

Show HN: Workshape.io – A talent matching service for developers in Startups - GordyMD
http://www.workshape.io

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GordyMD
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

~~~
rob_mccann
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...](http://www.workshape.io/api/0/session/connect/github/callback?etcetcetcetc)),
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" }

~~~
troels
Same here.

~~~
GordyMD
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?

~~~
atmosx
Sure do, here is my profile with everything you need:
[https://github.com/atmosx](https://github.com/atmosx)

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

~~~
gedrap
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.

~~~
ehurrell
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).

~~~
huntermeyer
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)?

~~~
jtheory
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.

------
bjackman
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...](http://www.workshape.io/api/0/session/connect/github/callback?<big)
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"}

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adlawson
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.

------
snlacks
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

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

~~~
snlacks
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.

------
juhq
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.

~~~
GordyMD
Hi.

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

We will inform users of future developments periodically.

------
500and4
Nice idea and really well executed. I run
[http://www.zonino.co.uk](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!

~~~
jtheory
Seems inactive --
[http://zonino.co.uk/jobs/latest](http://zonino.co.uk/jobs/latest) "No
matching jobs found", and copyright 2013?

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vonmoltke
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. :(

~~~
GordyMD
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.

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kornakiewicz
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.

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

------
instakill
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.

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poppahorse
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!

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

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

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

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

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lnanek2
Just get a page with empty brackets after authorizing on GitHub: " {} "

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

~~~
GordyMD
Thank you!

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peakepoetics
Great concept

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peakepro
Great concept

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sdickert
Like.

~~~
ScottCraig
Cracking idea.

