Show HN: Workshape.io – A talent matching service for developers in Startups | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Workshape.io – A talent matching service for developers in Startups

workshape.io

119 pointsGordyMD64 comments

Hi there I'm Gordon and I am a software engineer! I have worked in the startup space for the 4 past years in London and San Francisco. Over this time I, like many others, have experienced the way in which the world of tech recruiting works. I have grown frustrated by the number of times I have been contacted about roles not suited to me and how recruiters regularly pitch me roles based on technologies I used in previous employment. I have also experienced recruitment from the employers point of view where I had to build a team out in San Francisco which was equally frustrating.

I believe the systems that we employ to help us find a job/recruit falls short of our expectations and is in need of some desperate rejuvenation and optimisation!

5 months ago I arrived back from San Francisco and teamed with 2 former colleagues who shared a passion in trying to improve this experience for both developers and hirers. I would like to invite you to be one of the first people to see and use Workshape.io - a talent matching service for Startups.

The key premise to Workshape.io is that we are a matching service that focuses on what you want to do in your next role - more specifically: what tech you want to work with and how you want to spend your time as a developer. We feel when you are open to another role your aspirations should be recognised as one of the key components to matching you to a role. We are focussed on rolling out in London right now and currently have roles from companies such as Shazam, Spotify, Qubit and Moo.com online.

We are very early stage right now and would really welcome your feedback on the experience, thoughts on the site and how we match you to roles.

Thank you for your time

I'm having some trouble logging in. First time I got redirected back from Github (to http://www.workshape.io/api/0/session/connect/github/callbac...), I got {}, second time I tried, I got { name: "RqlDriverError", msg: "Object field 'id' may not be undefined", message: "Object field 'id' may not be undefined" }

Same here.

Sorry about that. I'll look into this as soon as I can. Do either of you mind if I contact you via email to resolve?

Same for me; was looking at it as a potential customer, although outside London

Sure do, here is my profile with everything you need: https://github.com/atmosx

I got the same series of errors

Had a brief look on your plateform, nice execution, can't wait to see you guys expand!

same here!

ditto exactly the same for me

Same here.

Never used Node or Rethink but looks like the DB treats undefined vs null values differently (errors on the former, inserts the latter).

Yeah. I was going to give it a shot, but I can't even get in the door :(

Same error here..

Also having issues logging in, same symptoms.

Annoyingly, our email quota ran out, causing this an exception that kills the signup process. Am resolving now. Accounts that were effected will be removed as they are currently in an erroneous state. There is also a chance it was another bug, but this is the first one I have isolated.

Big apology for this, will resolve ASAP.

Same error here, with the same empty response, followed by {"name":"RqlDriverError","msg":"Object field 'id' may not be undefined","message":"Object field 'id' may not be undefined"}

I've looked into the error with a few users and no recreations as yet. Please can you try signing up again now please and report back on whether it works. Many thanks.

Caveat: haven't tried the site yet.

Matching based on what you want to work on sounds dreamy for developers, and a like a disaster for startup employers.

Startups are defined by change, and a critical thing you want to hire for is flexibility and tolerance for technology schleps. This seems like the opposite of what you're selecting for in developers.

If you want to make things more pleasant for engineers, perhaps you should be targeting more stable companies on the other end -- the ones that know precisely what they need, and know that it won't change next week.

Source: running a startup.

Agree. When you are running an early stage startup, you don't have much cash to burn and let people fiddle with what they want to try. You want to get something done, fast. And that's where the experienced folks come to help you.

It's different in larger companies, where you can afford more time for learning and self-discoveries.

Source: I worked for a startup where 3 out of 4 devs had 1 year of experience combined. Things didn't go well.

The problem with the tech job market right now isn't typically:

"I'm a hiring manager and I get so many responses from good people that I don't know which to choose"

It's more like:

"I'm a hiring manager and I can't find any people who are interested in our position".

This is more of a solution to the second problem.

I thought the problem was supposed to be:

"I'm a hiring manager and all my postings get spammed by barely code-literate, unqualified people and I can't separate the wheat from the chaff efficiently."

