
Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been? - rrpadhy
I do come across job posts on the home of HN. Job postings by Y Combinator alumni, which are guaranteed to appear on the front page for a period of time.<p>How effective has been these posts? 
Anyone here who has out the job post and can share some numbers?
Anyone who has applied to these job posts?
Others, what do you do&#x2F;think when you see a job post?<p>We are working on a startup idea, and this question carries some value in validating our concept. However, it is not related to job openings. Our validation is primarily to understand user behavior.
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jonnathanson
I owe my writing career to HN.

I have been writing my whole life (I probably put in my 10,000 hours before I
left high school). But until recently, I'd never really considered it as a
serious job option. Journalism rarely pays a living wage. Trying to sell book
proposals is like trying to make a career out of buying lottery tickets.
Unless you are confident you're the next J.K. Rowling [1], you should leave
writing where it belongs: on nights and weekends, as a hobby. Or so I'd always
imagined. And so I spent the last decade of my life resisting the call to
foolishness and misadventure.

I've been lurking, arguing, and mucking about on HN for the last few years. I
took awhile to realize that HN had become my primary outlet for writing. Once
I figured it out, I committed more time to lurking here.

I responded to my first HN jobs post in mid-2013, for a writing job with
Priceonomics (YC '12). They responded rapidly (same day, if memory serves),
and I got to work right away. I have done some very fun, very interesting work
with those guys. (And I hope to continue; in fact, I owe them beers when I get
back into town!). That work went really well. In the span of three or four
months, I landed an agent, a book deal, some NPR appearances, and some columns
in national publications. I have yet to make Harry Potter money, let alone my
previous salary. But in the meantime, I'm paying rent in San Francisco, doing
something that doesn't feel like work to me. That's pretty cool.

Lately I've picked up a lot of freelance content marketing and writing jobs
through HN Freelancer threads. I get a good response rate, and the people I
work with have been awesome. I hope to keep landing these gigs every month or
two.

And at some point, I'll get around to writing that book.

I apologize if this post seems glib, humblebraggy, or even non-humble in its
bragginess. That's not my intent. I just saw this topic and felt an
overwhelming need to share my story here. My path is atypical and ill-advised.
Especially if you like making money. But I know of no other path by which I
could have reshaped my destiny so quickly.

[1] Or Robert Galbraith, or whoever.

~~~
rrpadhy
Hey .... I could not have asked for more... Thanks for the detailed response.
It really helps in my understanding and adds a not of value.

~~~
xerophtye
"not" is: ton*

I know normally corrections are frowned upon, but this should be an exception,
it completely inverts the meaning!

~~~
rrpadhy
Thanks ... yeah ... I meant ton ...

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pg
I don't know specific numbers, but the companies we've funded say they get
good people from them.

------
8_hours_ago
From the viewpoint of a job applicant, I have been very happy with the job
postings on HN. Of the 4 jobs that I applied to over the past 3.5 years (I'm
pretty selective), all 4 responded to me on the same day, and 3 resulted in
phone interviews. Those numbers are very good compared to other job posting
sites.

I found that job aggregation sites like Monster performed absolutely terribly.
In that same category are the careers website that large companies like
Microsoft and Boeing have, which are basically black holes. I can't remember
ever getting a response from any of them. It's easy to spam your resume to
dozens of jobs at once, but 0/1000 is still 0.

My favorite technique (which got me my current job) was to apply to the
company directly after finding the job opening through Craigslist or other
means. Applying directly got me a response rate of 14/17, and an interview
rate of 10/14.

Emailing companies directly through Craigslist was fairly poor for me, and
gave me a response rate of 2/8, and an interview rate of 1/2.

I realize that my sample size is small, but I hope it helps.

~~~
danielweber
Your talk about "black holes" made me realize that when I apply anywhere I
should put some URLs into my cover letters to see if anyone ever reads them.

~~~
Evgeny
How would you use URLs in the cover letters to check they were read?

~~~
danielweber
Put them on a server I control and check access logs.

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akg_67
My experience as job applicant:

Who is hiring, March 2014: I received three responses to my applications. One
for code samples (no follow up afterward), one for quick phone conversation,
and one for phone interview (Ed: three different companies).

Seeking Freelance, March 2014: No response.

Who is hiring, Feb 2014: No response.

Seeking Freelance, Feb 2014: No response.

YC Companies /jobs: No ACK or response in last two months.

~~~
namelezz
Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone
interview -> No response.

