Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

jobstart.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 126 posts

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#111

Post by rawnlq »

fecak wrote: post #72

Jobstart works with job seekers to help them get hired, and gets paid when their recruiting clients hire their candidates. Sometimes Jobstart's candidates get jobs at non-clients, and Jobstart doesn't get paid. Jobstart can help negotiate offers, for which they charge the candidate 20% of the difference between original and accepted offer. I'm an independent agency recruiter, and it sounds a lot like what I do. I don…

Random question:

One thing recruiters are useful for is that usually have a list of interview questions their past candidates got from each company. But usually this list is not as comprehensive as even just careercup or glassdoor.

But every company I have worked at had an internal wiki of interview questions and guidelines for evaluation. The number of questions is usually very small and study-able. With just the knowledge of my company's current wiki (and some past experience as the interviewer) I am pretty confident I can train even the weakest of candidates to pass the interview.

Probably due to legal or ethical reasons though, I haven't seen anyone try to collect these database of questions from each company. Is it that risky to ask your candidates to leak them to you after they get hired?

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#112

Post by stellographer »

Haha, that mission statement though!

"empower all people," "help they deserve," "status quo is unacceptable," "they have had decades to find a solution to help the masses. They have failed," "facilitate this _movement_," "increase the rate of innovation across the world"...

Who do you think you are? MLK? You're a fancy-pants version of "Goodwill" that literally caters to just the 1%, get over it.

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#113

Post by ztratar »

rawnlq wrote: post #111
fecak wrote: post #72

Jobstart works with job seekers to help them get hired, and gets paid when their recruiting clients hire their candidates. Sometimes Jobstart's candidates get jobs at non-clients, and Jobstart doesn't get paid. Jobstart can help negotiate offers, for which they charge the candidate 20% of the difference between original and accepted offer. I'm an independent agency recruiter, and it sounds a lot like what I do. I don…

Random question: One thing recruiters are useful for is that usually have a list of interview questions their past candidates got from each company. But usually this list is not as comprehensive as even just careercup or glassdoor. But every company I have worked at had an internal wiki of interview questions and guidelines for evaluation. The number of questions is usually very small and study-able. With just the kn…

This question is juicy. Assume you're asking him, so I'm gonna shy away here. ;)

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#114

Post by ztratar »

stellographer wrote: post #112

Haha, that mission statement though! "empower all people," "help they deserve," "status quo is unacceptable," "they have had decades to find a solution to help the masses. They have failed," "facilitate this _movement_," "increase the rate of innovation across the world"... Who do you think you are? MLK? You're a fancy-pants version of "Goodwill" that literally caters to just the 1%, get over it.

I do believe everything that is written there. If you want to take it as inflated or egotistical, go ahead -- that's your right.

If you understand the mission and what we're trying to do here though, we're really aiming to help everyone. Starting with software is simply a foothold that works when you're an early stage startup. It lets us focus the business and run the model against an industry that moves so ridiculously fast, we are forced to keep up. As we can build tech to scale coaching, we'd like to achieve price points low enough to help everyone.

That's the plan at least. Not over it! Will keep dreaming!

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#116

Post by fecak »

rawnlq wrote: post #111
fecak wrote: post #72

Jobstart works with job seekers to help them get hired, and gets paid when their recruiting clients hire their candidates. Sometimes Jobstart's candidates get jobs at non-clients, and Jobstart doesn't get paid. Jobstart can help negotiate offers, for which they charge the candidate 20% of the difference between original and accepted offer. I'm an independent agency recruiter, and it sounds a lot like what I do. I don…

Random question: One thing recruiters are useful for is that usually have a list of interview questions their past candidates got from each company. But usually this list is not as comprehensive as even just careercup or glassdoor. But every company I have worked at had an internal wiki of interview questions and guidelines for evaluation. The number of questions is usually very small and study-able. With just the kn…

I've been in agency recruiting for almost 20 years, and I've never told a candidate what question to expect. I might say there is a whiteboard exercise, or years ago mentioned if a client asked Fermi problems, but never a specific question.

