Riphyak

We put together a bundle, mostly engineering soft: https://resources.youteam.io/bfcm-bundle-deals-youteam

Hm.. Interestingly enough we haven't tried linkedIn outreach to the employers'. We did LinkedIn ads though - with pretty much zero result.

Thanks for pointing our those details.

https://greenlight.jobs/ - is the candidates' website: we're sending access codes to candidates individually via LinkedIn or Email.

UPDATE:

Thanks for your amazing feedback, everyone! One more time I see how incredible Hacker News is.

Summarizing what I learned from your comments, there are 3 key hypotheses to check:

H1: We have overestimated the problem. Time-to-hire isn't really a big concern and companies in the US aren't experiencing any major issues with hiring engineers.

H2: We have overestimated our solution. The employer's aren't prepared to pay US-level salaries to offshore devs and/or are quite happy working with recruiters.

H3: We have chosen wrong marketing channels and/or ICP to target.

Probably the truth is a combination of all the above, but it is important to understand which cause is has the strongest impact.

Back in my cave to do my homework and book some calls with the customers :).

Thanks for this! Indeed, I may have overestimated the problem and our solution.

Good point, thanks. And a useful thinking framework indeed.

Looking at the funnel, it looks like the problem is at the very top. Further conversions seem to be OK-ish - if you can draw any statistically significant conclusions from 6 total conversions of course.

IOW, I feel like it is mostly that they don't want the solution.

And yes - I'm hoping to have enough intellectual courage to seek the actual truth, not a comforting story.

Wow, I didn't really think about it from this perspective. You are absolutely right! This is an extremely noisy space.

Do you think the fact that you're not going to pay a margin to outsourcing firm, but instead employ the offshore developer directly, doesn't compensate for the additional hassle?

That makes a lot of sense, thanks. What I was hoping for was that we can hit some early adopters - and pass without social proof (unless your moral is flexible enough to fake it, this is not an option at inception stage anyway) and multi-touch outreach.

Thanks for that.

We're investing a lot in expansion in LatAm at my other company - and one thing I learned about Argetina's job market is that you have 2 tiers of developers: one working mainly for internal market and the other - for US customers. The salaries may differ by the factor of 3 or even more.

Here is a great piece of research about similar situation in Europe: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Actually, the idea of Greenlight has a lot to do with this salary gap phenomenon. I see this as a big potential for a win-win.

Thanks for that!

I'm lucky enough to know both Rob and Julian personally, but this definitely doesn't serve as an excuse not to re-read the Mom's Test.

Very good point about the ICP. We were targeting startup companies 20-250 ppl, that raised their last round in the last 6 months, sector agnostic. However we weren't sure about the right decision-maker. The three options are CTO, CEO and HR manager.

So far we had more top-of-the-funnel conversions on Linkedin ads from CEOs and HRs, but more actual sign-ups from CTO.

Ah, this is indeed helpful. English isn't my first language - so such subtleties are definitely beyond my linguistic perception. I did use someones help to proof-read the content, but it looks like there is always room for improvement.

This is a very good point. Actually, the arrival of LinkedIn disrupted the way recruiters worked. Before LinkedIn the core of their job was indeed building the relationship with candidates. LinkedIn provided them with the opportunity to mass-message the candidates - which is more efficient from recruiter's ROI perspective, but also creates a lot of noise and eventually discourages candidates.

Love this, thanks!

Wow, thanks for spotting that typo, man!

Thanks, that makes sense.

Yes, I understand that hiring is always a big decision - which means you need to build trust. This would explain the low % of end conversions, but the question of low interest at top of the funnel (e.g. conversions from HN of PH) still remains.

Thanks!

The only channel we used for candidates has been LinkedIn. Got 30%+ conversion with very little effort.

Thank you.

I assume the information in their profile preview wasn't enough for you to do the initial screening.

What would be the crucial bits missing then?|

Hey hackers,

Yura here - I'm the co-founder of Greenlight. Greenlight is the new kind of job platform - where companies discover 'hidden' engineering candidates across multiple geographies. 'Hidden' means these engineers are not actively applying for vacancies, but at the same time are open to new remote opportunities.

Traditional job portal model emerged 20+ years ago, when 99% of job opportunities were inside your zip code and employers were the ones setting the rules. As a result, most job portals are limited to their local market and rely on the "candidates apply to vacancy" paradigm.

