Ask HN: Why is LinkedIn's job search so bad? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is LinkedIn's job search so bad?

3 pointsdcminter3 comments

Why is job search on LinkedIn so terrible? Is LinkedIn's game here to just hang on to the pool of applicants for as long as possible so that their engagement stats look attractive to all the recruiters who pay to put up listings? Or is it more of an incompetence over malice situation?

I'm looking for a job with a smallish company - but I can't specify that.

I'm looking for a hybrid or fully-remote job, but I can't specify a maximum number of office days.

I won't work for gambling companies, but there's no way to specify that - though I guess I can name a handful of industries or companies to constrain my search to.

I can't specify a language for the role.

These seem like basic non-rocket-science facets for a job search site, no? Anyway, is there a third-party way to search LinkedIn that sucks less? Or better yet, is there a less sucky jobs site that covers northern europe?

I spent a few years trying to start my own business. When it was time to look for a job I built something that would ingest job listings, classify them, and create a workflow system for evaluating applications and working through the whole process.

Within a week I'd found a job I really wanted to do at an AI company and aced the interview because I had a great story to tell.

Had my job search ground on I would have declared war on spam job listings on New York's job bank and would have had my systems file complaints about each and every one of them (e.g. supposedly it is a Java job in Syracuse, really it's a COBOL job in Atlanta, it might be there just to not get filled so they can apply for the H-1B lottery)

Incidentally I did find this previous cry from the heart, but it's complaining about a different aspect of LinkedIn's terribleness (keyword search failures):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30159705

I suspect none of it is a mistake. Allowing granular search would not get companies the job advert views they might be “paying for”, and also might reveal the sparseness of the jobs that match your exact criteria.

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