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Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

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Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#31

Post by endymi0n »

As much as I'd like to give this a go, my findings so far is that recommendations from anyone you don't fully trust already are as broken and prone to gaming as any other indicator in the job market.

As (almost) always, it's so ubiquitous that the German language even invented a word for that fact: "wegloben". Loosely translated as: praising someone away.

Why is it broken? Because while it's certainly possible that someone would recommend the best people they've ever worked with in the rare case of a sudden bankruptcy, chances are usually far, far higher that people try to recommend the weaker ones they had to let go in times of hardship to others, simply because they want to be nice and soften the blow.

Been there, done that. Multiple times.

If there's _really_ someone excellent, you move heaven and earth to keep them around in your own team.

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#33

Post by amitsy »

tomhallett wrote: post #30

When I "vouch" for a friend, what happens on the friend's side? Am I opting them in to getting email(s) from weekday? If so, that seems slightly odd that I'm going through my top 10 friends on linked-in, vouching for them so that they are now going to get some a cold email(s), but I have no insight if those 10 people are looking for jobs and want this email at all. I'm pretty much saying to my friends "Hey, I just ga…

Very legit point! That is a concern that some of our prospective users do share. What they do in that case is vouch for ones who they know are looking out or can benefit from vouching (eg. folks who struggle at DS/algo interviews etc).

On the "no recruiter mails", I just realised that it might be confusing. What I meant that just because you vouch for someone, it doesn't mean that they will get bombarded with spammy recruiter mails. I think that means object is the person you are voucher for and subject is contingency and in-house recruiters at tech companies.

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#35

Post by amitsy »

endymi0n wrote: post #31

As much as I'd like to give this a go, my findings so far is that recommendations from anyone you don't fully trust already are as broken and prone to gaming as any other indicator in the job market. As (almost) always, it's so ubiquitous that the German language even invented a word for that fact: "wegloben". Loosely translated as: praising someone away. Why is it broken? Because while it's certainly possible that s…

It is an excellent point and very similar to the experience we had seen when we first started with this approach. We have seen that once financial incentives and limits on no of people whom you can recommend, were introduced, people were not just praising anybody and everybody.

Another interesting phenomenon we see is that people don't generally recommend people from their current emplpoyer, they generally do from previous ones or their college friends.

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#36

Post by dreamer7 »

I would love to try out your platform for my current hiring needs. Good luck with the launch!

One UI feedback for your website - On your contact form for companies, text isn't visible when the form field is not in focus. The text colour matches too closely with the field background.

Edit - Also, on submitting the form, the success/ confirmation text did not appear in the visible window. I had to scroll up to see it

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#37

Post by amitsy »

dreamer7 wrote: post #36

I would love to try out your platform for my current hiring needs. Good luck with the launch! One UI feedback for your website - On your contact form for companies, text isn't visible when the form field is not in focus. The text colour matches too closely with the field background. Edit - Also, on submitting the form, the success/ confirmation text did not appear in the visible window. I had to scroll up to see it

Thanks for the feedback. We will fix it right away :)

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#38

Post by dang »

endymi0n wrote: post #31

As much as I'd like to give this a go, my findings so far is that recommendations from anyone you don't fully trust already are as broken and prone to gaming as any other indicator in the job market. As (almost) always, it's so ubiquitous that the German language even invented a word for that fact: "wegloben". Loosely translated as: praising someone away. Why is it broken? Because while it's certainly possible that s…

> "wegloben". Loosely translated as: praising someone away.

Wow, that's fabulous.

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#39

Post by jedberg »

Usually when someone asks me for a recommendation, I ask them what kind of skills they are looking for and their preferred contact info, and then if I have a friend who might be interested I send my friend the contact info of the person hiring.

So maybe you might want to consider flipping your process. Make it so I can see what skills the companies are looking for and then make it easy to send a message to my friend with their contact info, in a way where you can trace the recommendation back to me.

Re: Launch HN: Weekday (YC W21) – Hire engineers vouched for by other engineers

#40

Post by amitsy »

jedberg wrote: post #39

Usually when someone asks me for a recommendation, I ask them what kind of skills they are looking for and their preferred contact info, and then if I have a friend who might be interested I send my friend the contact info of the person hiring. So maybe you might want to consider flipping your process. Make it so I can see what skills the companies are looking for and then make it easy to send a message to my friend…

Interesting. So instead of recommending your friends, you would be recommending best-suited companies to your friends? I have seen a few of my friends do that when they are helping someone with a job switch.
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