Hi HN. We were tired of recruiters so we built this because it was something we wish existed. We had "satisfying" jobs and liked who we worked with but we were not naive and knew there could be a better job out there. Either building a product more aligned with our personal interests, making more doing something we enjoyed even more, or work with a team that challenged us further. It was too time consuming to actively look for jobs and the thought of dealing with incompetent recruiters turned us off so we built Pitchbox. We link to think of it as a talent agency for developers so only personally relevant jobs are pitched to you... think of it as "Here's what I'm looking for, if you can provide it then let's talk"
What's your experience or background with finding jobs for other people? What you have is an idealistic approach to recruiting, which is great, but may not that easy to pull off, if possible at all. There are not just spammy recruiters, but also b/s applicants either with bloated self assessment, unrealistic expectations or just simply unpleasant and unprofessional people to deal with. What's your plan for handling such people? After all, the pool of sensible skilled developers with honest resumes and reasonable expectations is very limited. If you ever put a developer job positing out there, you probably saw that 95% of all inbound applications are worthy only of going straight to the shredder.
(edit) Not to put you down by any means. I would love to see this work, I'm just having trouble seeing how it would.
Good work! However, there is no mention of telecommuting/remote positions. Even as a US worker, I prefer remote work, and it baffles me that us "internet folk" are not working hard to fight the industrial-era assumption that software has to be written in a central office.
> it baffles me that us "internet folk" are not working hard to fight the industrial-era assumption that software has to be written in a central office
Have you considered that some of us LIKE working in an office?
Of course, some people like working in offices; that was never disputed. However, there are an increasing number of organizations which have caught on that offices are not "software factories", but rather, an optional luxury.
-1 for the strawman argument. The OP didn't dispute that some of us like the office. They only pointed out that some (others) of us don't like the office, and that the site didn't take this into account.
Yes, several of the teams we are hiring for have 100% telecommute roles if you are able to legally work for a US based company. Just let us know in the Goals of this when signing up.
If you can work from outside of the US (technically), what sort of requirements for working legally for a US based company are? As far as I understand, you can just send them an invoice as a contractor and be happy, no?
I also found it odd at first that "remote" wasn't one of checkboxes in Step 2, but figured it was something I would type in a subsequent free-text box.
Well, given that the Agile cult demands colocation in a single office along with all sorts of other one size fits all cargo cultisms, what do you expect?
In my case, I prefer to not get in the way of my enemy while he's making mistakes.
Yep. Sure solves a huge problem, in a very nice, subtle way. Thank you for fixing this! :) Co-incidentally, someone today posted a link about how LinkedIn's recruiter spam is killing the quality of the product[1]. I think your timing is just perfect :)
EDIT: And your site is amazingly simple yet elegant! Keep it up guys :)
How much does it cost? I assume this is going to be fee-based on the employer side? I'd feel more comfortable participating if the nature of the transaction were more transparent.
We'll be creating a FAQ from this HN discussion. We intend to be very transparent.
It is free for the developer. Even though it is different, we found it easiest when employers pay us similar to how they pay contingency recruiters, placement fees. Typically recruiters charge 25-35% of your first year salary, we charge a flat 25K fee to the employer that hires you. We also have a unique offering for startups where they can amortize the payments over 12 months. This pricing structure means more interesting companies can afford to be on our platform and therefore more interesting opportunities for developers.
As someone who is hiring, my problem is to also find developers who are not actively looking. Sometimes those are the best because they are talented but have an inertia to move anywhere and may not even be aware of interesting challenges in other areas that their skills are applicable to, such as Healthcare etc.
Also for a 80K salary, 25K is just too steep, given that we do not know how your screening process works.
developers who are not actively looking...are the best because they are talented but have an inertia to move anywhere and may not even be aware of interesting challenges in other areas that their skills are applicable to
Exactly. We couldn't agree more and that seems to be the majority of Pitchbox members. It's more of passive tool..."here are some things I'm looking for, don't contact me until you find it, in the meantime I'll enjoy what I'm currently working on."
Being contingency based, there is no cost to anyone until everyone is happy.
