Our 1-year project: MercuryPuzzle. What do you think? | Hacker News Reader

Our 1-year project: MercuryPuzzle. What do you think?

mercurypuzzle.com

22 pointsdrdoctrine48 comments

I was enthralled until you asked me to create an account - I have so many accounts online that I really don't want to have to remember yet another password (or compromise my security by reusing one). Is forcing account creation key to the core functionality?

Also, I'd be wary of signing up with Facebook for a job-search app - while I'm not actually looking for a new job, if I were that'd put me off in case you posted a notification to my wall.

Thanks for the feedback! The overall goal of the platform is to connect talents with interesting companies. Especially for huge companies it is often hard to find suitable candidates. If you wouldn't register they couldn't reach out to you at a later point.

You are right about facebook! That's exactly why we choose to implemenent the mannual signup option without facebook. But we do respect the privacy of our users very much! We never post on any walls or something. In our the privacy settings you can furthermore control the visibility of every single field on your profile.

would it not be possible to leave an email address without registering for an account? It's more the password side that's a pain really.

Also in response to your edit, I do trust that you guys are honest but I'm aware of a lot of sites which use Facebook Connect to get permissions to someone's wall and just start spamming them heavily. By emphasising Facebook Connect you may get tarred with the same brush.

I'd add Mozilla Persona, it's very easy to do.

you could use the facebook sign-up...

read the second paragraph, I edited it in shortly after posting

sorry - i shot too fast ;). i agree - facebook is not the ideal job application profile...

Have you considered offering a LinkedIn signup option?

I think most people would be ok using that for something career-oriented.

so, let me translate that:

I've realized that password security is important, but instead of using any of the myriad password management tools out there I've decided to stop signing up for new things on the web. Please compensate for my lack of action. Also, i realize you have this easy Facebook signup thing, but Facebook is notoriously bad about privacy and apps frequently do things I don't want them to. As I've shown that I'm not an idiot by knowing that password security is important, it is not surprising to think that I, and other non-idiots, don't want to hook our facebook accounts to job hunting sites just to check them out. The consequences could be horrendous.

wow, that's a pretty shitty attitude you've got there. You don't need to be sarcastic and condescending to disagree with me.

the point that I was trying to make which you seem to have completely misunderstood is that it doesn't seems necessary to create an account to use this application; I sign up for new things all the time but I don't think it's necessary for me in this case and feels like a barrier to entry. The OP asked for feedback, and I provided it based on my opinion on how I personally would use the service.

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the late reply, HN thought I was replying too fast so it stopped me.. ;)

For the matching part you are absolutely right, it's not necessary to create an account for that. However, our overall goal is to connect talented people with matching companies and people with similar career paths. It's much easier to take advantage of this networking effect with active accounts. Maybe we can manage to let you create your profile at a later point of the path, I'll bring this to discussion tomorrow!

Hmm, it doesn't seem to be working for me (Chrome, Windows atm.): http://i.imgur.com/Z9aojGD.png

If I just choose randomly and click Continue the next screen is the same.

> <label class="radio"> > <input value="342" name="answer" type="radio"> > </label>

While they do have values (e.g. 342), I have no idea what they're suppose to represent.

There are no javascript errors.

Hi! Thanks for the report! This is new to us :/ Which browser culture do you have? Does it work for you if you switch to english at the bottom of the page?

It does work (also text on the front page when choosing field of interest). I had no idea I was not on english, and I hadn't chosen Dutch - I'm not in Netherlands.

I can not reset my answer though. If I choose "Back to start" followed by "Back to frontpage" and start over, I'm at step 3/7 again.

Not sure if it's related, but I see the (otherwise great) introduction/tour every time I restart.

Also, I can start matching without choosing a field of interest.

I'm not trying to pile on, I'm just writing down what I know in case it can help you solve it (or confirm that it only happens to me).

Trying on Chrome on Mac does work, but also has the "stuck at step 3/7" problem.

Firefox on Mac does work.

