Speaking as someone who has hired multiple times from HN:

I agree that the nascent trend of "Who's Hiring in XXX" has got to stop.

I strongly disagree that what we need is to formalize the job listings and make them searchable.

I strongly disagree that we need to loosen the "YC only" restriction on job ads.

I strongly disagree that what we need is a YC-style job board.

I'm with the other commenter on this thread that said that one of the strengths of the "Who's Hiring" thread is that it's a way to learn about what people are doing and what companies are engaged with HN. It's not a job database. It's a conversation. When I've posted positions here (note: we're still hiring!), I've been thrilled to get comments and questions and to be able to answer them publicly.

My suggestion:

There's already a leader list, and there's already a user profile. news.arc should just look at people's profiles as they're saved, and if the profile says "we're hiring", add that user to a list of users who are hiring. Keep another list. If you want to scan through everyone who's hiring, there's your database. The rest of us can just keep talking about what we're doing and having conversations and not worry about optimizing things or geeking out on how to run a job board.