Ask HN: Post-Mortem for "Who wants to be hired"

As someone posting my resume, I actually found it very valuable -- at least for me. I had five different companies reach out to me, and all of them were relevant. Three of them sound very interesting and I am optimistic about those.

I don't think I would have connected with these companies outside of a thread like this. I don't think they have their jobs posted on any of the sites I use (except for one of the opportunities).

As far as concerns, I can see how this thread would have a lot of noise, though it seems most of the postings were of decent quality. But I could see it growing in size, and the noise may overcome the signal at some point.

As far a recurrence goes, I think this should be based on the feedback. I can see how it would be valuable, and it certainly has already been for me, though I hope (thanks to this thread) that I won't be needing it next occurrence if it were to happen, or even for a long time to come.

- For others in the HN community: Did you find it interesting, or did you use it to find fits for opportunities you were aware of? I didn't directly participate in any way, but I did find it interesting. Particularly in opening up the thread and doing a search for "Austin" or "C++" or "Ninja" to get a general feel of how the job-seeking hn community is represented in various vectors. I could see myself actually using it in the future (both to find candidates or potentially find work in the future)

- For everyone: Outside of the above benefits, what concerns or issues do you see with a thread like this, and would you support some sort of recurrence? I think it's worth some sort of recurrence. The biggest issue I saw with it was that it seems like it will unfairly generate more interest in the 'top comments', which in a thread like this would ideally not be ranked by anything more meaningful than who responded first. I would like to hear feedback from those who were listed far down in the thread as to how their experience was, compared to say 'jader201' who says he had a great experience with it (but was within the top 5 most of the time)

I also noticed there were essentially 3 kinds of posts. Purely "mini resume" posts, posts with "this is who I am", and posts with "this is what I'm looking for". I'd be curious as to how different tone resulted in different responses.

Interesting experiment!

The existing "employees choose which companies to respond to" approach is probably most in line with the realities of the tech labor market, and it gives companies a smaller pool of respondents to look at which have (nominally) read and been interested by their most recent job post. And for applicants, you get more leverage if you judge which positions are potentially relevant, then tailor a response for each company. The thread was fairly popular - but I don't think it really improves on the status quo, for either player.

But, I can see it helping for people who are less experienced or confident or whatever and likely to take job posts at face value instead of as a signal of the problems the company is trying to solve through hiring. It would be better to get past that obstacle, but pragmatically it may have its uses.

I agree with you for the most part. However, I don't think any of the companies that reached out to me ever post on the "Who is hiring" thread.

Maybe my situation was an edge case -- I'm a C# developer, and I think my post stayed within the top 5 most of the time. So others may not have had the same experience, which is why I wanted to gather more feedback. If many others had a similar experience, then I think the "Who is hiring" thread may not be enough, or may need some tweaking.

Yeah, I think that's most of how it could generate benefit, i.e. companies often don't want to post in much the same way that applicants often don't want to pitch. It's easy to find plausible excuses.

Highly-sorted posts are almost certainly an edge case, but convolved against other factors (e.g. relative popularity of C#, how well post resonated with the subset of hiring viewers who ended up seeing it). Whoever ended up with post #70 likely got far fewer views relative to post quality & desirability factors, and thus fewer responses.

But at the same time, "uncommon yet high-demand" keywords probably got a Ctrl+F bonus. It's an SEO problem as much as a pitching problem, and more so if you're not favored by HN's comment sorting.

I feel like this thread shouldn't be useful, but because the state of tech recruiting is so generally loathsome, it does create value. I saw a couple candidates in the DC area on there that I will probably reach out to soon.

I think it's also better for developers, because it puts you in the position of having them (the hiring party) come to you, versus the monthly whoishiring thread where it works the other way around... a subtle but nevertheless important difference.

I wish this thread had existed when I was looking for work a few months back - hopefully it will still be around when I come on the market again.

I posted my resume, but I was 2 days late (at work when it was posted, and remembered until the next morning). I had no replies, but I find it invaluable to be able to put myself out there without LinkedIn/DICE. I got my current job through DICE and I got calls incessantly for a week, mostly from really clueless recruiters who would call me and ask me to tell them what "OOP" meant. I'm only on my first job, so my "Network" isn't impressive, most of them are in a city I don't have an interest living in for various reasons.

As for recurrence, I thought there was enough interest (over 300 comments!) that it would add value as a monthly thread.

As someone who is currently looking for a job, I'm slightly annoyed (with myself) that I missed it. There are several salient points already made about its merits and drawbacks, but please consider this a vote for some kind of periodic recurrence. Being that I'm looking for a relatively junior position, I did appreciate @glimcat's comment re: taking job posts at face value, and I think that the possibility of having companies approach a candidate that has previously had no idea where s/he is shooting in the dark is refreshing, affirming, and motivating.

The thing nobody has mentioned is how this "Who wants to be hired" is different to the "Seeking freelancer? ..." post where freelancer say they're "seeking work" and provide their skills.

Obviously there are differences between a freelancer and a full-time employee, but it could be possible that many of those freelancers wouldn't mind taking on 9-5 contract jobs over many months.

Any opinions?

I never thought to post there because I'm not looking for freelance work, period. Sure some still post there, but how many companies looking for full-time developers are looking there?

I would think the success rate in that thread for full-timers is pretty low.

Good point.

The fact that it is working for at least some people is interesting to me. I believe it's a function of the community in part, and also an indicator of product opportunity in the job search market.

I'd love to see something a little more evergreen and structured.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the results! I had 7-8 companies reach out to me, all of which were very interesting and strong companies that I'd like I'd potentially like to work for. I believe my post hovered around the middle as well.

"post-mortem", from the Latin

As someone posting my resume: I believe about three companies reached out and I got one new connection on LinkedIn otherwise. One of them is relevant to my skillset, and one of them is interesting to me. I think the third is lost in my inbox somewhere.

It wasn't a very serious or desperate posting, so I'd call this a good result. It certainly tells me which firms want candidates so much they're willing to respond to some jerk's self-serving self-advertisement ;-).