~~~
fsk
Why is it considered acceptable to just cut off contact after a phone
interview or an onsite interview?

If you get an onsite interview or phone interview, they should at least have
the decency for a form letter "Thanks for applying, but we chose someone
else." (especially after an on-site interview)

~~~
elandybarr
It is not acceptable.

I have tried to be courteous to everyone who has applied where I am. However,
keep in mind that one recruiter may be dealing with 20-50 applicants in that
week.

And it is never fun rejecting people. It is easy to want to put it off.

------
pbiggar
We get great applicants
([https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs)), and have hired over
half the company this way (maybe 6 or 7 people).

However, we have a lot that appeals to the HN crowd: a flat organization,
CircleCI is written in Clojure, the company is half remote, we make tools for
developers and we're committed to private offices per dev for SF hires.

So your mileage will definitely vary.

~~~
zerr
Why do you limit remote applicants with "US-only"?

~~~
danielweber
Dealing with remote employees is already something of an effort. It churlish
to take the minority of companies willing to do it and complain that they
aren't doing it enough because they want to stick with their native legal and
social system.

(Can I let go of my remote employee in London? Do I need to "show cause"? How
much will it cost me just to get a lawyer to answer that?)

~~~
zerr
Hire as a [long-term] contractor and that's it.

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tptacek
Until a year or so ago, they were our #1 most effective recruitment vehicle.
(We got better at hiring; HN didn't get worse.)

~~~
zerr
Next step: get better at management to allow remote employment ;)

~~~
tptacek
Yeah, no. Just not how we work. Sorry! :)

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minimaxir
Note that there are two types of job posts on HN:

1) Who is Hiring threads, which are posted on the first of every month

2) Job postings by Y Combinator alumni, which are guaranteed to appear on the
front page for a period of time.

~~~
rrpadhy
I meant the second type.

Was not able to frame it correctly. So I have copy pasted your definition and
updated the description. :)

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zbruhnke
We've posted two and received a total of about 50 applications.

of those 50 I'd say 65-75% of them are high quality candidates at least at
first glance that are writing emails specifically about the postings we put up
and referencing the things we say in the post vs just spamming everyone in the
list with a generic cover letter and resume.

So far HN is the best source of high quality candidates for us as a startup
working on hard technical challenges.

------
arasmussen
I regularly (twice a month?) check
[https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs) just to
see what's out there. I'm not even looking for a job, just more interested in
what startups are doing and what kind of employees they're looking for.

------
sergiotapia
Applied to 4 front end positions with a dash of Rails work, 2 of them had
uninteresting work so I declined, 1 wanted me to jump through hoops answering
some silly puzzles - "Lol no... I'm not 21 anymore, you want to hire me look
at my credentials and open source code".

The last one was a great fit and I'm loving the work we're doing.

If you guys want to hire good people who actually respect themselves and will
present your business well inside and outside, don't make candidates jump
through your silly college-level puzzles. I'm too old for this shit.

------
paulmay
We posted on HN in November and it was very effective
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653752)).
The volume of candidates that came from the HN post was much smaller than
other channels, but the quality of candidates was much higher than all the
other channels.

Here are the numbers we saw:

HN - 12 candidates total, 7 made it to the initial phone interview and 3 made
it to a full interview....we made one offer and he accepted (and he's
awesome).

Stackoverflow - 28 candidates, 9 initial phone interviews, 2 full interviews,
no offers.

Indeed - 40 candidates, 6 phone interviews, none of them made it to a full
interview.

Craigslist - 6 candidates, 2 phone interviews, neither of them made it to a
full interview.

Two other thoughts...

I think the reason that HN worked so well for us is that we we took a very
targeted approach...before posting, we spent a lot of time thinking through
exactly what we were looking for and what we thought made working at
BuzzStream a unique opportunity for the right person. We wrote a positioning
statement for the job that we used as the starting point for our post. Getting
the message right was critical.

The fact that we don't mind bringing on remote people makes things a lot
easier.

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sheetjs
If you go through the whoishiring posts, you'll see some people actually do
give numbers. For example, scribd:

> We've hired SIX full-time people and TONS of interns from these "Who is
> Hiring" threads ... it really works!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7326306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7326306)

~~~
rrpadhy
"who is hiring" thread is great...

My specific question is regarding the
[https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)

Also, some of the jobs show up on the homepage, how do they fare?

