Hacker Jobs is live and we want your feedback | Hacker News Reader

Hacker Jobs is live and we want your feedback

hackerjobs.co.uk

61 pointsPeroni58 comments

First of all let me say kudos on the launch; I'm giving this feedback because it was my reaction and others might have the same:

The two claims in your site header made me curious: "Dealing in only the finest jobs for the finest people in tech" and "Post a Job It's free and it only takes 5 minutes." This made me scratch my head... how are they offering only the best listings if I can post in 5 minutes? Does that mean anyone can post anything? Because that doesn't sound like it will be a collection of "the finest jobs."

I did a test[1][2] and sure enough, there is no process of vetting the jobs. This, to me, says that the site will have all the same issues as e.g. Craigslist; perhaps more because craigslist actually charges to post a job in Boston. Basically: another random assortment of good jobs, bad jobs, scams, and time wasters. If you are claiming that your site deals with "only the finest jobs," you need to back that up with some actual mechanism to filter out bad jobs.

To your credit: the posting has been removed in the time it took me to write this comment. :) (Unfortunately most spammy/scammy/crappy job listings aren't as obvious as mine.)

[1] http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2012/3/26/best [2: screenshot of 1] http://i.imgur.com/d0r7E.png

We made the decision to keep job posting free for now purely to help drive content and to give people a reason to return. The off-shoot of that is that we are manually vetting every single ad that gets posted.

Your test ad wasn't removed by a spam filter, it was removed by either myself or Jon manually.

Eventually you will have to pay to post your job on our site as well as more secure email verification but for now, we are happy staying up all hours of the night making sure that the quality remains high.

Care to share how did you guys get started with a whole bunch of job listings? Contacting tech companies to provide free listings on your job board? Employers actually discovering your site and posting their jobs? Thanks!

I'm currently working on a job board in an entire different niche so I'd really appreciate your comments!

I used to be a Tech Recruiter so as you can imagine I had quite a few contacts. That coupled with my involvement with Hacker News London, posting a notice on relevant sites like HN & Hackful got us enough jobs to kick the site off.

Also to add to Peroni - you can scrape recruitment sites (monster, gumtree, craigslist), get in touch with the relevant company asking if you can copy the job over to your site.

Most don't mind, and some are even happy if they do get a good applicant through your website instead of wherever they had initially posted their vacancy.

Just make sure there's no effort on their part, nor any hidden fees and they aren't signed up to your newsletter unless they specifically asked to be.

A mixture of scraping and contacts got us around 500 vacancies to launch qreer.com.

Thank you Peroni, DancesDrunk. I did not come from a recruitment background so I'd really appreciate the suggestions.

If a posting is marked as being contract and permanent such as http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2012/3/26/javascript-applicatio... perhaps have the ability for the advertiser to add seperate salaries for both? It reminds me of my daily CWjobs jobs alert offering roles for £50,000 per hour :)

- In the main job list, clicking anywhere in the cell should bring you to the job (since it does highlight the cell), not just clicking on the job title.

- Maybe this is a decimal vs space vs coma thing, but one just has a salary of "42.000" EUR while the other is "EUR 45000". The system should be able to make this consistent. Does the currency come before or after? And, FWIW, I read the first one as paying $42.

- As a foreigner, it's always nice to know any language expectation (I assume english, but that isn't always the case), as well as if they assist with relocation. I realize that's up to them to put in the description, but some hand holding would be nice.

- Qubit's salary of "£50k + bonus + shares + insurance + free food + the rest!" is lame..it expands the UI unecessarily. I'd put a lenght limit (and again, structure salary better overall)

- RSS? Most boards have it (or, I find a better structured json feed much better)

In the main job list, clicking anywhere in the cell should bring you to the job (since it does highlight the cell), not just clicking on the job title.

Not sure I agree with you on this one mate but I'll keep it in mind.

Maybe this is a decimal vs space vs coma thing, but one just has a salary of "42.000" EUR while the other is "EUR 45000". The system should be able to make this consistent. Does the currency come before or after? And, FWIW, I read the first one as paying $42.

Salaries are entered in a freetext box currently. That will change down the line. Just trying to get a feel for what works at the moment.

Qubit's salary of "£50k + bonus + shares + insurance + free food + the rest!" is lame..it expands the UI unecessarily. I'd put a lenght limit (and again, structure salary better overall)

As above

RSS

Really high on the priority list.

Re RSS, please let people create their own custom RSS feeds. Eg, I might only want to see opportunities within 50 miles of Nottingham above 30 grand:

http://hackerjobs.co.uk/rss/search?location=Nottingham&r...

Most of the listed jobs will end up being in London and there are a lot of developers (like me) who don't want to work there.

Having had experience with recruiters who were either clueless or merely rude/unprofessional it is indeed a good idea to try to produce something aimed at hackers (or at least moderately intelligent people) which hopefully isn't completely lame.

However, a quick review of the site didn't uncover anything which I wouldn't find elsewhere. Describing it as a UK jobs site, then allowing postings for jobs in Germany seems off topic.

