Show HN: Help job seekers by letting them ask employees anonymous questions | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Help job seekers by letting them ask employees anonymous questions

deskanything.com

55 pointsmillerski15050 comments

Love the idea. I have a bunch of suggestions, hopefully they're helpful:

--- Change cc to something like "a particular employee". I'm assuming it's there to target someone particular, like Jim Brown, Engineer at AnyCo. Right now it's a little unclear.

--- Make it more clear that the page scrolls down further. Right now there's no indication.

--- There's no link to the TOS

--- The last sentence is rambly: We can't guarantee an answer, but we will forward questions to companies and have built a public interface for them to respond. Maybe just change it to We can't guarantee an answer, but we'll try our best! Read more about how it works. (with a link to how it works)

--- How do I know that a) this person works there and b) I won't just hear good news from the PR person?

Good luck!

Thanks! Making some of these changes now. We're working on the fly so we're not totally sure how companies will respond, but there is definitely demand from people with questions. The goal is to have employees answer with their real names so you can solve (a) & (b) above.

For a while I've been thinking about how to provide job seekers with the type of information one usually acquires AFTER working in a position for a certain amount of time. A sort of "if I knew then what I know now" collection of employee data. It wasn't going to be company specific, rather position specific.

After thinking about what people actually WANT, I figured they wouldn't want to wade through thousands (more?) job descriptions. Don't tell me what's out there, just tell me what I would be good at and would like.

So I started to think about a tool that would categorize available jobs based on what people REALLY look for in a job. Users could identify what they (thought) they wanted and the tool would show them jobs that fit.

After many months I was losing interest. Then I recently discovered Aaron Swartz was working on something similar. "...we did agree on another good idea: a wiki to tell students what different jobs are like. That site should be launching soon."[1]

I'm not sure how far Aaron got with the project, but I think the idea is still viable. I often find myself doing a lot of research and job description comparisons to get past the cookie cutter information to attempt to answer the question, "what exactly will I be doing for you?"

Maybe I'm alone, but the majority of job interviews I've had were more about seeking information about the work I was going to be doing. Information I should have had well before I ever applied.

[1]https://aaronsw.jottit.com/howtoget

Thanks for sharing. We didn't know about Aaron's project, but it definitely resonates. We definitely agree with you here --> "Information I should had well before I ever applied". Hopefully companies / their employees will answer the questions!

Not completely fleshed out jemka, but we're working on this over at Work for Pie. https://workforpie.com/companies/gallery/

Free for companies to set up a page.

As an employer I would want to block this in an instant. It's the perfect addition to any social engineering arsenal. If it works, great for finding out little details about a company that only an insider would know, to support a more thorough corporate espionage or hacking attempt.

Also, given that out of the volume of incoming queries that companies get only a tiny fraction is related to potential employment there, you'd have to figure out how to filter out people looking for 1) sales leads, 2) customer support, 3) freebies, 4) a direct line to the CEO for their complaints, 5) a direct line to the CEO for their charity sponsorship, etc.

Sorry about being harsh. I just think it could be a bit of a Pandora's Box.

Thanks for the feedback. So far the questions are mostly about what it's like to apply, interview, and work at a company. We'll let companies answer what they want to. The purpose is to make information about jobs more transparent. There are numerous questions that could help a job seeker / candidate (and thus an employer) that aren't harmful to anyone. Maybe they'll answer those, we'll see.

First off I love this site, wow what a great idea!

I think a solution to the concern is to allow employers to mark harmful information and for that information to be removed. I know that then the employers could attempt to remove bad reviews, but this is where you'd need human interaction at some level.

Give employers 5 strikes, if they attempt to take down something defaming just because it's a bad review that's a strike. If they get to 5 they can't make a request for a set time frame (to keep the amount of human intervention to a minimum). The reverse could be true of your anonymous users. The 5 strikes is arbitrary.

I work in corporate information security, and I have a few questions. The first is what email addresses these questions will go to. HR? Random employees? Both? The "Contact Us" address on their website? If it's going to random employees, how are you getting these email addresses to contact the employees? If I say to email John Smith, how do you know if the email address is john.smith@company.com or jsmith@company.com?

I like the idea behind this, I do. It's useful to know some insider information. But it's difficult to train employees not to respond to things that seem like social engineering. What I'm looking to know is, how can I be sure that the people I'm trying to help aren't giving away restricted information to anyone who asks? If I fill in the form and say "what kind of card access system does your company use", or maybe even something as innocuous as "does your company have a designated area for smokers to be outside?", this could be giving away a lot to a competent social engineer. I like the idea. But I'm also a bit concerned.

It breaks the back button (ff 19). Also what is stopping employees just email the company themselves?

anonymity.

What does it even mean to "just email the company"?

Thanks, looking into it (ff 19).

Back button breaks for me too (latest Chrome). Clicking on 'see companies with questions' shows the questions, but the url doesn't change and my back button doesn't do anything.

Thanks, looking into it now

We allow potential employees to ask questions during interviews. Almost everything is open for ask. I don't understand why anyone would want to work at a company which wasn't like this. Then again, there's lots of people who work at terrible jobs...

Hopefully these companies would be willing to answer questions publicly for everyone to benefit (= our goal)!

I have a feeling there are some questions that you'd like to ask about a company, but actually asking during the interview might not be the best thing to do.

"Is the manager of WebAPP a micromanager?"

"Do you guys have to give daily or weekly status reports?"

"Are there any slackers on the team that probably should have been fired but HR/management hasn't gotten around to it?"

"Do you have a work environment that allows excessive swearing?"

"Do you guys make a lot of inappropriate jokes?"

Agree!