Wow, that's pretty steep. Maybe that's just a west coast thing. Where I live (Ohio) that's 50% of the salary of a developer with 5 years of experience. I signed up for your service but... that seems like a good chunk of change I'd prefer to have in my pocket :)
Wow, that's pretty steep. Maybe that's just a west coast thing.
I don't think most developers realize how much recruiters are getting paid for placements. 25% is pretty standard across US, we're less then that with our flat rate.
Where I live (Ohio) that's 50% of the salary of a developer with 5 years of experience.
This is why we built this product - assuming you are even remotely decent at programming and write code in modern languages, a dev with 5 years of exp can easily be making more then 80K+.
We have several companies right now that are hiring and paying more then that for roles where the developer can telecommute 100% from anywhere in the country. Not only do they pay well but they have really awesome teams.
25% is pretty standard across US, we're less then that with our flat rate.
Fair comment however your flat fee equates to 25% of a $100k role. It doesn't become a viable economic alternative for employers until you reach the $150k mark. If your primary target is CTO level roles then great, otherwise your fee is ridiculous.
I think you might be underestimating the level of pay for developers in a lot of the "big" areas. (SF, Silicon Valley, NYC) I've personally heard of friends (fresh college grads) getting offers anywhere from $70k to $150k.
As a fresh college grad from a non-top tier school in Silicon Valley, many of my friends are making ~$100K/year right out of school. I'm sure people from top tier schools going to Google and Facebook can make double that.
Have you considered the possibility that charging a flat fee instead of a percentage of annual salary makes your service inappropriate for most areas outside of silicon valley or NYC?
Yeah, I go to school in Ohio and am going to be working on the west coast. Salaries on the west coast are >2x (close to 3x) what I would have made in Ohio (Cleveland).
I haven't seen anybody raise the point about the cost of living. The salaries are more because the cost of living is higher. With 50k you can afford a mortgage for a nice house in the midwest, but in NYC the equivalent monthly income will qualify you for a tiny studio or 1 BR apt.
Yes, very! What about amending our profiles? I just signed up and have a github profile, but not a resume that's particularly up to date. Is there some way I can add it if I brought it up to date?
Yes. If you just signed up, you'll get an initial email package soon. We're full service though...so you can email us anytime with questions or updates, like a new resume, at support@trypitchbox.com and we'll do the updating for you. Whichever is easiest.
YES !
Beside the fact that ask for uploading a resume is not a good move. Resume can be very quickly outdated, why not asking to link a linkedin account instead ?
+1 i only update my resume when im planning to change position, since this tool is not to actively look for jobs i would care less to keep a resume updated
I'm currently hiring developers, and I also hate recruiters, for the reasons you outline. I was interested to learn about your flat $25K fee in the comments here, and I can tell you that I'd be unlikely to pay it. I have other ways to find developers that aren't so expensive.
If I'd bothered to sign up after reading "It's free to get started" then learned later about the hefty fee, I'd be disappointed at best. Since I didn't sign up, I don't know how much bait there is before the switch, but if you talk about the fee right away after the signup I guess it's sort of okay, since you didn't waste much of my time but you did receive my contact information under false pretenses.
I'll be interested to see how many takers you get at that fee level.
Hey @DavidAdams, Our intentions are not to bait and switch and so far responses have been very positive. I believe most developers share your surprise when they hear about the overhead to hiring, I did. I appreciate that using outside help to build a team is not right for every stage company.
After looking at the dismal state of recruiting and the enormous typical placement fees that well exceed $25K on avg across the US for developer positions, we feel our pricing is comparatively low and the experience and results, superior.
We found that matchmaking developers and companies may seem like simple quick transactions, and many recruiters treat it that way, but the reality is it is a time intensive process to do it right.
True, but it's not a bad idea to check for an @ in the string as a sanity check, in case the user has accidentally put their username/password/other in the field.
I think that the $25k flat fee is very well done. It sends the right signals, and incentivizes companies in the right ways.
1) It implies that their offering is heavily productized. To a hiring company, this implies that quality will be high because they have found a way to scale a solution such that improvements benefit every customer.
2) $25k signals a bias towards higher salaries, where this number can be expected to be below typical recruiter prices. It has the same effect as theladders.com's "$100k+ jobs only" policy, but acts as a natural consequence of economic interest, instead of a gimmicky status ploy.
