Ask HN: Thoughts on our MVP that helps people find a better career? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Thoughts on our MVP that helps people find a better career?

jobgps.com

20 pointsmikejobgps34 comments

2 years ago, in my last semester at the university, I volunteered at doing an intro-course for first-semester computer science students. Basically, we made sure they transitioned to the university learning style and they've got some student instead of a prof to talk to. Each student had to prepare a talk on a relevant topic.

One of the things we talked about was career options. Imo, first you want to do a broad search, and then you want to dive into specific careers. I.e. a computer science student could get into software development, system administration or consulting. If development sounds most interesting, she should learn about the differences between several technical areas (frontend/backend) as well as company types (software shop/IT dep in larger corp/agency).

One of the students picked up a book on career options for computer science students and did a 30 min talk. I wasn't really happy with the book and shortening it to 30 min didn't really help, but oh well. But it definitely broadened the horizon of most students. They either didn't have any clear picture of a job, or they knew one or two types of jobs because someone in their social circle happened to have that particular job.

If I had given my student(s) your MVP, it would have most likely failed. With 3 random jobs displayed, it's not broad enough to lay out different career options. Plus, job ads, especially for software developers, teach you as much about being a software developer as a car commercial teaches you about driving a car.

To finding "a better career", I'd still recommend my students a book that tries to list most major career options, and tries to objectively name (dis-)advantages of each job. Job ads, no matter how well done, are a terrible first place to start the search.

That said, I think you've found a problem that currently isn't solved very well and I'd look forward to the next iteration of your MVP.

Hi CookWithMe. On your first point, 100% correct. The broad search is the whole idea. We've got a lot of work to go and it's very early days at present (we also look forward to our second iteration :))

Do you happen to know the name of this book? Would love to have a look at it.

Given your feedback is very considered, it would be fantastic if you could sign up to our page or shoot us an email on our contact page so we can keep in touch and hear more of your thoughts as we develop the platform.

Thanks again and keep the insightful comments coming!

I like the name.

Here's a problem I quickly ran into. I browsed to companies. I clicked on the company Autotask. I was mostly checking out the design, but I noticed something curious. On the right it lists the location + google map.

What country is Autotask located in? No clue. All it says is "East Greenbush, Rensselaer" and the Google map is devoid of any further relevant information. I could guess it's an Australian company, but....

The site is sort of ok looking, but it seems very cookie-cutter. Kind of looks like a template site for bootstrap. Some more personality would be nice, something more unique to whatever image JobGPS is looking to broadcast.

I clicked the Navigate button on the home page without typing in anything, and it didn't do anything at all. It should do something, if just tell me to type something. I also typed in "guitarist" (to test it) and it rolled down an empty gray space; it should do something constructive instead upon entering non-useful text. I also tried entering text and hitting enter on my keyboard and it failed to do anything; it also wouldn't respond to the enter key upon selecting an actual degree properly.

The register and sign-in buttons in the top nav aren't very good. The text definitely shouldn't turn black against that background color.

This is a slightly OCD issue: the spacing in the top nav between "jobs | companies | register" drives me crazy (that jobs is so far apart from companies, compared to companies and register; whereas I think the sign up / sign in buttons should be separated more so from the main nav items; again, not a critical issue ;) ).

Great feedback. What did you have in mind when you mentioned more personality on the site? Also, would you be interested in learning about the various roles which are available after your degree?

There's no way I'm reading that big slab of text down the bottom of the home page. Understand the SEO benefits, but I'm sure you could break it up into meaningful sections and make it seem a bit less keyword stuffy.

Thanks for that. It's more for SEO than anything else.

Yes, definitely breaking into smaller paragraphs will make it far more readable.

Thanks gpsarakis. Appreciate the feedback.

>Understand the SEO benefits a.k.a. minimal to none to pot. downside, google is not stupid, big textblobs == not that much value, lots and lots of keywords == negative value, low contrast == bad idea

not every bad idea is good SEO ....

I'd like something that is based on looking at what jobs people from a particular degree actually do -

A lot of people that I graduated electronics with now work in Finance (as quants or non-IT) because the money is better and banks love 'numerate' people. A couple of them went into accounting. I'd say more are doing other 'numeric jobs' than remained in electronics.

This isn't reflected in careers suggestions I read around the internet.

Could you derive this kind of data from linkedin to produce something empirically driven?

I respect the MVP philosophy, but a location filter better be coming soon. Otherwise it's an MVP that helps people find a better career and move city/country.

No problem, we will certainly be introducing that functionality.

Which kinds of roles and organisations would you be keen to learn more about?

I don't think the youtube videos add enough to justify the clutter. I'd rather have more text details/stats on the initial job descriptions.

Thanks Moya. What types of detail and stats would you like to see?

Appreciate the feedback and keep it coming!

I'd like to see figures like average salary, number of listings, and a succinct description of the role. Maybe even something in the same vein as the "Company Perks" on the individual company pages.

If the search results had videos explaining what you'd do in the role, would you find that helpful? Thanks again mate!

I think the role explanations should be clearly expressed in text on the site. I'm not saying the videos aren't helpful - they should just be included later in the navigation process.