However the reality is: both of these things have changed. The market for software engineers is one example: demand exceeds supply and now it looks like most of us prefer the flexibility of remote work.

Greenlight is an attempt to reflect this new reality: here companies apply to interview engineers, not vice versa. And this happens across multiple geographies.

Also, for the founders this is personal. Both of us are immigrants to the United States. We both went through a 3-year long visa marathon, spending hours of each week struggling with complex bureaucracies in order to be able to move our families to the US. The process was long, confusing, costly, and stressful.

We also previously built a successful business in outsourcing - an industry whose very existence is made possible by the striking differences in what people with the same skills are paid for the same work, depending only on where they were born.

One of the greatest achievements of the Internet era is that it helped level the playing field for those who weren't been born into privilege - no matter social class, wealth, or nationality. We believe this is just the beginning of what actually can be achieved - and that geographic work permissions are a barrier that can be torn down easier and faster than others.

With Greenlight, we want to help build a world without borders, a world where every human being has equal access to career opportunities - no matter where she or he was born. In our world, access to work is globalized: every company has a portion of its workforce working remotely from other geographies, and every job is global by default.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hey hackers,

Yura and Nik here - we are the makers of iZenHover.

iZenHover (https://izenhover.com/) sorts messages, mentions, and other activity across all your work apps into a single checklist, ranked by importance. As a result, you can enjoy more distraction-free time to concentrate on the work that demands focus.

The idea of a tool that would strike balance between 'manager schedule' and 'maker schedule' first came to my mind three years ago, after the two of us moved from Europe to California - for our Y Combinator batch. Being 10 timezones apart from the rest of the team initially looked like a productivity killer. The bigger our surprise when we soon realized that we actually accomplish more during the day! Having all work calls and messages pressed into 2-3 moring hours has freed-up the rest of the day for the 'deep' work - like building stuff.

Here are some things you can do with iZenHover:

1) Bundle up your Slack messages, emails, Trello updates, Google doc mentions, and other work activity into a single checklist - so that you can address them all in one place and save time on switching between the apps. See the full list of integrations planned for ver. 1 here.

2) Get your activity checklist prioritized based on the importance rather than 'first in first out'. Here is how it works.

3) Schedule the 'power hour' to work through your activity checklist - so you can safely mute all app notifications for the rest of the day.

4) Send different creative auto-replies to your co-workers every time they try to get hold of you outside your power hour - so that they know you're not being unresponsive, just need to focus on something important.

5) Selectively 'whitelist' particular people - so that you can receive notifications from them outside the 'power hour'.

6) Provide the "Emergency button" - so people can get through if the matter is indeed urgent.

iZenHover is still in a super-early alpha - so we're here to listen and understand if we're moving in the right direction.

I and Nik will be here all day to answer every question you may have.

Thanks. The idea is that you're getting a retainer equivalent to a mid-market salary outside Bay Area - and then get Bay Area level compensation (+30-50%) while on an active job. You don't lose your benefits

Thanks for your question. 1) The gigs are guaranteed full-time and 3 months minimum. 2) Yes, the 'insurance'. You become de-facto employed full-time - with an upside when you're getting a project with a customer.

An omnichannel messenger that bundles up incoming updates (messages, mentions) from a number of different apps (Slack, email, Jira, etc.) and prioritizes them in a smart way - so that you can address all the important updates within a 1-hour slot a day.

Problem: updates coming from 5-6 different apps during the day distract me from high-impact work that requires focus. However, going radio-silent is not a solution because I may appear rude and miss something important.

Wow! Generals looks awesome.

Thanks! Do you sort email notifications by latest or is there any other way you decide which to answer first?

Thank you!

Thanks Kevin!

Wow, what a great answer! Thanks @forgotmypw17

@illuminated thank you for sharing your perspective. I totally agree: the culture/values fit only becomes visible over time. As wise man once said: when you hire you always guess, when you fire you always know :)

@redis_mic I’m sorry but we’re not a body shop :). We are a marketplace for dev talent. Backed by Y Combinator.

Also, what is your definition of spam? I have just shared some of my experience of hiring remote team members. Yes, there is a link to the full version at YouTeam blog, but how does it make this spam?

Great job!

How about the integration?