…

I've had quite a few friends go though Indeed Prime (https://www.indeed.com/prime) with success. I think it's a start in trying to make hiring better

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#13

Post by iandanforth » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

I'll reiterate a desire for someone to actually make an OkCupid for Hiring. Both sides answer questions and get matched. (If this exists please let me know)

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#14

Post by csallen » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

I'm a huge fan of the approach KeyValues.com is taking to help engineers find companies they'd actually like to work at. A lot of sites are focused on helping companies cut through the noise to find qualified developers, which means forcing developers to "prove" themselves through various tests etc. That's useful and makes sense.

But I like the idea of the opposite approach — forcing companies to qualify themselves to shed some light on what it'd be like to work there without having to go through the whole interview process first.

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#15

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:24 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#16

Post by psadri » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #8

Recruiting is a human resources intensive industry where the quality of a firm's output is dependent on the quality of the individual(s) handling your account. Companies like Triplybyte and Hired who raised gobs of VC with the promise of shaking the recruiting business (with their like totally amazing algorithms and "innovative" testing processes) haven't really done much and IMO are reverting to more traditional mod…

So, which small recruiting company is it please?

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#17

Post by Zaheer » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:33 AM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #3

Hiring is broken because employees and employers have asymmetric bargaining power, which leads to unrealistic expectations. No amount of improved candidate screening will solve that.

What specific information do employees not have? I'm co-founder of https://www.Levels.fyi / https://www.Comp.fyi which we built specifically to tackle information asymmetry in the job-seeking process. Would love to get feedback on how we can expand information we collect: hello levels fyi

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#18

Post by RhodesianHunter » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:39 AM UTC

lykr0n wrote: post #12

blizkreeg wrote: post #9

For the past few years, I've mostly been on the employer side of this, recruiting engineers in my teams with a brief period where I had to find a job. It plain sucks. As the hiring manager, I wish I didn't have to deal with recruiters and their 20% fee. But sourcing candidates and reaching out to them is painful too. OTOH there is too much noise in applications that come through your job board/career page links. Usin…

I've had quite a few friends go though Indeed Prime ( https://www.indeed.com/prime ) with success. I think it's a start in trying to make hiring better

Having tried both I much prefer Hired.com on both the hiring and seeking sides.

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#19

Post by lynnetye » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:42 AM UTC

I was a software engineer looking for full-time jobs a couple of years ago and it blew my mind how terrible the process was.

There are _many_ problems in recruiting, but three things really bothered me during my search:

1. Information asymmetry. Job seekers should know more about the people at and day-to-day practices of a company before committing to their long and exhausting interview process. Often times this information is buried under cover letters, applications, phone screens, take-home tests, and hours of onsite interviews. The amount of time/energy it takes for a job seeker to get to the most important information means that they can only really "get to know" a handful of companies.

2. Incentive misalignment. Another big problem in recruiting is having placement fees. If a recruiter's goal is to get me to join a company just long enough to hit the 90-day mark (when they get paid) but it's actually a bad fit, I lose and so does my employer. The incentives are misaligned between (third-party) recruiters, candidates, and employers when there are contingency fees.

3. Lack of exposure to options. When you don't know what your options are, it's easy to settle. It often takes people 3, 4, 5 jobs to figure out what it is they really care about and want from their employer / team / work. Unfortunately, this can take years to figure out for yourself. Not knowing what you want means that you'll do a worser job of choosing the right company to join. We would all do better if we had more exposure to the different ways different teams operate.

I ended up too frustrated w/ my job search to actually get a job. I instead founded Key Values (https://www.keyvalues.com) which solves for the three issues above and provides a way for software engineers to find teams that share their values.

The most talented and competent people will still perform poorly if they're unhappy / uninspired. That junior dev that you took a chance on will blossom if they have the right support and environment.

Value alignment is everything.

Re: Ask HN: Which companies are improving recruiting?

#20

Post by Boxxed » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 6:08 AM UTC

Zaheer wrote: post #17

chroem- wrote: post #3

Hiring is broken because employees and employers have asymmetric bargaining power, which leads to unrealistic expectations. No amount of improved candidate screening will solve that.

What specific information do employees not have? I'm co-founder of https://www.Levels.fyi / https://www.Comp.fyi which we built specifically to tackle information asymmetry in the job-seeking process. Would love to get feedback on how we can expand information we collect: hello levels fyi

Personally, I never really trust any of these sites because the all claim to have good data, and yet they all report pretty wildly different salary ranges for similar jobs. I have absolutely no idea if I'm actually being paid a reasonable salary, but honestly it's something that's important to me at my current stage in my career.