Ask HN: Why have no career network centered around missions and skills only? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why have no career network centered around missions and skills only?

3 pointsthorio5 comments

Hey everyone,

The more I see LinkedIn getting filled up with useless pr spam and overly relatable nonsense, everyone mass-adding later sales prospects via duxsoup etc, I wonder if there can't be a place, that's focused singularly on ones skills and current activity/mission. Without all the cherry picked history of past projects and jobs.

I would love to have a place where I can really find people for certain skills or be informed about their current path. I don't care who has worked for whom, every now and then I just need someone to get a certain job done or that's heading in a certain direction to board ship together.

I feel like the social graph of networks like LinkedIn incentivices streamlined and exaggerated public CVs and bs posts way too much.

Am I the only one?

Best, Thorsten

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People change missions all the time. Currently I think wealth distribution is the biggest problem in my region, but I'm also down to work on say, healthier eating or climate change. And if someone comes to me with a (well-paid) idea for something less important like making a good mobile game or better job searches, I might switch to that.

There's a lot of missions I haven't heard of until the interview, like one which was recycling thrown away mobile devices to detect poachers. Another was using apps as a way of distributing solar power in rural areas of Africa, so someone could choose to buy as much power as they had money for.

Angel List actually provides a good middle ground for this, but I find that the response rate for both applicants and companies are low.

It's true of course, that missions change all the time. Also people that try to get something off the ground don't only push one thing but often try several things in parallel. Sometimes they don't want to disclose that in an early stage even.

Still I think it's valueable to have user profiles centered around skills rather than track records. It might not be possible to estimate ones seniority otherwise, but by relying on track records to assess if someone is a valueable contact we make personal success way more path dependent than it should be.

To me the same goes for missions / projects. I find it questionable if something really has higher potential of successful execution just because it's done by people that had success before. I know that's what draws attention to certain projects that often gets them funding and early traction. But recently it still turns out to be a bad idea to begin with after a few rounds of funding, while other projects suffer from lacking exactly that focus.

I'm sharing open thaughts here mainly to be honest. Will take a closer look at AngelList for that too. Thought it was more of a funding thing to be honest.

I won't defend LinkedIn, which always seemed useless to me. Recruiters and employers pay the bills at LinkedIn, so naturally the profiles and CVs get optimized for those customers. Get off LinkedIn and do the work, either finding good people for your company, or finding a good job.

I will take issue with the idea that "skills" and "mission" have more meaning or value when matching people with jobs, compared to experience. When companies recruit they look for people who can add value to their business and work as an effective team member. A track record of adding value and getting along in an organization tells a story. "I know Rust" does not.

No company goes out looking for someone who can write 2,000 more lines of Javascript next month. And interviewers generally don't care about what "missions" or career goals candidates might have. What they want are people who will contribute and not cause trouble, because the mission comes down to "make more money" (or "attract more investment capital") regardless of whatever high-minded ideals the company fluffs out their Mission Statement with.

Thanks a lot for your insights. I fully agree, that the setup necessary for efficient recruiting is the one LinkedIn serves, I will say, that I think that exactly this is what causes the trouble to me because it pulls value away from the individuals to recruiters and larger cooperations. Maybe I'm wrong about this, and people primarily want the public CV being found by recruiters thing and what I imagine is like a more niche kind of thing not applicable to a large group of people as a career network.

I might be too idealistic, but I imagine a community, that is more on eye level with everyone not hiding behind long track records. I find it desirable to be more transparent and make advancement easier. Otherwise see both over filtering and valuable connections falling through the grid because one doesn't have the ivy league school and fang experience in his profile.

Track records of accomplishments and experience show that someone can apply what they know. I may know from books or videos how to build a bridge, but if I’ve never built one I can’t show that I can apply what I supposedly know in a useful way.

Show, don’t tell, in other words. A documented track record comes closer to showing than just listing “skills” one supposedly has.

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