

Show HN: Moki is a recruiting platform built on Twitter - illdave
https://www.trymoki.com/

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jasonkester
You might want to work on your copy. I read your whole homepage several times,
and still can't figure out what it is that your product does.

You start off with: "Moki uses Twitter to make your social recruiting smarter"

OK. How? Is this your big selling point? As a guy off the streat, I have
trouble even parsing that, let alone coming up with what it might mean or how
it would help me (or even if this is a problem I have).

So, thus far we know that "Twitter" seems to be a big deal for your thing. You
have a "why twitter" thing taking up the rest of the space above the fold:

"On Twitter, we tend to follow people we trust. And if your team follows an
applicant, that's a sign they could be a great hire"

Is that true? As a job seeker, would I need to be following people on Twitter
for your thing to work? As an employer, would I need to be following people on
Twitter for your thing to work?

Onward, below the fold is a bunch of talk about applications, job boards, etc.
But still no word on what your thing does that sets it apart (and never
another mention of Twitter anywhere). I see things that look like features,
but it all seems like pretty generic job-board stuff.

So yeah, here I am having read everything there is to read about your thing,
with no real understanding of what it is or whether it would help me.

How about instead, above the fold, explaining in a few bullet points:

    
    
      - What your thing is
      - Why I need it
      - How it works
    

_Then_ , you can tell me about Twitter below the fold.

(oh, and since you seem to be here, how about explaining to us here at HN what
your thing does, why we need it, and how it works!)

~~~
illdave
Hi Jason, thanks very much for the feedback - I really appreciate it. It
sounds like the copy is definitely something I need to get right.

And in answer to your question \- It's a recruiting platform like The
Resumator, or Jobvite, but with a job board built in. It also adds social data
to job listings and to job applications - so each job listing will also show a
list of people who recommend working there. If you're an employer, when people
apply for you job, it shows you a list of your team members who choose to
follow the applicant on Twitter.

Companies could find it useful because recruiting is extremely hard - there's
a low signal to noise ratio, so you might get lots of job applications from
people who aren't really suitable, and only a few applications from people who
are great. Moki helps you spot the people who are most likely to fit in
quicker. Job seekers can find it useful because jobs listed aren't from
recruitment agencies - they're from the actual company themselves - you can
see a profile page of the company that explains their culture, office & perks
and you can see a list of people who recommend working there.

It works, hopefully, seamlessly - companies list jobs in the same way they
would with a regular job board and people apply for jobs directly on Moki,
filling in a form on the site. The only difference is that you need to log in
through Twitter to sign up. Nothing is ever automatically tweeted from their
account.

As you can see - I've not quite found a way to word the concept elegantly yet.
Thanks again for the feedback - I genuinely appreciate it.

~~~
yashchandra
"you might get lots of job applications from people who aren't really
suitable, and only a few applications from people who are great"

This in my opinion is the problem that you are trying to solve through Moki.
correct ? Why not make this clear on the homepage instead of saying "Hiring
made simple..through twitter blah blah". So the problem is "too many
applicants, only few good ones _matching_ your company's
needs/culture/environment/requirement". Moki is solving this problem by a)
removing recruitment agencies layer ? b) directly connecting job seekers and
employers ? c) twitter helps the employer understand more about the job
applicant from his/her connections who might already work at the company ? d )
twitter helps the job seeker understand more about the company from his/her
connections who already work there ? I am just thinking off top of my head
here but take away whatever you can.

~~~
illdave
That's great, thanks very much for the advice, those are some really good
starting points for me to work from.

------
illdave
Hi HN, I finally got around to launching Moki - a recruiting platform & job
board that aims to make hiring easier, by using social data. It's partly
inspired by pg's request for startups that use Twitter as an infrastructure.

I'd really love to hear your feedback - criticism of the landing page, copy,
design & concept is all genuinely welcome.

~~~
koide
How do you plan to solve the problem of, say, Paul Graham or Joel Spolsky
receiving tons of job offers?

~~~
illdave
I think I may need to reword the landing page as it might not be completely
clear how the site works. You can't give job offers to people who haven't
applied for a job. Now, if pg applies for a job that you've listed, you'll
probably find that a lot of people on your team follow him on Twitter - so his
application will appear at the top of your list - but it won't list people who
haven't seen your job listing and chosen to apply.

------
wiradikusuma
congrats on your launch!

although i think "On Twitter, we tend to follow people we trust. And if your
team follows an applicant, that's a sign they could be a great hire" is too
idealistic :P a lot of people follow celebrities (can be in tech industry),
bots, official twitter of some entities/websites, and even random people they
find entertaining.

~~~
illdave
Thanks very much - you're right, I certainly follow people who are unrelated
to my industry, but it shouldn't affect the results Moki displays, as it's
very unlikely that a celebrity will apply for a job on Moki, or recommend
working for a specific company (and even if they do - that data is still
probably useful to know).

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mutewinter
Those avatars look familiar <http://eightbit.me/>.

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nodata
Does your job search page work? I get no hits for java, lisp, or php.

Also, I always see "Showing 1 to 4 of 4 jobs" at the bottom of the page.

~~~
illdave
Hi, it does work - it's just a brand new site that only went live today, so
there are only a couple of jobs in the system at the moment.

~~~
nodata
Ah. I thought it was trawling Twitter. mea culpa.

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rmATinnovafy
Tell us about the stack/code.

~~~
illdave
It's all built on Ruby on Rails, and it's running on Heroku - expect a more
detailed post later on the Moki blog :)