I think these things are beside the point. People are not products, and thus aren't subject to appeal through opulence. It is conceivable that one would buy a product simply because it is expensive in order to distinguish themselves or satisfy some arbitrary desire to have expensive things, or because they view cost as a factor in "quality." People, on the other hand, are more akin to machines in that their only value to a company is through the utility they provide, and thus money spent on hiring should be minimized so that its returned value can be maximized. The fact that expensive things are alluring doesn't work with exclusively utilitarian commodity goods, like labor. So the fact that the service is expensive won't make it any more appealing to employers. (Or, it might. I don't know what goes through the heads of recruiters. But, a rational actor in their position wouldn't draw your conclusion.) Companies are trying to maximize value, which means minimizing the cost of labor. This includes both the money they pay to their labor and the money they pay for their labor.
Companies are not trying to minimize the cost of labour, they're trying to maximize the return they get on what they pay for labour. So they might decide to get someone for 150k rather than someone for 50k because they think they can get more than triple the value from the 150k guy.
A recruiter that has lots of 150k people on their books can signal that by charging 25% of a 150k salary rather than 25% of a 50k salary. Then people who want 150k people will hopefully come to them.
You can see this if you speak to different recruiters when hiring people, they charge different rates depending on what market segment they target.
This is tangential, but I'm curious about your partner "startups." Most of the listed companies are established, monolithic organizations that are notorious for onerous and extensive interviewing processes. Do these companies employ different practices in your "speed dating" environment? If so, why? If not, how does this service offer distinct functionality beyond an exclusionary set of abbreviated interviews, which would conceivably be less appealing to both parties?
I'll second this. The HackerX pitch is "Where developers meet startups" but all the partner companies shown in the logo section (namely eBay, Amazon, Groupon, Google, Disney, YouTube, Quora) are very much established companies, not startups.
Sorry, but what part of 'Stay anonymous ... 100% Private & confidential - Learn your market value without your current employer ever knowing' involves me giving you my name, current employer, current title, and email address in step 2? That's just down-right cognitive dissonance. The landing page doesn't give me enough assurance, but to get any more details, I have to click through. Or do you expect a curious candidate to read the two pages of legalese (Terms of Service, Privacy Policy)? Not saying we wouldn't, but that's sort of a slow, boring sell.
It is anonymous to the point that others don't know you are on Pitchbox. Your name isn't shared with anyone until you are matched with a company and you like the pitch and agree to sharing it.
It would be just to hard to send you personally relevant pitches without a little background information to incorporate in our matchmaking.
Names aren't the only personally identifying information. Many of us with specific skills working in small companies are easily recognizable based on title and company alone. For the record I'm not looking at the moment, but I know I'm the only one with my title at my current and previous job, and they're both the sort of tech companies that will find your service.
It'd give me much more confidence in your site, and other recruiting sites as well, if you outlined exactly how my info was presented to interesting parties, and how those parties were selected.
Don't you already have sufficient numbers of potential candidates at your other venture (coderwall.com)? Coderwall and PitchBox are both owned by Appdillo. Why not make it clear that both sites are related? The relationship is buried in the TOS on both sites.
Your TOS states: "For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a wall at trypitchbox.com to provide a username, email address, location and links to their GitHub, Twitter, and StackOverflow accounts." Since Appdillo owns coderwall and PitchBox, and coderwall already has a lot of information about developers, is there any manual or automated privacy bleedthrough?
I'm sorry but how is your business model any different from that of a recruiter? (Other than claims of human or AI filtered quality.)
I just don't see how you will not run into the exact same problems that existing recruiters run into.
What makes you different than a normal recruiter building profiles of companies and employers and soliciting both? This just looks very familiar, abeit drop dead gorgeous. :-)
I guess if good design and AI are enough to solve the recruiter problem, then count me in, it's just not clear to me how you are really different from your landing page. (Other than of course it is beautiful, seriously fantastic work.)
There are a few things I dislike about recruiters that we aim to fix:
* They nearly all are technically incompetent, e.g. thinking Java is the cool word for Javascript and such. We know the difference between interfaces and inheritance, being developers ourselves, we are better at understanding the needs of companies and matching that to the desires of developers.
* Recruiters hide information, almost always. We're fully transparent with each pitch and include details about salary, team, etc upfront.
