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Comment by jabberwocky923 | Hacker News Reader

How is this similar to Pandora?

In Pandora you specify one song/band you're interested in, and it shows you a list of similar things.

Can I say that I work at Microsoft, and have it show me a list of jobs that are super comparable to my current position? This would be great for pivoting out of a stagnant job...not something I need now, but I've been there in the past.

I see an incredible amount of voting, highlighting, keywording, etc. Maybe I'm missing it.

I'm almost certainly being nitpicky about how you invoke Pandora.

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Our tagline has always been a bit of a struggle -- we originally said OkCupid for jobs, and then tried (briefly) doing Tinder for Jobs, but none of it felt really "close" to what we were going for.

The idea behind using the Pandora analogy was: when you start a new station on Pandora, you input something you want to listen to, and it starts playing music, at which point you can "like" or "dislike" the song to get Pandora to "learn" what type of music you like.

In that same way, you can "like" or "dislike" a lot of things about a job posting, and then we can give job recommendations will try to find jobs that fit you based on that.

But even outside that, we also allow you to filter through a bunch of other things, so the Pandora analogy breaks down somewhat fast about that time. If people have thoughts as to how we can describe this differently, we're all for it :)

IMO "We're x for y" is not a catch all. The convention is used to explain what can be a complex mission statement to people usually outside your space and though this is particularly necessary for SV-shenanigans -> regular people, I would recommend playing around with taglines your team can personally find compelling rather then trying to fit that mold.

YMMV and always get feed back, but don't artificially constrain yourselves... there are enough natural constrains in the world.

When someone invokes the "x for y" metaphore in a description it has always come off as lacking from my perspective. I don't want to think of you as an Uber for someIndustry, tell me in a clear short beautiful statement what value your company creates.

The 'x for y' metaphor is actually a well-respected positioning technique in strategic marketing. You want your product or service to occupy a place in a prospective customer's mind. The easiest way to do that is to place it close to some things that are already in their minds. Creating an entirely new place is much more difficult when time and attention are limited.

Great book on the subject (Amazon link but I'm not an affiliate):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/...

Thank you for the recommendation. I'll have a look at that.

Try to describe yourself without comparing it to anyone - you are assuming now that someone is familiar with Pandora and hopefully has a positive opinion of it. Why not say "Job search customized for you"

The * for * has become the most dreadful cliche.

Why are you trying to force yourself as a comparison to other companies? In certain cases it makes complete sense and from a brand building perspective can work wonders, but it doesn't always work. I would focus more on describing the value of the product in a clear and concise way.

I agree, I've never been a fan of "X for Y" type of analogies, but our service/services is hard to describe succinctly -- we want to get across that we are a "smart" job search company, and we have the thumbs up and thumbs down like Pandora, but also that we are more than that, including giving analytics that end up being very useful.

We've thrown around "Data driven startup job search" and "Recommendation based job search engine", but those are pretty vague and don't feel quite right either.

To be honest, we're so close to this, that we would love an outsiders take on us -- if you had to describe us, what would you call us? Maybe we just always overthink it and someone will have the perfect way to describe us :)

Job search intelligence

Jobs you like

Jobs like you

You like Jobs

Personalized Job Search

Job streaming, personalized

Job discovery engine

Pandora for jobs.

Your personal recruiter.

Help you find your one True Job™

JobsCQ

Find your one true job

TrueJobs - the job search that learns

If I thumbs down a song on Pandora and that causes their algorithm to skip a song I'd actually enjoy. Eh, it's just a song, no big deal. But if truejob decides I wouldn't like a job that actually is a great fit, that's a bigger loss. I'm being a little pedantic, but that's an initial impression I had.

Hopefully there's an undo button :)

Crazy idea time.

Create a lot of random landing pages for different verticals the reference True Jobs. True Jobs for music. True Jobs for pizza delivery. True Jobs for auctions. Let things that sound like reference you, and then you are the original!

Better yet... create fake companies in the loosely defined job space that copy you, but not as good. "We're True Jobs for #{some_vertical}!" "This #{some_vertical} job service sucks, maybe True Jobs is better?"

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