Still focusing on just the tools? Why is no one talking about the people? I feel that the biggest factor in whether I'll like a job or not is whether or not I enjoy the people. Is there anyone there I can learn from? Anyone I find entertaining/interesting? Will I fit into the dynamic?

We all feel great when we are in the presence of a group of people that feels like the perfect mix of personalities. Where each person plays off the others in a way that feels awesome.

When I am interviewing for a new tech job, I always want to meet the team before deciding if I want to join up. Rarely do I get the chance.

It sounds cheesy, but I feel like recruiting should be more inline with matching people and personalities than matching tools and technologies.

I think you've nailed it.

The reason these products don't focus on people is that people are hard. Hiring is one the hardest things out there, with often warped incentives on both ends re: honesty. Building a product/service to solve this dilemma in a way that satisfies all parties is probably even harder, and then on top of that you need a business model for pulling dollars out of the matching process.

It's much easier to just build a product that matches technology stacks, and it's not immediately obvious that it's the wrong approach.

Totally agree. This is the direction we are going to head in. We will display existing team members and also how you may compliment/overlap one another.

hello - www.somewhere.com - it's all about the people.

disclaimer, I'm a founder there.

How does Github alone determine a good match? If I don't have much on my Github, I'm ineligible?

Recently, there seems to be a trend that everyone should be pushing code to github. While it's great (real project is much better than a paragraph in CV and it shows your activity over the time), there are a lot of devs who just don't have time or just can't push code there for good reasons.

For me, I push my toy projects there - my first RoR app, and that kind of stuff. Would I like an employer to decide hire/no hire based on my weekend projects? Thanks, no.

GitHub profile is a nice add on for a job application, but it shouldn't be the whole job application.

My thoughts exactly.

I strongly agree with this, I push a lot of toy projects to GitHub, and some of the more interesting work I've done can't/won't end up there (I designed the algorithms behind an advanced analytics startup, but can't share the code since the startup failed because I don't own the rights, for example).

What if you were looking for a job, how would you demonstrate or prove your skills? What would be a good way to share the most interesting work you've done (since you can't just post a Github link)?

I usually combine sharing what I can with showing my credentials (I've a PhD and can share the work I did for that, which I don't put on GitHub because it doesn't feel like the place for it), as well as share anecdotes and get others to vouch for my ability. I've found actual credentials are the best help, but your mileage may vary.

That the most common case, though, not the exception. You make a CV that highlights your accomplishments, and you make sure you're prepared to dive into technical details during discussions. The hiring company tries to put your through your paces, somehow or other. It's imperfect, but the GitHub profile approach is going to weed out a lot of candidates who you probably ought not to weed out.

By far the most interesting work I'm doing is for my current employer; and it's not OSS (and wouldn't make sense to open source).

In theory, I could cut back on my work-work, and spend more time on side projects; but I have a family, and other interests as well. I'd rather have good overlap between "interesting work" and "work I'm paid for" than sacrifice my time with my kids or my guitar so I can work on interesting technical problems I'm not paid to work on.

For some people this could work out well -- e.g., maybe the crucial and awesome component of your company's infrastructure that you're building can be open-sourced! -- but for lots of other people life simply won't line up that way, and building something serious (but a personal project) on GitHub in your spare time means you don't have spare time for anything else in life... I wouldn't demand that of myself, or of anyone I was hiring.

We don't actually use Github for determining any part of the match, it is just a social sign in so that we can minimise the friction when signing on. The match is generated based on primary information gathered by our app.

We will add another form of social sign up soon so that people who do not use GitHub can sign up - most likely Twitter.

Use Facebook or LinkedIn.

Honestly, for anything "career," LinkedIn should be the norm unless their API has unsurmountable technical problems.

Quite frankly, I don't like tying my career to my github account. My best work is closed-source!

This is great feedback - from this entire thread about Github based sign up. We will be reviewing our strategy here and other social sign ups. Thank you.