* Recruiters are about quick turn and will place you at any role that matches their keywords. We're more interested in long term relationships. In Pitchbox, this manifests itself in many ways...for example, just because you signed up today, doesn't mean you'll start getting job pitches tomorrow...instead we focus on relevancy and quality over quantity so you hear from us only when we think its particularly suited for you.
* The recruiting experience is horrible for companies too. The recruiter typically spams that hiring manager with resumes forcing the company to sift through it all. We provide simple useful tools for the companies connecting with Pitchbox members.
* If you liked our homepage for its simplicity and design, then you'll be happy to know we have built our entire product with similar focus. Interacting with it should be easy, purposeful, and enjoyable - pretty much the opposite of every interaction I've had with recruiters.
(BTW - Thanks for the kind words about our design)
Whilst I don't agree with the practice, the reason most recruiters are cagey about disclosing too much info on the company they represent is because they don't want the candidate to go to the company directly and saving the company $25k. How do you deal with that challenge?
Look, I'm incredibly vocal about the need to disrupt the recruitment industry but from what I understand based on the discussion here, the difference between Pitchbox and agencies is that you're developers not recruiters and you charge a flat fee. Am I missing something?
Generally they have a contract that says something along the lines of "if your initial contact with a candidate is through me, then you'll have to pay if you hire them". I think the caginess part is just an extra precaution.
This is my thought exactly. Recruiter here, 15 years with software engineers. The concept is interesting, and I dislike what many recruiters do to give the industry a bad reputation.
That said, you are contacting a select pool of self-identified candidates about a select pool of jobs after matching them through some algorithm or criteria. Then you charge a fee to the hiring firm which is probably only competitive in NY and Silicon Valley.
Engineers that are contacted by recruiters through other social media sites only consider it 'spam' when it's a job they don't want to hear about. If your system selects a candidate to share a job with, and the candidate is not interested, then the contact is pretty much the same as spam.
I have a pool of candidates that tell me what kinds of jobs they are seeking, their criteria, how active their search is, etc and I contact them accordingly. If they aren't interested, hopefully they don't feel it is spam, but it is just as invaluable.
The recruiter/engineer relationship is broken and hopefully good recruiters and entrepreneurs are able to think of some better ideas. This has potential, but for the price I'm not so sure.
I didn't see in the thread - one advantage for candidates in using a recruiter is being a buffer in negotiations, a guide, and coaching for interviews. An upside for companies that use recruiters is the negotiation help (at times) and closing deals that might not close without an intermediary. Does your service provide these additional perks to companies and to candidates?
As a developer, I love the concept - obviously, a tool that filters for great jobs and pitches them to developers is really appealing. However I'm curious about a few things:
1) It sounds like companies are hand picked. On the other side: How do you filter for great developers? I'm sure you can't assume every prospective employee signup is a top-tier developer. Do you have some algorithmic, human, or other process?
2) As someone about to graduate and transition to a PHD program after the summer, I'm looking at technically challenging summer internships. I'm sure there are other prospective interns. Do you have any plans to support matching summer internships?
3) Assuming a github profile is the only "resume" your site accepts (implied by another comment here), where do developers list journal and conference publications? (Apologies in advance if this assumption is wrong -- I haven't signed up due to reasons mentioned in question #2.)
1) It sounds like companies are hand picked. On the other side: How do you filter for great developers? I'm sure you can't assume every prospective employee signup is a top-tier developer. Do you have some algorithmic, human, or other process?
It is a combination of all of the above. All companies are screened so we know what makes them unique and what type of developers excel there. We do the same for the developers. Everyone is happy only when we make appropriate matches...since we are developers, we think we can do this better then anyone else.
2) As someone about to graduate and transition to a PHD program after the summer, I'm looking at technically challenging summer internships. I'm sure there are other prospective interns. Do you have any plans to support matching summer internships?
Yes, right now we pick that up from your goals and by looking at your background. At times we may reach out for more information so we can understand your unique situation.
3) Assuming a github profile is the only "resume" your site accepts (implied by another comment here), where do developers list journal and conference publications? (Apologies in advance if this assumption is wrong -- I haven't signed up due to reasons mentioned in question #2.)