This website won't help with that, as the answerers have to use their real name. Only the askers are anonymous.

Even if you allow any questions I doubt people would actually dare to ask anything so I definitely see a place for this service.

"Almost everything is open for ask"

Exactly. You said "almost". The idea (hopefully) of this platform is to get rid of the word "almost" and just have "Everything is open for ask".

Yes but:

-You can't always trust those answers since the person doing the interviewing may be in the happy employee camp and not see as many problems as somebody in a different part of the company.

-You also might be lied to if they desperately need somebody to accept.

-It may undermine you to ask questions like: "What are the actual hours?", "How long is lunch?", "Is being late big deal?", "Is vacation easy to get approved?", etc.

To your first point, employers will generally utilize happier, fresher employees to do interviews for this very reason. It's easier for them to be happier about their company :)

So even though it's probably genuine enthusiasm, it's still engineered.

If I were an employer who was paranoid about this I would ask dummy questions in an attempt to weed out the "leaks".

Unless the company is very large this shouldn't be too difficult, even looking at writing style and common typos.

Thanks for the comment. The full product will make this more clear, but the idea is to allow anonymous questions and answers will be from real employees who show their names.

There might be a section later for (current or former) employees to review or answer questions about their company anonymously, but that'd be broken out.

> Answers will be from real employees who show their names.

Honestly, that seems to kind of defeat the whole purpose, doesn't it?

I'm assuming that questions are all going to be more-or-less standard. The value is in the "ugly" but true answers (e.g. the product manager is an idiot and management is a disaster, and the product will implode within a year), which no employee would ever sign their name to.

So what kind of value is this site attempting to provide, in the end? Is it trying to simply be a database on workplaces? I don't really understand what having anonymous questions has to do with anything.

It might be useful to get former employees opinions. I am sure rachelbythebay will give you unfiltered answers about what her experience was like with Google. Former employees jobs don't depend on toeing the line.

I would worry that this might open someone to a lawsuit, even an ex employee if they cannot be anonymous.

However with anonymity it would be very open to shilling.

If you aren't already, please consider collecting their tenure with the company. That way, you can see who's been there a week, a month, a year, or ten. Then, once you've been running this for a while, start looking at the data for patterns. See if people get unhappy after a certain length of time. Or, see if the responses all take a downturn after a certain date.

Then see if you can correlate that with public output from the company: products, services, that sort of thing. You could have something really valuable here: a finger on the pulse of a bunch of companies, in effect.

Thanks! Great feedback and ideas.

Awesome idea! Great companies should love this. It attracts passive job applicants - people currently employed but looking for a better job or company. Passive job seekers are often deterred from looking online because it takes so much time to go through all the irrelevant job posts to find the few they really want. Small companies that are great places to work but haven't received awards or press attention get lost in the mix on job boards. Now they can use this tool to stand out. Benefits both sides.

Thanks and agree!

I'm curious how this actually works.

If I put in the name of a company and a specific employee, how do you go about getting the answer to my question?

Thanks for asking. We're going to pool the questions together and send them over to the company and let them know they can answer them (publicly) on an interface we built for them. If someone has cced an employee, we'll put them on the email. We'll probably send to HR or the founder(s), depending on how big the company is. We're not sure yet how companies will respond.

I am pretty sure that you are just going to get filtered PR bullshit responses. Unicorns and rainbows.

Get some actual off the record/anonymous answers and then things might get interesting.

A little feedback:

I think the real interesting answers won't necessarily come from the companies themselves. I think it's a good start, but much more interesting from my perspective is what employees with varying opinions--from glowing to not so glowing--might have to say. I think Glassdoor is close, but it's really wonky to use imo. An easier to use or niche version of Glassdoor would be cool.

What reason would the company employee (identified by name) have to give an answer that contradicts the company line, or casts the company in a poor light?

I'm trying to find a way this could work, but I don't see one - not because of your implementation, but because there's a fundamental information imbalance and incentive problem.

It's a good question. We think there a lot of questions with answers that are beneficial to both sides. Perhaps some companies won't filter their employees - we're not sure. We might break out a section that allows employees to review or answer questions anonymously.

In fact, now that I cast my mind back to old paperwork, making any kind of public statement while identifying yourself as a company employee ... may violate your employment agreement, unless you're authorized to speak on behalf of the company.

The whole idea hinges on getting employees to break confidentiality agreements. Maybe target the company instead of the employees? I know it's not as fast/interesting/honest, but some of the questions are easy and companies might actually want to participate so they can recruit.

Good feedback. The company will be involved too. We're going to pool the questions, send them to a bunch of employees (including HR) and the company can decide how and if it wants to answer. Agree on it can help recruiting, that's part of the goal!

The Vault has provided this type of information for aspiring consulting, investment banking, and legal professionals. I used it to evaluate opportunities at management consulting firms. The Vault has information about interviewing, salaries by position, and life at the firm.

Requiring the employees to attach their names to answers publicly is guaranteed to produce nothing but puff pieces.

Now if the answers were also anonymous, insomuch as that only the site knows who the employee is, you might end up with something usable.

Just putting it out there so it won't sound like I'm trolling: I like it. Now, isn't this a subset of Quora? (which might not be a bad thing because it's trying to grab a particular niche, but still I'd like to understand the "secret sauce" here)

Focus is a big part along with trying to get the company buy in to using it as a tool for their benefit. Building the product around helping people find info about jobs or careers will change some aspects of the architecture and layout.

I wonder how you would verify if a person actually works or worked for the company in question. Getting this wrong would allow for fake responses.

Auth with a social account (Linkedin or Facebook) or verifying via their company email.

Who did the UX/UI?

We did. cc/ @anto215

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