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Comment by romanhn | Hacker News Reader

Through employers, not job seekers. Not sure how to put this without marketing-speak, but I do truly believe that there is a win-win proposition here where an amazing candidate experience can be highly beneficial to the hiring org. I wrote down some thoughts on https://rolepad.com/employers as well. As I mentioned in the original post, there is a lot of consider here privacy-wise but I definitely have some concrete ideas that I want to start bouncing off hiring managers and the like (which will likely involve sharing Rolepad job description links that add the position with a bunch of prefilled data to the candidate's account in one click).

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I honestly think you should aim to make jobseekers pay instead of the job offerers.

The automation of job applications means that basically everyone tunes out when they hit 100+ CV's, go post a small wage globally remote job to test and you will see what I mean.

A dollar here or there definitely means your clients will get actual people who are serious about wanting it rather than the current spray and pray system that inundates and overwhelms anyone who puts up jobs today.

I also want to pay for this as a future jobseeker for two reasons: one, I want a platform like this to focus on me as the client, and two, I want it to exist.

But what Grimburger says is also important - employers will hate your platform if it will become spam city.

If a platform helped me track my applications CRM-style and automate some of the process, especially scheduling interviews, I would gladly pay LinkedIn bucks for it.

This platform will not change human behavior. Sorry to say.

Yes.

I think the only way to prevent spewing/spamming of every employer with resumes, would be if there was a crazy high cost to apply to each job. If someone paid $10 per month for 1 application or 100 applications, or 1000, for many the 1000 is going to happen.

If it was $10 per application, you wouldn't be "changing" human behaviour, you'd be leaning into it, by de-incentivizing 1000 applications with "virtual pain". EG, money leaving wallet.

I don't see how to easily prevent this with such a platform, the per-application cost is a no-go, at best you could have hard limits of apps per month.

The problem is the person who selectively applies to a job or three doesn't need this. The target is the person who has dozens of applications in various stages of flight and is "casting a wide net" to put the strategy charitably.

I suppose so. I tend to apply to a few jobs a year, but mostly because it seems like a neat place to work, or a change of pace.

One thing I have noticed, as I'm extremely skilled at this stage in my career, is that there are logically fewer jobs.

Spray and pray is more, I think, a junior thing.

Certainly applying for jobs out of school--at a time when nothing was online--it was very much a mass snail mail exercise for the most part as augmented by on-campus interviews. A lot of companies basically hire warm bodies. One job offer I got out of grad school was sight unseen. I had to ask them to invite me to see the place and talk to people.

Everything I've gotten since then (just a few) was sending an email to someone I knew at a company.

>Spray and pray is more, I think, a junior thing.

I'm at least intermediate, I've done senior work before, and this is still my strategy. Applying to one or two jobs isn't going to do anything. It takes at least a calendar year to find a job that wants me. I can't imagine applying for less than 5 positions a week, and usually it's at least triple that.

I'd love to hear a different strategy for a developer that doesn't specialize in any given language or technology. Most of the employment gates seem locked for me. Yet I hear of other people doing things just like that and making bank from it. Who knows, maybe people don't like me as much as I don't like them.

Although I've never been primarily a developer, it's always been about the people I know and have worked with in some manner. My network, if you would, although that term tends to get conflated with things like "networking events." Job-seeking hasn't been about about applying to posted jobs for me since I've been working professionally for decades.

Even in school I wasn't applying to multiple positions per day on average. Probably a more focused strategy is indicated than sending applications into the void.

Fair, yeah. I don't have a professional network. I find the folks I work with to always be insufferable. Guess it'll be launching resumes into the void. Thanks for the perspective.

As a currently not employed person, one interesting thing to note about me is that I have no income, which means not much money to pay for things.

I see this argument a lot, yet it falls apart upon closer inspection, I'm talking a few dollars a month to put your best foot forward at jobs that suit you rather than spray at basically every single open position and take whatever you can get.

Try to see this from the other side of the equation.

> I see this argument a lot, yet it falls apart upon closer inspection

But does it, though? I don't think so.

> I'm talking a few dollars a month to put your best foot forward (...)

No, it really is not, and your portrayal really feels like a fraudulent way to frame the service.

No job applicant becomes better suited for a position if they apply through service A or B. Moreover, the only thing that this sort of service enables is throwing your hat in the race, and it's up to the candidate to successfully pass all subsequent tears. This sort of service does absolutely nothing to help you with those stages of the process, which are the ones that matter.

> Try to see this from the other side of the equation.

This is one of the many mistakes you're making. For the job seeker, there is only one side: the job seeker's side. There a already N services out there that allows them to apply for a job. None of them charges them a cent. Some companies even go through the trouble of posting the same job ad in multiple services. Some companies even hire multiple recruiters to find them the job applicant they are looking for. A job applicant can already apply through N services for free. Why would a job applicant suddenly feel the need to pay for the N+1?

It's stupid to confuse "have money" with willingness to pay, and mentioning vacuous statements like "sides of the equation" changes nothing.

> your portrayal really feels like a fraudulent way to frame

This an an incredibly offensive thing to say, there's definitely a fraud here and it is not me, you should probably try harder next time with your sigint thing :) Good luck with it mate, please don't ever again.

> This an an incredibly offensive thing to say (...)

I'm pointing out a fundamental trait of a system: if a service charges users for each job application, regardless of their nature, then there's a perverse incentive for service operators to maximize the number of job ads a user applies to.

This includes but is not limited to creating fake job adverts.

Do you disagree?

> then there's a perverse incentive for service operators to maximize the number of job ads a user applies to.