You can supply your GitHub profile and/or Resume...ideally both. We'll look at improving the sign up process though. We just wanted to make it super simple and easy for developers to start.
Aw man, am I the only one who doesn't have this terrible problem of everyone wanting to offer them a job?
I'm sure I'm not doing 100% of what's possible to be able to sit back and pick and choose whether I want the 150k job or the 180k job, but almost all of these "recruiters suck" posts apply to a small minority of people, those near the top of their profession.
Maybe I need a "Do you make shitty weekend projects that end up going nowhere? Let us know" site.
I'm nowhere near the top of my profession, so I'm baffled by it. I'm actually glad to read about it, since my non-dev friends don't understand it and get angry at me for bitching about people trying to offer me work! I am however, a minority in the field (a woman) so I sometimes think that this fact MAY have something to do with it :/
It really gives me even more reason to hate the recruiting spam - when I'm called "Mr." or when they tell me that "We're looking for a couple of great dudes like you!"
Ha! Definitely can relate (except for the great dudes part lol), but I wonder what kind of deals these recruiters have with companies? Do they really care about finding the right people for positions, or do they just want a quick cut of whatever commission they're making? It's flattering sometimes to see a voicemail full of recruiters, but one has to wonder if their intentions are optimally in line with what companies need.
Mostly the latter (the quick cut). They're basically like realtors in that sense. I've worked with a few recruiters on both sides of the fence (hiring and behing hired). They're are a few really good ones out there and a shitload of noise. The trick is to find one you trust and just run with them (or, increasingly, just use your personal network).
I'm nowhere near the top, but get these emails all the time. Want some of your own? Put your resume on any of the big job sites; just one is all it takes. You'll get calls and emails daily, usually several a day. Almost all of them will be a total waste of time. This is the recruiter spam they alude to.
Maybe it's just the information we put online, or maybe it's just the business, but I don't think it's a minority who have bad experiences with recruiters. I'd actually be really interested in hearing peoples' positive experiences, as they seem to be a very rare thing. I'm not trying to be cynical, this has just been my experience, enforced by just about every other developer I've talked to.
The salary ranges seem very high from my experience. I've been developing for a few years, and I know a handful of excellent developers working for big-name companies...and I know they're not making the numbers listed here.
I want to believe $180k is doable for a software engineer, but I've yet to meet a salaried programmer over $110k. Am I keeping the wrong company?
I should note I don't live in a major city, but even amongst devs I know in San Francisco, $180k would be very high. It seems most of the programmer salary estimates I see online are similar. Are these numbers real? Or are the numbers I see coming from software fantasy land?
A single number for income is always difficult. For me annual salary is base pay. Bonuses, stock options/awards, benefits are in addition to this. If that is the case then the ranges look reasonable (also I like the coarse granularity); if this is the sum of base-pay, bonus, stock-options, benefits, then this range is low by at least 50K
If you could be so kind, could you clarify exactly who could expect these salaries? Are these entry/mid/senior level? 1, 5, 10 years experience? Top-tier developers only?
I ask because there are plenty of companies hiring at sub-$70k salaries and they're having no trouble filling their positions with decent programmers. Are the programmers I know selling themselves short, or is $140k for extraordinarily experienced and talented programmers only?
I can only speak for web application development, but $140k is definitely not for "extraordinarily experienced and talented programmers only" in San Francisco for someone doing js/rails.
Are the people you know working in startups where part of their compensation comes in equity, or the prestige of working at a well-known "great" place?
I'm working in the midwest where the average experience level among developers is "several" years. (I don't know exactly, but it's probably at least 5). I'd be surprised if the average engineer salary here is as high as the lowest pitchbox bracket.
Then I expect the average developer could get a big bump in salary working for an SF company.
But it's not a free lunch: cost of living is high here and some things like commuting are terrible. I know developers who moved back to Minnesota so they could waste less of their lives in their cars.
Hence the appeal of "work from Ohio". 100% remote seems to be an ever more realistic option, but I expect it's still harder to find work, although work is so easy to find this may not matter much. A bigger issue may be finding a 100% remote job at a company with a remote culture. Working remotely with a company whose culture is centred around an office can be an exercise in a thousand little tediums.
The different social dynamics of working remotely can be a challenge as well.
