Ask HN: Have the whoishiring posts been useful? Can we do better? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have the whoishiring posts been useful? Can we do better?

25 pointswhoishiring22 comments

Thanks for your input

HN itself is the biggest bottleneck, IMO. A few days after the thread has been posted, it gets paginated, usually into 3 or 4 pages. Assuming you Cmd+F/Ctrl-F for a couple keywords (remote, state, city), you end up having to do 10+ searches, in addition to weeding out the "no remote" matches. On the same note, it's very hard to keep track of new posts after the first day or two, which means you're searching for "minutes ago" "hours ago" "1 day ago" "2 days ago" etc - again, on 3 or 4 pages.

I know there's one user who maintains a site that lists all of the job postings (forgot the url), but personally I'm not a huge fan of the layout.

Indeed, it might be a good idea to have 2/3 separate threads for US/Europe/Asia... or US/Rest of the world since postings regarding jobs in Europe are hardly visible at all.

I totally agree with this. I'd much prefer a separate Euro post.

There should be a separate section for WhoIsHiring on Main Page ordered by month wise.

It should really be merged into the "Jobs" section. That makes the most sense to me.

Totally agree. YC companies can still maintain their advantage by having their listings "stickied"/pinned to the top of the page. In fact, this may help YC companies, since knowing that lots of startups are listed on the jobs page should drive a lot more traffic to that part of HN.

Agreed. I'm a recruiter for a YC company and I would love to see a higher level of functionality with a jobs-specific area focused on all startups. We've gotten some of our most talented candidates and employees from HN.

My experience with it has been positive. I'd say a way to improve it would be to open a third thread for people looking for new full-time jobs (no freelancers or contractors). Like a reverse who is hiring thread. Programmers post their info in it, and companies get in touch. That way, companies can quickly get a good pool of people to interview.

Try it out for this month.

I doubt it will have lots of success. First, companies can use linkedin, or other social networks such as github to reach people, second, most of the people will not want to publicly show that they are looking (their current employer could very well read that thread), and finally as mentioned in another comment, the thread will be way too long (in the "seeking freelancer" thread, there are about 5 times more people looking for work than people hiring).

Fair points. Though I'm sure the HTML template could be modified to not include the username of the person posting. Or people could use throw away accounts. Its doable.

Then you would have lots of throwaways, saying "I am looking for a job, I am good at X and Y, please contact me at somefakeemail@gmail.com". I doubt it will have any success.

Of course this would happen. But do realize how much more valuable the whole site would be to the users and to YC. This should be tested.

I always check them out with lots of hope, but then am dismayed to find that they are usually entirely filled with technical roles and almost completely devoid of any marketing/product/business roles.

This is likely in part due to the HN audience composition, but my hunch is that its also partly because people are making assumptions about the HN audience composition.

I'd love to see one post for technical hiring and one post for business hiring. I think calling it out as its own post would actually encourage people to post those other jobs that they might normally think are not appropriate for the HN audience.

As someone posting in that thread and in our case we don't post those jobs not for the reason you mentioned but (1) because we just don't have many of those jobs available and (2) because we already know people we may to hire so those job positions are filled even before the job is posted/advertised.

I will like this thing to be continued. I have been contacted quite a few times from these posts. The only complain I have that I find more developers looking for job/project than the people seeking developers. This thing needs to be addressed.

I have a suggestion, please make it fortnightly .

Some way to keep the postings brief would be a huge benefit I think. Many are overly long and make for too much information. Less is more. Just the essentials should be listed, with a link to more information if desired. Maybe using a form to fill in the post rather than free-form. Postings should be 4-5 lines long, not 40-50. Filters for location, job type, and skills would be next after getting the brevity handled.

I recently scored a nice internship from last month's, so that is a positive. I also look forward to them because they often showcase companies I may not have heard of so they have the bonus of providing exposure to products and services as well.

I second pknerd's suggestion to make them fortnightly.

Very useful! I got a job through a post. I was able to hire an intern for my employer through a post. The first place to look for my next job will be there.

Search/Sorting is a definite room for improvement so I can narrow down the opportunities that I'm interested in by location, skills, etc. Obviously, the HN comment system is quite limited for that stuff.

The http://hnhiring.me/ site makes the whole thing a lot more useful

I haven't managed to find a job yet, however that is probably due to the fact that I require a H1B visa for the USA. I have actually used the who's hiring threads to meet a lot of people though, I met some interesting entrepreneurs in 2012 via the thread.

I haven't used them directly, but I've browsed a few and they seem to be of pretty high quality.

I hired someone from one. They were awesome.

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