Only way I can reset it seems to be to delete all cookies.

Liking the questions, short and to the point. Great design and feel :)

Thank you very much! We'll look into that!

Nice UI, but you lost my focus after filling out the initial questions with the:

"I have read the terms and conditions of membership and the privacy policy and agree with the content."

I clicked on one of the embedded links, such as the terms and I lost the page I was looking at. Pressing back then reset everything. However, if I click the logo it looks like its restored. I'd say open in new window or have a dialog.

Also, why do you need a date of birth?

i guess this is an important criteria for recruiters/companies

An illegal one, in many (most?) places.

Really, I did not know that. I think at least it is a useful one, as it highly corellates with a person's experience.

In the U.S. definitely. Check out The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)

Nice UI. What does those button at the landing page mean? I was there expecting for a hint to come up from any of the buttons. Then, for some reason, I didn't get what I think were questions since after the "tutorial" (really nice) that part was all white with only the radio buttons.

seems you're having the same problem as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5456874

Looks great!

A couple of things:

1) The blue background in the "They are already in" section of the website is flickering on my laptop (13" non-retina MPB).

2) Why do you need so much information from my Facebook login? I understand Email and profile information, but why photos, status updates, and friends' profile information?

We analyze friends interaction to calculate some kind of "best friends score". Basicly we try to figure out who your best friends are and take this into account to improve the matching.

In the assessment, 'help' and 'next' should be farther apart, different colors, maybe in different places, and definitely bigger.

EDIT: And I get really turned off when I have to spam my friends with requests, so thanks for giving me the option not to.

EDIT2: This assessment is painfully long.

I wonder if the companies that "match" me know about their participation in the project...

Your location field when signing up barely works at all and doesn't have instructions that are helpful. I've searched for at least 15 combinations of Philadelphia, PA United States and every time it comes up with nothing.

Also there is no way to delete my account.

We are still working on that, we will defenetely impelement this in the near future. You will receive a newsletter when it's ready! If you can't wait shoot us a mail to account@mercurypuzzle.com that you want your account to be removed.

for me it works - even though it is very slow...

The location field is for cities only. We tested it with very small cities around europe, it is based on OSM so it should work in the US too. Please let me know if it's still not working for you: birke@mercurypuzzle.com

agreed. I tried searching New York but i get some town "New owen" ? in Kentucky.

I'd be interested if this site showed me how to get to a dream job. I'm by no means ready for my dream job, and I'm taking what I think are the correct steps to get to that dream job, but I'm not sure...

The basic idea behind MercuryPuzzle is to evaluate your personality and talents and provide you suggestions of matching companies and people with similar career paths. You can think of it as some kind of career "browser". "if person X is now in position Y, which steps and skill did help to get there?"

I'm able to choose my location once I type it in, but when I click it just goes back to the loading... message. I can't get it to load and it won't let me continue otherwise.

Oh, I just noticed that it was listed a second time in the drop-down and when I choose the lower one it worked. Yay, now I get to explore the website!

I imported data from facebook but the button still says skip. I think it's done but I can't tell. I'll push the skip button but hopefully it doesn't actually skip anything.

Great job guys! I really like the layout and the clear structure of the submenus. I´m curious if you come out on top!

Thank you very much! This means a lot to us! Hehe we thought about that, but we are not participating in the company matching.. ;)

I really like the look and feel of your frontpage! The "retina ready" badge on the right side made me chuckle.. ^^

In level 9 rank (among contacts and global) is shown, but percentile would be more interesting.

seems to be down at the moment I am getting

Error 7 (net::ERR_TIMED_OUT): The operation timed out.

the adress for google is a small sales office in vienna. the adress for microsoft is the headquarters in redmond.

however those are my best-matching companies - sounds legit.

still skeptical, but looking forward to this. Like the functionality n design. Could ease a lot of things for me...keep on going guys

awesome page! I'm sure it is going to make an impact on the online job-application process! What do you guys say?

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