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msutherl
I got a great job through the the Who's Hiring thread. The company that hired
me said the signal:noise ratio from HN was about 50:50, much higher than any
other method.

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kamens
Multiple hires for Khan Academy. One of our best recruiting networks.

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steven777400
I once applied to a job post in the one of the monthly "Who's Hiring" threads.
I got a callback and we discussed the my experience, the company, and the
position.

They were interested in conducting a further interview, but, based on the what
I learned in the phone conversation, I decided we wouldn't be a good fit
together and so declined to move forward.

I do enjoy reading the threads each month to see what the industry is up to
from a hiring perspective.

------
fsk
Just one data point:

I replied to every NYC posting one month. I got zero on-site interviews. (I do
get interviews when I send resumes via other methods.)

I'm not wasting time responding again.

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kiyoto
We hired our frontend engineer, and he's been nothing short of awesome.

To put this in context:

We are an enterprise SaaS company (www.treasuredata.com). In other words, this
is not something a lot of frontend folks are aware of let alone interested in
by default. Still, we managed to find someone who was really good. He and
another frontend engineer made a worlds of difference in our webapp and
boosted customer engagement.

~~~
akg_67
Very interesting company. Thanks for making me aware of it. I wasn't aware of
an enterprise data storage, management and analytics SaaS company. This is my
area of interest. I noticed you have couple of opportunities that I may be a
good fit. Sending my application.

------
BorisMelnik
Great but terrible. Lots of initial contact with people I am offering them
jobs with WordPress development and rails but very little followup.

~~~
rrpadhy
You had posted a job opening and got great by terrible response, or you
applied to jobs, but no follow-ups?

~~~
rhizome
I think it's supposed to read, "Lots of initial contact with people. I am
offering them jobs with WordPress development and rails, but very little
followup."

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croisillon
1\. I don't work in a technical domain

2\. I don't look at job offers on HN

3\. I never applied to job offers on HN

I hope this gives you a great insight!

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hgh
Got a few interesting nibbles after posting on the who's hiring posts, but
specific hiring submission didn't get far. We're based in Cape Town, so
perhaps reader geography plays some part.

If you're in our part of the world, have skills in frontend development, java,
or python, and you want to work at a fast growing mobile payments company,
send me a mail (email on profile)

~~~
Kluny
Same as the other commenter, I'm interested. Canadian but I'd like to work in
Africa. HN doesn't display your email address, you have to post it in your
bio.

~~~
Noelkd
I you can find it in his previous comments, he's posted in the "Who's Hiring"
before. I would repost but I assume it's something about avoiding spammers?

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lbotos
As an applicant
[https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs) was
always a fun way to read the pulse of the YC crowd. I saw something
interesting, I applied, and now I'll be starting my new position in a few
weeks! In a word; useful. :)

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yesimahuman
I'd be curious to hear about how effective the ones that end up on the
weekends are. I can imagine they are quite a bit less effective, but I could
be wrong. Seems like it would be worth just delaying those to the next Monday,
but that isn't exactly a new opinion.

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nathan_f77
Myself and 2 other ZenPayroll engineers found and applied to ZenPayroll
through the job posts on HN.

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DevoAKA
I didn't find my current job directly through the monthly job post but, over a
year ago, I found a link to AngelList and then from there I was able to find
my full-time job, junior and all.

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chrisconley
I got my current gig at Monetate in December 2013 after seeing a post on Who's
Hiring November 2013.

It turns out we've hired 7 our ~20 software engineers like this over the last
few years.

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kclay
Seeking freelancer has netted me a 3 to 1 rate for new clients on average
every time I've posted. Far better then posting on elance or similar sites.

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d0m
High quality candidates and also great discussions even with people we end up
not hiring (Some we forwarded to other startups we knew were looking).

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vikas5678
I've posted many UI programmer job openings I have in my team, never even
received a resume. Good programmers are hard to find.

~~~
ultimatedelman
I know this is a shameless plug, but my company, Mighty Spring
([http://www.mightyspring.com/getstarted](http://www.mightyspring.com/getstarted))
has a ton of front end people who would be interested in working at your
startup ;)

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bliti
I was hired from a regular HN post. But know of people hired through the job
posts themselves. It works well.

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laurenstill
My current job I got through HN, in addition to a number of interviews. Not a
YC Co though.

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guiporto
I think this post should be a poll instead of just an 'open question'.

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rco8786
Got my current job on here