Maybe I'll watch a video about Optiver when I've narrowed down a path, but initially I'm interested in the career and the roles associated with it.

Good point. When you mention careers and roles associated with it, do you mean the industry and the sub-roles within that particular industry?

Great feedback again, you're a champion!

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

No problem. I look forward to watching your progress :)

Mike: i'd look into http://www.careerleader.com/ for some inspiration, their career assessment approach and scoring system is quite comprehensive and effective. the goal behind the assessment report is to rank - align someone's interest & core activities. then putting all together for you to take actions ...

Given that my search yielded jobs in the same city, I was curious how that was happening given an earlier commenter noted your lack of location filter. Then I realised you are a Sydney company backed from USyd. Good luck with the site, Sydney needs more startup success stories. Most of my feedback has been covered by other commenters. Fix that and you are on the right track.

On the top nav bar (on the main page), I found it annoying how only the register and login links turn black when moused over, while the other two become a (too subtle) brighter white. This seemed inconsistent, and made me think the links weren't actually links. Also, black might not be the best mouse-over color on the dark blue background.

Appreciate the feedback. What do you think of the idea of a job site which allows you to view a variety of different roles relevant to your skills rather than 10s of the same job?

Doesn't really do anything better than the (many) alternatives. What do you do better than your competitors?

I'd argue it's worse - it's based off degrees, and only shows me three jobs at a time.

Don't want to sound harsh, just some honest feedback :)

No, thank you for the honest feedback! The idea is to show people the spectrum of roles available to their degree disciplines rather than 100 of the same roles.

There is still a lot of work to be done but we hope to become the destination where people see organisations and positions which they may not have considered.

Out of interest, if we're targeting Uni/College graduates why do you feel it's not ideal to search by degree type?

I'd just like to reiterate what timtamboy63 has already stated. There are an estimated 100,000 job boards around the world in various industries, sectors, cities and niches.

Each of these offer the ability to browse for skills/degrees.

For example, I just did a search for "graduate jobs australia" in Google and followed the top link to "www.seek.com.au/graduate-jobs/‎" where I was able to type in "engineering" and "bachelor of engineering" and saw a refined list of applicable opportunities.

In that above list, I'm presented with jobs that I would not have considered because the search was not job title based but degree based.

How do you differ from that experience?

I like the UI experience. You'll definitely need to consider a "location" field because Australia is a pretty big country!

Keep up the good work :)

Great question and thanks for the feedback. For the most part, platforms like SEEK assume you know what you want to do. The rationale is that many graduate opportunities hire from a variety of degree disciplines which are not necessarily listed in job descriptions and go undiscovered by a lot of candidates who have never considered a particular option.

We only want one search result per industry or role in the primary search, not 20 "Engineering" and 2 others.

Keep the comments coming it's great feedback for us and we're taking it all on board.

Do you think job boards meet your needs currently or would you prefer to see something different on them?

Looks good! I'm not looking for a new job, but I can understand the value for someone who is. Some of my friends who have no idea of their career would love this. Do you have more jobs on the way?

Thanks for the feedback, yes we're looking to build up our platform with a lot more companies that are fantastic to work at.

Let me know if you have any more thoughts or questions!

What do you think about changing Navigate Your Career to something else? I'd prefer to understand what to do. Looks good though

Thanks rheotron, suggestions welcome. What about:

"Discover companies and roles you've never considered"

> Discover companies and roles you've never considered

Can't resist saying that linkedin already does that. The kind of jobs they keep suggesting to me are just hilarious.

Your site looks good. Just checked a familiar company's listing. It looked nice.

And I agree, if you are targeting recent graduates, then search by degree is a good starting point. Ideally you should be able to read my mind and my dreams :-), but as a startup going by something that you can feed straight into a simple algorithm is the way to go.

Hi kops, thanks for your comment. The LinkedIn algorithm suggests my software engineering friend to be the head of legal at an investment bank, not ideal.

What kinds of things would you be looking for on a job platform (which can hopefully read your mind and dreams?)

As I said college degree is a good starting point. Next you could collect a few other pointers such as the optional courses a student has taken, their interest in particular industry or field, the people they admire, the place/country they would like to work in etc. All of these can serve as signal to what this person wants. You can even collect these attributes, and some data about the people who are already successful in the industry and build a neural network or some other algo that predicts the most fruitful path for a graduate. All this will give you signals where to concentrate your efforts w.r.t. an individual.

As for reading my mind, that's a little more involved and probably unprofitable/unscalable venture. But just because you asked, i will take a shot. I have always thought about a placement agency where I am not the one being sold but I buy the services of this agency to be on a lookout for jobs/opportunities for me. If this agency manages to become reputable, then companies will seek their help to staff their projects. Once the project is over I move to next interesting thing regardless of the company. I imagine this sounds like a very good consulting firm, but in my version the agency is to be honest to make its money purely from me either as direct fees or retainer or whatever. I should not have an iota of doubt that they will sell my resume to xyz company for a bunch of money and shaft me. The customers of this company will be people like me who are introverts and absolute retards at networking. That's not a pledge to buy anything :-) I think what you are doing is good. Stick to it :-))

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