Bug report: I tried to sign up (great landing page BTW - I think you pull off the flashy design) but when I clicked the "authorise" button from GitHub, I got dropped into JSON at http://www.workshape.io/api/0/session/connect/github/callbac... qeury params> (Not sure if its unsafe to post the whole URL. I cannot web).

Here's the JSON {"name":"RqlDriverError","msg":"Object field 'id' may not be undefined","message":"Object field 'id' may not be undefined"}

I've been looking for something that's both useful for me personally to check out the current work available and that works as an employer. I think this is it.

It's incredibly difficult as an employer to convey exactly what the job will involve. Unless you're hiring a direct replacement of somebody you likely won't know what it is they'll be working on. Equally, as a developer, it's easy to see a job spec as a pack of lies, which they often are, and it can be hard to break into a slightly different role. A recruiter's aim is to fill the jobs their clients are paying them to fill and not to advance careers of candidates. I believe this [will] solve the problems in the current recruitment industry from the perspective of both invested parties.

I fully expect this to stir the waters of technical recruitment, so best of luck to you both.

I have nothing bad to say about this.

Does it take into account relationships between tags? Like if someone puts in CSS3 will it put CSS in the listing?

Is there going to be a "questions" section? :P

At present there is a crude tree of connected skills that feeds into the matching algorithm. CSS3 has the same root as CSS. The presentation of what you entered will remain the same though.

As for a questions section it is not on the roadmap... yet!

I think you have a good thing going here with or without questions. I was half joking. It might lead to "shopping lists" which is what I find is the greatest hurdle when hiring people. I need someone who can do what I need them to do/would want to be hired for what I can do.

This seems really interesting, unfortunately nobody seem to be looking for a starlord willing to take over the universe.

How would this work for companies looking for candidates? I saw no search or nothing. Companies signup a different kind of account?

Do you have plans to integrate topcoder, hackerrank etc? Will you be emailing users when you add new stuff? I regularly signup to services to test out them, but then immediately forget them as I get no reminders of new stuff or reminders about the existence of said service.

Hi.

Company sign ups are curated, there is no public sign up form presently.

We will inform users of future developments periodically.

Nice idea and really well executed. I run http://www.zonino.co.uk with a couple of other chaps and we think similarly about the need to bypass recruiters. Get in touch if you'd like to have a chat about the wild London startup scene!

Awesome idea. I like the concept of balancing the qualities you want and do not want in a position. It's a great step up from simple keywords.

Thus, I was bummed after I signed up and discovered it is basically for matching developers with web startups. :(

Hey. Thanks for your feedback, appreciate your point of view. We had to start somewhere though, and this is the area all founding members have domain knowledge. We will roll out to other sectors and geographies (right now mainly in London) when resources allows.

No matches so far (I got more on tinder, lol), but extremaly useful, well done. Altough it would be nice if one could also explore offers that don fit him perfectly, especially when there's no others. It always good to know what market needs.

Thanks for this insight. We'll take this onboard for next iterations.

the match aspect made me think of tinder, too

This is slick. The one thing I'd suggest is that you add percentage labels to the sliders.

That being said, I was mostly guessing the ratios for those 10 segments and I wouldn't be surprised if I was off by 20-40% for some of them.

great idea, love that it solves a problem so many in the tech industry seem to have finding the right people

think the design of the homepage, interface, and signup are all very slick

feel like it runs aground slightly if there are no matches, and as I had no matches, can't really comment on the end goal / application experience

otherwise good work, pretty interested to see where this goes, good luck!

Really slick set-up, novel but so intuitive - Great work.

I am getting an issue. I have entered the "job description" but showing empty and shows my profile is not complete.

Looks kind of interesting but I wasn't able to view any matches or any close positions, so it's hard to judge.

I really like the simplicity of this- it does what it says on the tin. Nice, neat and simple!

Just get a page with empty brackets after authorizing on GitHub: " {} "

cool concept, the very best of luck growing it and getting more employers and employees on board.

Thank you!

Great concept

Like.

Cracking idea.

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