Ask HN: Would a Job Site with Public Applications Be Better? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would a Job Site with Public Applications Be Better?

3 pointsCM305 comments

As in, every application for every job is viewable in full by users or the general public, along with information about how far that individual got in the process (rejected before first interview, rejected after 1st/2nd/3rd interview, given offer, hired). This seems like it would help with a few things:

1. It'd accurately show how many candidates applied for each role, and how many were rejected at each stage.

2. It'd indicate what the automated systems/AI/HR department are looking for in a CV/resume, since you could note which skills and past experiences result in an offer and which result in a quick rejection.

3. Ghost jobs would be easily spottable, since no one would be marked as 'hired'.

4. Racism/sexism/classism/ageism/etc could potentially be detected, based on what candidates got chosen and what they filled in during the application (many seem to ask for gender, ethnicity, age group, etc).

Obviously, I'm sure companies would absolutely hate it (in the same way and for the same reasons they hate salary transparency), and there might be some privacy implications, but it feels like it would probably tip the balance far more in favour of the prospective employee than the employer for once, and given a better indication of what you're doing wrong with your applications if not hired/offered interviews.

What do you think?

there might be some privacy implications

This is a staggering understatement. It would be instantly banned in Europe for a start.

it feels like it would probably tip the balance far more in favour of the prospective employee than the employer for once

The majority of job applicants are already employed. Publicly declaring they are applying for jobs elsewhere would be career suicide.

Ghost jobs would be easily spottable, since no one would be marked as 'hired'.

You give way too much credit to companies. Most companies are terrible at keeping their own internal Applicant Tracking Systems up to date as it is.

Sounds great in theory.

If one could figure out how to get companies to actually use it which seems highly unlikely.

In a presumably asymmetrical information process where one side has more information that’s valuable to the other but not shared the only reason the informed side would share is for their benefit or they were forced to share.

So if sharing all that info you mentioned would somehow improve their hiring process i.e lower costs, decrease false positives (hiring bad candidates), increase overall quality of hired candidates, etc. then some companies may be interested in that value trade off.

Other option being forcing companies to share info through say lowering access overall to candidates (we all left LinkedIn and others and only communicated, applied, etc through your new site).

* I would say only good candidates could move leaving only bad ones on LinkedIn but “good” is subjective and I think the lower threshold on quality companies will accept in candidates is sadly lower than many of us like to think.

Also there’s an assumption of information asymmetry here but in reality we have as little information on companies hiring processes as they potentially do on our individual job searches.

If your site also included visibility into candidates search, how many you applied to, how many interviews you got and success/failure rate, why you didn’t call that company back or ultimately didn’t choose one offer over the other then it actually would be lifting the information veil on both sides so to speak.

Of course, many candidates may not be comfortable revealing that info if currently working due to possible retaliation (even if technically illegal). So you’re left with candidates that are unemployed currently who are at disadvantage in favor of hiring companies.

Put another way, if you were the world’s most desirable candidate for whatever field and level you’re at, it was known and agreed far and wide, would it benefit you to share where you applied, how you did, etc?

All this being said, my aim is never discourage someone from trying to solve a problem they believe is important nor flatly deny that something could work just providing some things to think about to hopefully help somehow.

As a job applicant, I wouldn't touch a site that did this. I don't want the details of my application (or even whether or not I submitted one at all) to be publicly accessible.

Since many companies now use AI to filter applications, viewing which resumes made it to which stage would offer insight into what qualifications, experiences, and keywords are triggering progress in the system.

> and there might be some privacy implications

Huge implications. It sounds like a data broker's dream. I would never apply to a job that had a process like this.

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