Comment by qchris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qchris | Hacker News Reader

By far the most exciting thing about this announcement is this feature: "Detailed information on what a recruiter did with your application."

I've been wishing for something like this for years. Especially for early-career engineers or people from non-traditional backgrounds, this is insanely valuable because it helps you to know avoid wasting time on applications that will never go anywhere; avoid typing in your resume, line by line, into another form after already submitting your pdf. Avoid writing a cover letter to a job that's already been filled. Avoid applying to a posting that's really just out there for a company to "gauge" interest, not for filling a real role.

If an application is rejected, fine. But getting a follow-up request 7 months after submitting a resume into a black hole is ridiculous, and I think any system that decreases the information asymmetry between the applicant and the employer that allows people to intelligently approach their career search is going to be tapping into something truly valuable.

So fun fact, we built this feature as a pretty low-grade experiment, but when we ran it by actual users we got such a positive response that we ended up putting it at the top of our new front page.

Like you, we thought (correctly, as it turns out) that it would appeal to people early in their career. What surprised us is that very senior engineers also told us they loved it - we didn't think it was as much of a concern for them, but sometimes your users surprise you.

It's also a great example of how obvious low-hanging fruit gets missed until you start thinking strictly about "what can we do to make job seekers' lives better?". It's not a particularly innovative or difficult feature, and yet major job sites with a dozen times our engineering resources still haven't done it.

It's ridiculous. You can go through a couple screens, 5 coding interviews, and the end is just a "no" due to liability reasons. Literally zero information about why you didn't get an offer or if you were even close.

It's not just liability.

The last time I was a hiring manager, I committed to giving feedback to anyone I rejected after the very first screening step. This was about 25-30% of applicants, which (even for a role in considerably less demand than engineering jobs) ended up being many dozens of emails. It was a giant pain in the ass - and it's pretty emotionally draining because you're turning down people who would really, really benefit from getting hired. I did it anyway, because I'd promised to, but it was not fun.

It might not be fun but it is definitely good for your brand. In the last few years, I have interviewed at several dozen companies but the only companies which provided feedback to me were Facebook and Brex. This sub communicates to me that they take the candidate seriously and don't jerk them around.

Next time I look for a job, I will definitely be targeting both these companies.

Seriously. People ache for feedback in low information environments. Good on yall for taking customer surveys seriously (even if the data underlying it isn't always clear) because enthusiasm, though noisy, is a strong signal.

I wouldn't charge for the service, however, unless building it as a freemium model.

/economist hat

Do you all have anyone doing user research?

Yes. Ammon and I spent many, many hours in research calls prior to this launch, and we'll be doing them on a regular cadence going forward.

When I graduated I submitted around 50 applications to open jobs around where I live, to almost no feedback at all.

I'm in this industry and doing well because of recruiter reaching out to me (multiple times) and not vice versa. The whole idea of applying for jobs just doesn't seem to work at all.

My experience is similar but at a differet level of seniorty. I've applied to ~15 jobs for engineering manager and got 1 answer.

On the other end a recruiter reached out to me and I'll be doing the final interview with their VP next week.

I don't think we can draw conclusion at that stage (we are a dataset of 2..). But I'd love to have access to the LinkedIn dataset to figure out if applying for jobs is broken at scale.

Waiting for a recuitor to call you limits your potential but makes the process easier for you. Applying yourself takes a lot of work but you get to select who you want and to target a bigger group which. But it's messy, ugly , stressful and filled with rejections for no reason.

Doing both, when you need a job, gives you the best of both worlds.

It's ugly and mimicks real life... more effort gives better results but life isn't fair and never has been. Luck factors but always fight on multiple fronts.

Where did you graduate from?

A school that has consistently ranked top 20 and sometimes in top 10.

My major are slightly mismatched though.

Did you use platforms like Handshake or Jumpstart to apply?

No, I used Linkedin at the time.

Then I stopped bothering when it's super obvious that isn't working. Particularly, on Linkedin you could see the number of people that has applied (maybe a paid feature, i don't remember now). And for any entry level software engineering and data science position it's always in the 100s.

The one recruiter that I had contact with did more work than all of these. I've since switched jobs (to one of the FAANG) and that was through recruiter too.

Top 20/10 for your field? In the US? Worldwide?

General, not sure about the field.

I also don't think field matters until one gets to PhD levels, which I did not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com