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Comment by kfk | Hacker News Reader

I think Excel or Trello are fine for most of the people out there and the ones that need so much data won't pay for it (because I doubt somebody doing 100+ applications is a successful employee with money to spend).

I think you should focus on whatever takes out most of the effort of this process and for that an email would be the best solution: send me an email that is targeted to me and with jobs I can actually apply for.

The biggest pain for me is not doing applications, it's doing applications for jobs where I have no idea if: 1. I have good chances; 2. have been closed already (lots of those out there; 3. have the pay I am looking for.

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Background story: I applied to 10+ companies a month ago. I did keep track, I did follow up etc. Couple of them didn't follow up, couple of them I remembered not replying last time I applied for them as well. Nothing changed. I was tired of Excel, Notepad, Gmail.

The pain you're describing is being handled by at least 10 companies that I know and which sent me updates about the jobs. Granted they're not the best, but they work.

The pain I wanted to reduce was the pain that comes with the entire process. When you're simultaneously in 10+ process it can become easy to lose your focus and forget to follow up, read notes, to dos (google most recent interviews etc).

The pain I also wanted to remove was the pain of re-applying to companies that are god awful at providing feedback, that do not reply, that forget to close job ads etc. Think job app history.

Another pain I wanted to remove was weighing the offers via charts and summaries on the offer page and show communication and interest from the company on the reports page.

Another idea as suggested in comments: Provide this data transparently, blind the important information and that might take the product to a whole new level.

I do not want this to be another job board or an email newsletter. There are plenty out there.

Maybe the problem is asymmetrical information. If I interview at Apple and do fantastic, and I have interviews lined up at Google and Facebook, wouldn't it be a better use of the other interviewers' time to look up my results and focus on things that matter, like culture fit?

I think the problem is that while most of us have college degrees which at least give us a foot in the door, there is very little differentiation to an employer from a graduate of Waterloo or Carnegie Mellon. You might assume they're good but you don't know. They aren't vested by the companies you trust to have quality screening processeses.

The problem might be getting companies to willingly disclose their information. Then again, I went to a co-op school so by the time I graduated I already had nearly a year of work experience, and very little trouble with each additional notch on my belt. Maybe there is a way to solve this that isn't necessarily a product or service.

A lot of the feedback you're getting is saying that the problem you're interested in solving can already by solved by other tools or simply isn't a major problem. What features do you envision that can't already be handled by Trello?

I would consider reading the comments again, it seems like a lot more people are wanting a way to quickly fill out a variety of similar but non-standard forms than want either a job board or a job app tracker.

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