I feel as though my post reads a bit like "don't try to work for an SF company", but that's not really my intent. I mean more to convey that the pitchbox salaries are perfectly real, but it's not too good to be true. Moving to SF to work, or working remotely are options, but salary isn't everything and these choices won't be right for everyone.
No, the developers I know are working for large companies.
Some of my disconnect may be due to where I live. My peers may also be relatively inexperienced, so maybe these salaries aren't nuts. I just wish I knew these numbers before I took my last couple of jobs!
I expect location matters more. Even here, the salary difference between working in SF and only slightly further north can be $30-$50k for comparable jobs.
When I was looking for job in April the lowest offer I got was for 135k base + ~70k in stocks (vested over 4 years). All other offers were higher and some significantly higher. Dev with ~8 years experience.
Interesting - kind of reminds me of a site a friend built a few years ago. It was a resume site with contact info hidden. In order to contact you the recruiter had to pay you - at whatever price you put on a contact (usually a buck or two). If you didn't respond in a reasonable time the money was refunded. But he was trying to solve the same problem - recruiter spam. Unfortunately he launched right in the deepest pit of the financial meltdown and he was unable to get any traction with the site.
If I'm looking for a high paying job, a few dollars isn't going to interest me. Your friend probably had to create a ton of code to allow for the applicant to store and eventually withdraw his few bucks. If I'm really looking for a job, how many recruiters could possibly contact me? 10-15? at $2, that's $30 at the end of the process. Seems more like a distraction from my job hunting.
It seems more like a distraction from core development (having to manage the cash accounts for applicants) and not enough money to be interesting.
I can see charging the recruiter to email people (sites like Elance do that) but that's where it should end. The money will never be interesting enough for an applicant to care and it confuses the process.
I expect the intent was really the other way around. To someone who is truly interested in what you have to offer, a buck or two is just a rounding error on the salary they will eventually pay you. To someone who is harvesting contact information to fire spam your way, $2 * n-number-of-contacts starts to add up very quickly.
But that's the point. It's supposed to be a no brainer for someone who actually wants a real contact with the applicant but prohibitive for a spammer.
A recruiter who is genuinely interested in you for a job opportunity wouldn't mind paying the $2 but a spammer who is emailing hundreds or thousands of people just trying to build an interest list would suffer.
Still, this hinges on the person actually responding so the spammer wouldn't suffer in this case. They'd be happy to pay for a $2 lead and not suffer any expense if the person doesn't respond.
I think you'd have to pay regardless of the lead responding for this to have a chance of working. Again, that's how a successful system work with Elance. You pay regardless of getting your bid accepted.
I see your point. He really didn't ever get enough usage on the site to know if the refundable upfront fee would have been a sufficient anti-spam tactic or not. Several sites with the same basic idea all launched around that time. His was bootstrapped, at least one of the others had millions of VC behind it. I don't think any of them made it.
> I can see charging the recruiter to email people (sites like Elance do that) but that's where it should end. The money will never be interesting enough for an applicant to care and it confuses the process.
Just make the applicant choose a charity. (Have a list to choose from, and allow them to add one for themselves, too.)
I'd prefer it if I could see the possible "goals" before entering my contact information. At the moment it is the usual: no information before signup. (I didn't proceed past the contact information tab, so can't comment further).
Just went through the signup process. There should be a textbox for those of us who don't maintain great github profiles to say a few words about ourselves.
I'd say they're focusing on software developers (ok, software engineers). They're more niche than 'engineers', which CS intersects. I agree it's less than obvious.
I feel like you could emphasize your DEVELOPER-ONLY focus a little better: it's not clear who should be filling out the form a) unless you scroll down the page and read all the content or b) until you get to the github handle input and think, "Hmmm..."
If you attach your resume, we'll parse it for you. LinkedIn has set a precedent of cease and desists for products like this, we wanted to avoid that path.
I think the signup flow could use more handholding as far as telling the prospective developer why you need the information you are asking for and what you plan to do with it (i.e. how it will help you find them a good opportunity).
As an example, I got as far as the second part of the form where I am asked for my name, current company, location and title, and became hesitant because I have zero idea what you are going to use this information for specifically.
Looks pretty sweet. It's been a few years since I've done the job-search thing, but this looks like what I'd want to use.