The biggest problem with contingency recruiting is when the recruiter feels that the size of the fee > the value of a recruiter's reputation. This issue caused me enough angst that I created my own business model that eliminates these incentives to cheat.

I personally have never considered asking about the specific questions/answers for my clients' interviews. I may be in the minority on that.

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#117

Post by fecak »

ztratar wrote: post #87
fecak wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being experienced engineers is helpful. Whether or not you're "much more involved" than recruiters probably depends on the recruiter, but running multiple interviews internally with coaches is definitely a worthwhile service. Most experienced recruiters can rip apart a resume and are usually willing to help make changes (specifically when it's for their own client). I've seen recruiters that claim ownership of the re…

Are you in SF? If so, we should grab coffee. Even if not, we should Skype. My email is zach@jobstart.co!

I emailed you a few hours ago. I'm in NY, but happy to share ideas.

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#118

Post by flashman »

ztratar wrote: post #30
edw519 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Zach for doing this (both starting the company and coming here to Hacker News to answer questions). Based upon what you're seeing: 1. Please rank these in order of importance: - technical skill in one (or few) technologies - broad technical skills - years of experience - raw smarts & ability to learn - user/customer domain knowledge - soft skills (project mgmt, systems analysis, etc.) - cultural fit - attitude…

1. The importance there depends on the company. This is why we take a human-oriented approach, instead of just building a marketplace. We can understand the nuances of what different employers want better. Data models will follow, but we're hand picking the points to start. 2. Remember we're open to helping you get anywhere. We've placed people at both startups and large companies already, but most of our contracts a…

> 4. The status quo is pretty terrible.

I can agree with you here. One thing businesses are constantly telling me: "We are flooded by unsuitable candidates, because recruiters are playing the numbers game. Their strategy is submitting large lists of candidates in the hope that one or two are suitable."

The status quo has evolved because employees don't feel qualified, or like they have the resources, to conduct an initial candidate search. They don't think they have the networks, but they need a new hire fast. So they outsource to 'experts', but the incentive is all wrong.

Good luck to you. I'm on the other side of the Pacific thinking about what we can do to take recruiters out of the mix, focusing on better marketplaces, but you've certainly piqued my interest.

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#119

Post by igravious »

ztratar wrote: post #73
fecak wrote: post #72

Jobstart works with job seekers to help them get hired, and gets paid when their recruiting clients hire their candidates. Sometimes Jobstart's candidates get jobs at non-clients, and Jobstart doesn't get paid. Jobstart can help negotiate offers, for which they charge the candidate 20% of the difference between original and accepted offer. I'm an independent agency recruiter, and it sounds a lot like what I do. I don…

Hey there! Great questions. 1) All of our coaches are experienced engineers. 2) We're much more involved than recruiters. We're going to run you through in-house interview gauntlets if that's what you want and need (detailed feedback included). We'll rip apart your resume and start from scratch if that's a smart thing to do. I've found 0% of the recruiters I've talked to can do those things effectively -- perhaps you…

Location? SF only? California only? US only? Further afield?

Re: Jobstart – Personalized, expert guidance to land your next software job

#120

Post by igravious »

coherentpony wrote: post #64
ztratar wrote: post #2

Woah -- wasn't expecting the quick upvotes! :) Creator here (shamefully submitted myself, haha). Happy to answer any/all questions or ramble on and on about the problem. We basically think there needs to be a legitimately trustworthy service out there. Something that acts more like a a career coach instead of a position spammer. Something that understands your needs and specific situation. Along the lines of "doing t…

Your site jobstart.co has 6 trackers that are invading my privacy. Here are the URLs they hit: s7.addthis.com stats.g.doubleclick.net s-static.ak.facebook.com cdn.optimizely.com 2762420311.log.optimizely.com cdn.segment.com

My uBlock setup (default v0.9.1.0.1-signed setup on Firefox) blocks them all bar sdk.js from connect.facebook.com

I wonder why FB isn't being blocked. Anyone any ideas?

Post reply on HN