

Ask HN: Do you think there is a need for a community for career advice? - abhinovb

I guess plenty of students use Reddit&#x2F; Quora for career related tips. Please give your thoughts
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Yadi
I answer a lot of question on Quora & Reddit about CS career stuff, I think
it's nice to have a community, but reddit questions are more natural and less
for show.

Quora career advice stuff have so much artificial taste added to it, such as:
recruiter adding very weird advice and getting upvotes. While the answer would
still not get a proper answer.

There is actually a startup called Career Dean, that is their whole mission.

[http://careerdean.com/](http://careerdean.com/)

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abhinovb
Thanks for the pointing out the limitations in Reddit/ Quora. Seems like
CareerDean is specific to CS guys.

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cylinder
There needs to be a community for career _changers._

I'm finding it extremely difficult to find a way to change my career and most
advice online is not tailored to this.

A recruiting service for matching skilled, quality people who are looking to
change careers with open-minded employers who are willing to consider these
non-traditional applicants who may not have the standard background of X years
experience in Y would be a good idea.

~~~
abhinovb
Noted. I understand your concern because I was in a similar situation an year
ago.

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cylinder
There's a lot of infrastructure now for those looking to change into tech, web
development, startups etc. But beyond that there are many people looking to go
from say, Accounting -> Consulting, or Lawyer -> Strategy, etc etc and can't
figure out how to pull it off and how to get past the walled garden of
corporate HR.

~~~
abhinovb
Hmm, interesting problem. I was a telecom engineer but got into a data analyst
research position.

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guinness74
Interesting thought, but if I wanted career advice I'd ask Hacker News, since
I'm a software engineer and the folks here are a great resource. If I was a
chef, I would ask for career advice from a similar online community or
subreddit. Point being, an online community about a specific interest is where
the experts for that topic would reside and those are the people I want to
ask.

The value lies in those communties. Creating my own community platform is
something I've been noodling for some time. Reddit is terrific, but it's
cookie cutter and not exactly feature rich.

~~~
abhinovb
Agreed. This community aims to address the needs of college students in
particular, as they are often confused with the available choices during or
after college.

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kukudi1028
Yes. They need the information and they visit very often.

But does it really help? I don't think so.

General advices about what to do make them feel good but they don't really
understand what it means and how to really use the advice.

I think compared to giving and finding advice, teaching students how to
analyze their own career and come up with a practical plan to carry out is
more helpful.

~~~
abhinovb
Agreed. Yes, this idea comes from the very issue you mentioned. General advice
is not actionable. Thus, we wish to build a community initially for college
students and later on build upon it.

~~~
kukudi1028
Also, if your target customers are students, I highly suggest you go to
universities and talk to the students, get the idea what they think about the
advice and what influence it has on them.

I think most people here are better than average. The result may be different
from what you really need.

~~~
abhinovb
True, will contact my juniors right away.

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taprun
I don't think there is a need for another one. As you guessed, there's a
pretty good reddit sub for that:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions)

~~~
abhinovb
Noted.

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proveanegative
I think it isn't a bad idea to create a new community of this type. If you are
looking for an existing community with an overlapping scope there is
[http://workplace.stackexchange.com/](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/)

~~~
abhinovb
Thanks for sharing the link. From what I understood, that community is focused
on helping working professionals. I want a similar community for college
students.

~~~
proveanegative
Yes, working professionals are the core audience. Some of the topics that are
discussed there like resumes and interviewing can be useful for students
looking to be hired but not so much for those wondering what to major in.

For students there is also
[http://academia.stackexchange.com/](http://academia.stackexchange.com/) that
deals with the immediate problems they face.

~~~
abhinovb
Great! But then it is basically a Q&A forum. May be a mix of HN + SE can be
built. Thanks for the suggestion :)

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robmarkg
I personally think everyone should have a team to give them help and guidance,
and members of that team should have their own teams. I think this is a good
idea in theory - will be hard to do in practice though.

~~~
abhinovb
Well, there can be voluntary group leaders for important categories such as
jobs/internships, higher ed etc

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hkarthik
CareerDean is a targeted community just for this purpose.

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abhinovb
Thanks for sharing the link.