Now that I think about it, this reminds me a bit of Feynman's pickup technique [0] - why waste your time with the whole song-and-dance routine if what you want was never on offer to begin with?
Seems like a great idea. I recommend making the "what do you want to do" a bit more explicit (e.g., more multiple choice, asking me to give examples of jobs I'd leave my current position for, etc). When I completed this, I wasn't sure how you'd know what my "dream job" was. I know you're probably trying to keep it short, but I think I'd be more of a believer that this was going to yield good results if I were asking for slightly more info.
Thanks @esharef - we really are focused on making the experience very simple and painless. For developers, we can extrapolate a lot from the basic information provided (GitHub/Salary/Goals/Location/Resume)...the goals in particular are often revealing. It may take one or two pitches to calibrate but overtime pitches get more relevant.
Every single developer is reviewed by a human before we begin any matchmaking and we also screen every employer (this means names are in a predictable format).
Ah this clarifies something for me. I was just wanting to try it out but didn't want to put my details, can't go to the next step, but down the bottom it says "stay anonymous".
I used to run a software developer job board startup for several years and I came the the conclusion that what the market needs is a better way of reaching passive job seekers.
While I think this approach is along the right lines, the big problem is that it's incredibly hard to get passive job seekers to sign-up, so mostly you'll get active job seekers signing up and then you'll essentially just be another curated job board / CV database.
I think your key to success will be if you can figure out someway of getting lots of passive job seekers to signup.
Personally if I was doing it I'd go the route of making hyper-targetted mailing lists. So like a reverse groupon catering to specific niches. So have one for developer evangelists, one for flash games developers, etc. with the idea being that the niches are specific enough that people want to be on the list not because they're job hunting but because they want to keep their finger on the pulse of their niche.
(feel free to email me if you want to talk more about the developer recruitment space; I've spent a lot of time thinking about it!)
> I think your key to success will be if you can figure out someway of getting lots of passive job seekers to signup.
If you want people to do something there is way that often, but not always, works: pay them.
Why not share the fee you charge the companies with the people on the list? Obviously there are issues to be worked out to stop people from gaming the system, they need to be legitimate candidates, but I'm suspect there is a way. Basically it's the same as cashback on credit cards - they charge the merchant and share some of that with the consumer.
You want to incentivize the best developers, not those who want (a relatively small amount of) money. By replacing intrinsic incentive with monetary incentive it may end up making the situation worse.
Someone might happily sign-up to a mailing list for interesting jobs based on the inherent incentive, but offer that person $10 to do the same and they'll think "my time is worth more than $10" and just walk away.
You'll almost certainly better off just putting that same amount of money into traditional marketing channels.
I agree, thats why we built this more around someone's expectations and goals and less about their history (though that is important too). That way we can be more focused on high quality discovery, lowering the barrier to "keeping your finger on the pulse of the market in your expertise".
I think this is much needed service. However, I did not see anywhere mentioned - how long I might have to wait after I said I am interested in, lets say $100+ job. What I am asking is how exactly does your process-timeline work? (i.e. Roughly how long do I might need to wait? Is there some sort of strategy/rational that helps me set some realisting timeline expectations?
My understanding of this service is that it is meant to be used for people that currently have jobs, but would consider offers above a certain amount. Basically a way to say "only contact me if I get an offer that matches my interests above $XX".
Recommendation: go niche if you have trouble building a critical mass of employers and prospective employees. Be known as the "go to" place for getting jobs in obscure but important technology/programming language <X> (for example). Brand appropriately, and manually reach out to companies and developers that use those technologies and try to kickstart the process. Get on the first page for "X jobs" in google. Then build out from there.
Hey @arscan, thanks for the feedback - totally agree. We did this at first and was able to build relationships connecting developers and companies around ruby/python/js roles. With this we HN post we wanted to guage the appetite of the broader tech community.
I applied, it will be interesting to see what kind of jobs you have in mind. Although one way to improve is to be able to tell you where I would be willing to relocate. Id love Seattle for instance, but wouldn't consider a job in Colorado or Austin. Other than that, it is a very cool service and look forward to finding out what you find for me.
Out of curiosity, are you also working on Coderwall?
Your email ( from your HN profile) matches the twitter username of a Coderwall founder.