Why do job-related web sites often suck? Usually it's that the job descriptions are too vague, are ineptly categorized, don't describe what the application is, or are excessively wordy and packed with 'buzz' terms or other meaningless fluff. These descriptions are often asking for highly capable people, but seem to have been written by someone who is only semi-literate or who only has the vaguest idea of what they want.

I don't care who the job comes via, as long as it's fair salary and a role I'm interested in. I've never used a recruiter so I can't comment on whether they'd get me a good job or not.

However, looking at the board there is a senior UX job for 6 weeks that is offering just £80 per day for a 9 hour day! http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2012/3/26/mid-senior-ux-designe...

If it's about the quality of jobs then surely this one falls short?

I would love to see a jobs board where salary is a mandatory field because calling a position Mid, Senior, Lead etc means something different at every company.

When we originally received that post I was under the impression that the amount was per week. Turns out it's the total amount.

In fact, I'm going to pull that one now.

Also agree with a mandatory salary field which is tied to an actual monetary amount. 'Negotiable' doesn't mean anything without some sort of range, surely every salary/perk is negotiable?

Right now job at the top of the list has its location 'Anywhere', but if I click on the Remote Friendly tab it doesn't show up.

I see this sort of thing all the time on job boards. I'd love to trust the filters but somehow I have to look through all the ads to be sure.

So I looked at the posting form and location is one entry with a text input and three rows below it is the job type section with checkboxes, one of which is remote.

I think you need to constrain the inputs more. Make it harder for people to mess up. Or, in this particular case, maybe put the remote checkbox up in the location row?

Yep. In this circumstance it appears they simply forgot to check the box which I've since updated.

We are looking at different methods for job posting so today is a big learning curve for us!

Steve, I think the idea is terrific and am a fan of yours. I'm a recruiter, but I'm very pro any solution that cuts the amount of noise in this industry. I recently posted about this problem here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771806

That said, what incentive do recruiters have to email you and justify their existence when there are no constraints on posting a job?

So what is really different compared to other job boards besides the good will of the admins to keep it clean of recruiters spam?

Right now? Not a whole lot being honest. We have plenty of plans and features in the pipeline but the initial plan is to fill out our currently minimal feature set with what you'd expect a decent board to have, then add some more that we think are missing and can improve on what previous boards have done.

We're doing lots of offline work to make sure we get a good calibre of user, candidates and advertisers alike. we're not going to just throw money at PPC campaign, we want to build a good brand by going out and getting engaged in the community (we do it already, after all).

One of the jobs posted says "we pay in kit, holidays and (a little) cash".

That screams the complete opposite of a good calibre of advertiser to me I'm afraid. Which is a real shame because everything you've written in the past about the London recruitment scene is correct and I'd love to see some real changes in the industry!

We had a bit of an internal debate about that particular vacancy. The company are legit and the job is a bit of a unique one in the sense that it's a travel blog where you get to do something completely different.

We are going to do our best to ensure the calibre remains high but high salary doesn't automatically mean high calibre. We want to offer something a bit different too.

That being said, the site is about the users so if this is the sort of ad you don't want to see then we will absolutely keep it in mind next time something like that pops up.

It would be good if there was some sort of karma system in place, so that user accounts who consistently post worthwhile jobs were rewarded, and sucky jobs were down modded. Open to abuse, so you'd have to watch it, but would definitely be an interesting concept.

Great minds...

It is a great concept and one we have already considered for The Obair Company - the parent company to HJ.

We have a really different concept coming soon that will put a very different spin on the job market.

Look forward to seeing what you have planned!

Thanks for the feedback.

RE: "high salary doesn't automatically mean high calibre" - you're right, perhaps I've been in finance for too long ;-)

Keeping a job board free of recruiters is quite hard. That's why for http://jobs.usethesource.com/ I made posting rights be based on your Hacker News karma. Be part of this community and you can post jobs on UseTheSource.

Not so difficult when you used to be one yourself! Also, a blanket ban on recruiters is counter-productive as we have established that there clearly are a tiny percentage of decent recruiters, those are the ones we are happy to allow access to.

It would be nice if the interface to signing up for hacker jobs and looking at available jobs be only through the command line.

For now, there is not a lot of offers as the site just launched but will you add the possibility to filter by experience and salary too ? Another important thing for me as I'm planning to move to London soon is the geographic location of the company as it may mean having 1.5hours of transport instead of 20 minutes each morning/evening.

Yep. All in good time. As the jobs list grow, the search functionality will grow to match.

To follow up on this and what Steve's mentioned elsehwere, the locaation stuff is a prime example of the kind of thing we have in mind for future developments where we feel other sites lack.

Right now though this is just a minimal feature set. At midnight last night when I looked at 'add filtering to the search options' on my todo list I decided that with only a handful of jobs on launch day, this can wait. I guarantee though there will be better search filtering by the time the number of jobs has grown enough to warrant that.