Is that not an incentive for the service operators to find more employers? No one is forcing you to apply for a job hopefully.

When the cost for applying is zero all you get is:

- puffed up resumes

- laughable experience in the stack that doesn't last a few minutes upon (time consuming) inspection

- bad cultural fit

- fake human beings who aren't even real and are actually just devshops in third world pretending to be Europeans with fake personas and everything

- the list goes on...

These things are expensive on the other end, yet it costs a person exactly $0.00 to send that resume, it's the bullshit asymmetry principle at work, there's so much time and effort required to refute job applicants that you basically have to give up.

Again I'm asking you to go post a remote job and see for yourself. Please, try to see this from the other side, it might even benefit you as a jobseeker to do so :|

Sure, and you certainly have future money. if the app is that good that is.

I have thought about this because I've wanted such a platform as a candidate, and I think an interesting angle would be having the jobseeker's loved ones buy it for them as a gift. Many times, I've been sad that I wanted to "help someone " with their search but I did not myself have a role and didn't feel effective. Friends who are unemployed usually won't accept cash from you but they might accept a subscription to a job search service.

> I honestly think you should aim to make jobseekers pay instead of the job offerers.

If I was a job seeker, specially if I was out of a job, I would never ever spend a single cent on a job application service, particularly one that does not work as a job board.

All job boards such as LinkedIn already support some job application tracker features, including through third-party services. If you have access to a text file/spreadsheet, you can easily fill in the blanks to track your own job applications. Any third party job application service ends up being only the n+1 webapp you'll be using anyway,so why pay for the one out of n+1 particularly if it doesn't add any value?

There are plenty of job application tracking services out there already, but from the applicant's pov the only issue worth fixing is how you end up using a different service for each company you applied for. Job boards such as LinkedIn kind of mitigate this problem due to its massive adoption, but still some companies only use LinkedIn to route applicants to their own service. Adding yet another job application tracker to the mix solves nothing, and is definitely not worth paying for as an applicant.

> If I was a job seeker, specially if I was out of a job, I would never ever spend a single cent on a job application service

Find this very hard to believe. You really wouldn't spend $1 to submit a job application to a position that is your bread and butter while unemployed? Even if it meant there wasn't hundreds of others spamming the same endpoint? Taking such an ideological high ground over a few cents rarely works out well.

I've seen/been on both ends long before covid/wfh stuff and the worldwide remote market is a complete fucking mess today due to automation, it's bots all the way down and not a single bit closer to good client/contractor relationships, you really have to wade through the weeds to find anyone half decent.

Again, I ask you to post a job online and see the results for yourself then reconsider my comment.

> Find this very hard to believe. You really wouldn't spend $1 to submit a job application to a position that is your bread and butter while unemployed?

No, it's a stupid concept, and one that turns posting fake job ads into a profitable scam.

> Even if it meant there wasn't hundreds of others spamming the same endpoint?

Take a minute to think about that nonsense. Do you really think a company will want to risk losing the ideal candidate to fill it's position just because some mastermind decided to charge for each application?

Specially when every single company out there already has no problem posting their own job ads without charging applicants.

> Taking such an ideological high ground over a few cents rarely works out well.

Nonsense. It's a stupid move that goes against the best interests of all parties involved. But don't take my word for it. Go ahead and invest your cash on yet another job tracking service and put a paywall on applicants. Best of luck.

This is already how it works for renting an apartment in the US (and often up to $75 per applicant, so each roommate has to pay!), the fact that companies don't charge you an application fee is merely convention. I'd be horrified but not surprised if we see a day where minimum wage jobs start charging an application fee to "cover the cost of background checks" or some other nonsense like that as corporate greed stretches ever further.

> turns posting fake job ads into a profitable scam

God forbid that the average software developer actually does 5 mins of research into the company before shooting off a resume, even worse before loading 700 npm packages and running build scripts on their computer for a quick "test" assessment?

All I see in this thread is reactionary stuff from people who get kneejerk offended by the idea of paying to apply to jobs. The market is getting entirely automated from end to end and some who want to hire don't particularly want that.

So it looks like you have no clue really why an employer would pay? Maybe when things become tight you would consider selling some user data? Or we can just trust you 100% as you are a solid guy?

I'm confused. Are you honestly selling to the CEO?

If someone down the ladder, who exactly?

What kind of competitive benchmarking would you offer?

Compensation is top of mind for me. An applicant [EDIT: application, not applicant] tracking system is well-positioned to have a solid, up-to-date view into the compensation landscape, unlike sites like Glassdoor and Blind which are more lagging and self-selecting. Balanced with privacy, there is some real opportunity here. Outside of compensation - all sorts of analytics pertaining to interview process, how quickly competitors fill their roles, that sort of data.

Why is an applicant tracking system have an up to date view of the compensation landscape? Would I be required to submit how much I was offered to your system? Why would that be necessary?

That's a fair question - and no, almost all data is optional. But... people do enter this, and companies have roles with open compensation as well. I'm talking about an aggregated view into anonymized data here.

EDIT: Just realized I wrote "applicant tracking system" above. Total slip of the tongue, this is an _application_ tracking platform for job seekers, not an ATS used by companies. Though I do sometimes think of Rolepad as an ATS for the candidate.

Why not just gather all the roles with open compensation out there and aggregate that data then, instead of tracking only the ones your users apply to?

I can see value in tracking offers to see how negotiations are going. so if there's standard fields for this, then that's a way he could track comp data without requiring, and even get offer increase info which is probably even more valuable.

I feel like at this point you're also building glassdoor or levels.fyi in addition to rolepad.

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