In your privacy page, you have "Appdillo, Inc. [..] provides this Privacy Policy" and the domain http://www.appdillo.com has a coderwall email address in it.
One item to pay attention to is location. If someone currently works in San Francisco and choose to remain there, will a Palo Alto company be able to contact them? Is there a default radius?
Perhaps someone wants to relocate, but only to specific cities. Expanded options would be nice.
Yeah, we understand there are unique situations like this so we typically reach out for more information when someone says they are willing to relocate.
For me I would do it if the salary field was optional, I think the employer should decide what value to place on a specific candidate based on his or her past experience.
Companies who can afford to pay for someone with an expansive background will do so, but certain candidates might also be more interested in working with local startups who don't have Silicon Valley or NYC budgets, but allow for more flexible positions (i.e. Telework, like others have mentioned).
Not to mention certain people thrive in a small team environment versus a large corporate culture, and there's a chance to get meaningful equity to build something new and exciting.
I was about to make the same comment. @kylerush, the developer with Obama posted the A/B testing of Barack Obama's donation page. Its a great design (apparently well-tested design) glad you guys are using it.
Have you considered adding StackOverflow as one of your "Resume" links? That's, personally, where I keep my most up-to-date information. And now I think it's time to update that information.
I understand you're trying to create an alternative to spam from say Linkedin, but that really is what I use for my resume these days. Can I use that for my "application"
Putting your resume online, on a resume board, or elsewhere is sure to send many unsolicited jobs in to your inbox. You'll then have to engage with each individual to determine if its interesting work, good pay, etc...That works if you are actively looking but it can be time consuming and you can be overlooked by great companies. This is meant to be a filter, we'll spend the time filtering out the junk jobs for you.
$25k is ridiculous, unless you make some guarantees, which you don't seem to do (wouldn't know, there's no relevant info for employers without signing up).
I can't fill out the form as I have two major problems. I am legally entitled to work in the USA, but only for my current employer. - there is no option for this. The salary I expect depends on the type of job and total compensation (equity) - there is no way to specify this.
1% at one company vs 1% at another company can vary so drastically we thought it was almost meaningless to ask...we instead prefer to present the whole pitch and let you determine if that equity and everything else that comes with it is interesting. It is preferable if you let us know you want in the goals...something to the effect of "small startup where X, Y, and Z" or something.
Quick design comment: I like the clean look, but I find the home page a bit long (i.e., a lot of scrolling is required), even if that's the style these days. Best wishes with your project. I look forward to updates. Cheers.
I submitted my information; it doesn't hurt to give it a try. I live in the Philadelphia area, but I'm open to relocating if the position is right, so a service such as this may be able to work for me. I'll have to see.
I stopped at entering my name, company and position. Why can't I try this out anonymously? The stakes are too high for most people to willy nilly add their personal info to a conduit for recruiters.
We don't share your information with recruiters, that's part of the proposition as we are a conduit to companies that you decide who to share your information with.
We match jobs to your goals AND to your relevant experience, if we didn't collect information about who you are we couldn't accurately do our part.
Yes if they are serious about being pitched relevant jobs. It is one of the filters so we don't pitch jobs that will not meet your basic salary exceptions. If you don't have experience and your expectations are unreasonably high then you likely wont receive many pitches.
Fair point...right now we associate your salary with with where you live. If you are open to relocating, we'll reach out to find out where and then make sure salary is adjusted...our intent is to help you find something great, so we'll work with you to make that happen.
I was asking because if you optimize for pitches response rate, you end up with better pitches but not necessarily good matches between candidates/companies.
They are doing something also interesting, albeit different. They timebox the offers which is clever but the "Auction Price" that is non-binding is confusing and people I've talked to felt it was sorta gimmicky for that reason.
We feel compensation is very important but so are the problems you'll be working on, who you'll be working with, and the culture fit.
If you are legally able to work for a US company then we have several teams that are hiring for 100% telecommute roles. Just mention that in your Goals on signup.
Nice site. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this problem; have you thought about an "allocate <number> points" solution? I've had the thought that an "allocate 20 points" resume / requirements list might be superior to the traditional, cluttered approach. ( http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/why-i-wiped-m... )
Is this something that you want?