That's great! I understand this was not top priority before having hundreds of job offers displayed. Just, as I am searching for a new job, it is really painful for me to have to check the offer, check the company name, go on it's website, find the office address, go on google maps, check where it is precisely then go on TFL to check how much time it would take me to go to work. A map as airbnb's or hipmunk for hotel would be so cool, but I can understand not a lot of people really search a job in a specific radius based on transportation time.

Day 1 and there's jobs listed in Newcastle upon Tyne, Huddersfield and Birmingham. I'm absolutely gobsmacked. More of this please. It looks like you're already aware, but just to re-inforce the point: once the number of jobs is too large to comfortably browser, then for people outside of London, sites like this will live or die based on their location specific search. (Around here, Jobserve is a big deal for precisely that reason - they eventually even managed to distinguish between Newcastle upon Tyne and Newcastle-under-Lyme.)

There is a button for job offer "remote friendly" but no "tag" associated in the posting. And when reading the offer nothing indicates that the offer is really "remote friendly". Is it a hidden field selected by the recruiter when posting the offer? Are the tags added by you?

When the employer fills out the job form they have the option to select remote friendly if they are willing to consider remote workers.

I had a similar idea for a startup, so I find it really interesting to see what you've done. My biggest question is:

How do you plan to monetize it?

Really nice looking site!

Thanks!

Monetization: Charge for job postings further down the line once the site gets a bit of traction and regular traffic.

Have you considered doing the opposite - charging applicants a minor fee per application?

Can't see it working at all to be honest. The ratio of quality applicant to job advert is drastically low across all job sites, introducing a barrier to entry will have a further negative affect on that I think.

I really don't know - it's an idea I've been thinking about.

It may have the opposite affect - having a monetary barrier will force applicants to only apply to jobs they want / are qualified for vs the current state where they apply to everything remotely close to where they want to work.

The number of applicants will definitely be 1/10 or even 1/100 of what it was before - but you will get folks who want the job enough to pay for it, and are definitely qualified for it.

Free for recruiters and you'll get plenty advertising their vacancies, which should entice more applicants.

Then again, the system now works and has been this way for decades - not sure if a role reversal would work at all.

Nice, looks great. There's a bug though; when you post a job with the same title on the same day, the slug is the same which obviously causes issues.

You're right. We spotted that bug a bit too late last night (3am to be precise) and implemented an ugly work-around.

Jon (my co-founder and lead dev on the site) will be tackling that particular issue this evening.

Any chance of having a mailing list for new job postings at some point? Looks like a sweet board though!

It's on the list. It's down the line but it's on there!

I haven't received my email to tell me that, are they going to be sent out?

They are being sent as we speak

Got it, sorry for being impatient ;-)

There is no good way of "drilling down" when browsing the jobs. Meaning I cannot look for existing locations and then by language etc.

Also, where are all the tags? I can see the popular ones, but none of the others.

These are the major problems that I see standing out.

Personally I really hate these "follow us on twitter and like us on facebook" kind of things. Be your own company.

If you ever implement a login system do not make it "connect with facebook" or similar, as people looking for or posting jobs deserve their privacy.

Also, where are all the tags? I can see the popular ones, but none of the others.

The search functionality will improve over time and the tags are intended as a secondary measure of searching. They are more of a guide than anything else. If you want to find a Ruby related role simply stick Ruby into the search box.

Personally I really hate these "follow us on twitter and like us on facebook" kind of things. Be your own company.

We've been incredibly light on the social media links compared to every other job site out there. Regardless of whether you like them or not, gaining a following on popular social media sites is integral to getting your name out there.

If you ever implement a login system do not make it "connect with facebook" or similar, as people looking for or posting jobs deserve their privacy.

We will implement a login system but forcing people to connect to any other account will not be mandatory as I also feel like it's just overdone.

I really dislike using Facebook for login and always look for an alternative (and even cancelled my premium Spotify when they tried to ram it down our throats), but the bottom line is that in a lot of markets this is a killer feature. Facebook Connect and social widgets are successful because they work so well. If you want to take a moral stand against them, more power to you, but I don't think it's a smart business move.

Nice work guys, but I have a bug for you - if two people list jobs with the same title on the same day, the URL is identical, and whichever one got there first gets the page - see the "blubolt" listings on http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs that link through to Blooie's listing.

Oh, and I recommend making the preview page more obviously a preview page, as the "confirm and review" and the info text is below the fold, on a page that looks identical to a completed listing!

Off topic, is "Hacker" the new trend? Like we 'll see hacker food, hacker cars, hacker pillows etc?

I don't think so. If there are only programming and tech jobs on the site then the name is perfect.

http://www.jobsmanifesto.com

... another new UK jobs site, over 25,000 jobs, exactly zero agencies/recruiters. Generic site, but over 1000 IT Jobs.

Disclaimer: I know the dev team.

Not even remotely comparable. The site you mention is essentially a link aggregator.

I guess it is a link aggregator. But they've got 25000+ links to real jobs, with not an agency or recruiter in sight. What's wrong with it being a link aggregator? I'm no expert, but I've not seen any other UK site that advertises so many non-recruiter jobs.

Indeed.co.uk does the exact same job. You simply select 'Direct Employer' jobs only and there you go.

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