

Blonk – a Tinder for Jobs iOS/Android app - ninthfrank07
http://blonk.co/

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cjbarber
Awesome :)

This looks great! Francis, congrats on launching:

Feedback \- agree with below on the name, not so hot on it \- be aggressive
with your promotion! the challenge is getting developers to actively use the
app, so that's what you'll need to optimize

I co-created (along with my friend Sam who's fantastic!) a similar app that is
in it's very early stages (started many months ago, paused for a while, but in
the recent frenzy got it finished up quick!).

You motivated me to submit it!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262142)

I'd love your feedback on Score, Francis!

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adamb0mb1
This is the second "tinder for jobs" app we've seen in the last week (the
other was www.emjoyment.com -- not a native app though)

Torturing the dating metaphor, is Tinder a better model than eHarmony?

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adamb0mb1
Also, the app is just showing:

    
    
        Meteor Rider, 
        Loading
        Loading...

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adambrod
This seems to be happening on Android's that are having not being connected to
the server (bad wifi/cell).

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syllogism
So how do you prevent yourself from getting scammed for the $1,000 hiring
bonuses? You've incentivised people for up to 50-60 hours of effort to scam
you. That's going to be tough to defend.

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epaga
I would assume that the $1000 are covered by the hiring company paying them a
higher sum for the referral of the applicant.

If the $1000 are coming from a larger sum being paid to them by the hiring
company, I see no scam possibility (but maybe I'm just not creative enough).

~~~
adambrod
Yes, we are charging 5k for a job placement, and then kicking back 1k to the
person getting hired and $500 to a referral.

There's a few vectors for potential scamming but it's going to be closely
monitored anyhow. If we can't do this manually because of huge growth it'll be
a great problem to have.

~~~
sp6pe
This is a great idea and I will definitely be downloading this app. The only
issue you might encounter could be, like Tinder - there are too many dudes
trying to get laid (people trying to get jobs due to the 1K bonus and $500
referral, and because it is easy) and not enough girls reciprocating
(companies looking to hire due to the 5K finders fee).

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Moto7451
Couple issues:

1 When viewing a company website on my 5c, there was no UI element or gesture
I could conjure to go back to the job listing.

2 I signed up via LinkedIn. After quitting the pp to get out of the webview
issue mentioned above, attempting to use the app resulted in me getting kicked
out to the reg wall and the linkedin integration failing to work a second
time. The error displayed was that I needed to upgrade the app.

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adambrod
1\. Yea this should work but is a problem with how PhoneGap handles links....
it should be opening them in a new slide up browser window but is not. I
should have a fix for this tomorrow.

2\. If you force quit the app (by holding down home button), and then relaunch
you should be good to go. I think what's happening is it's losing connection
with PhoneGap... i'm hoping this is fixed in the next day or two

The upgrade error is not true in your csae, it was just meant to sniff for a
phonegap variable for an older iOS shell, but in this case it's also undefined
so it throws the upgrade error.

Sorry about the bugs!

~~~
sazpaz
Is this built on Ionic?

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adambrod
It's built from scratch. I'll be open sourcing it all very soon.

I'm using Meteor for the front and backend and the UI was just recreated with
CSS. PhoneGap provides the shell and basically hijacks the DOM from the Meteor
server and re-fires events. I'm going to be implementing the FastRender
tomorrow so it'll render all html and json with one request.

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sheetjs
I must be out of the loop here: what is Tinder, and is it sufficiently well-
known that "Tinder for Jobs" is a good summary?

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cjbarber
Tinder [1] is a mobile dating application where users can swipe left or right
to indicate if they are interested with another 'tinder-er'.

If it's a mutual Yes (when you swipe Yes on someone, they will see you mixed
amongst random Tinder-ers on their swipe pages), then you both find out and
can start talking.

1: [http://www.gotinder.com/](http://www.gotinder.com/)

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eru
Tinder is like Grindr for straight people.

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instakill
Informative yet subtly esoteric enough to also be a tongue-in-cheek reply.
Nice ;)

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adambrod
I'm going to be open sourcing an iOS7 UI web app framework pulled from Blonk
if anyone is interested. Let me know what components you'd like to see.

It's based on the new Meteor UI components but the CSS could be used on any
stack.

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typage
I'm one of the co-founders. My name is Tom. Thanks for all of the input. If
you have any questions and thoughts on what you'd like to please fire away.
Also, my email address is tom@blonk.co

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supercoder
an app like this, but for finding a date / relationship would be amazing.

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durkie
that would be the "tinder" part

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interstitial
He must mean the $1000 reward if you make a hook-up.

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mehulkar
I would ranodomize it. I don't want to see all the positions for the same
company one after the other. Also, the Filter section froze (maybe because it
was still attempting to load all the filters? Maybe pagination would fix
that?)

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adambrod
Yea sorry about that, the filters are completely unusable at the moment. The
filters view is totally thrashing the DOM. We just released the LinkedIn
connect which increased the tags by a ton. This should be fixed in a day or
so. A regular text search would prob. be better at this point.

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aashaykumar92
Funny, I applied to YC with this exact idea. Unfortunately, I had barely done
any work other than thinking through the idea so, understandably, nothing came
of it but glad to see someone went through with it...good luck!

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the4dpatrick
I was actually really looking forward about using this app, but I found it
unusable. I've messaged Patrick about it through the app, but the app froze
when I changed the filters. Also, I saw 4-5 listings only?

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adambrod
Sorry about that, i'm working on reducing the number of tags being sent down
to the client... it's causing the filters page to totally barf. There might
only be 4-5 listings because of the filters? For example if you have the ruby
and javascript filter on it will only return those jobs.

In retrospect, the whole filters page is a bust... there is way to much to
scroll through now, ~800.

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vijucat
"This item cannot be installed in your device's country", which is Hong Kong.
I guess this is by design since locale is a dimension of complexity that you
want to figure out later?

~~~
adambrod
Yea in retrospect I guess it wouldn't have hurt anything to open up
internationally... we're mainly focused on the bay area jobs.

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vijucat
I, for one, would greatly appreciate if you can allow employers to specify if
they're OK with Remote (distinguishing between Remote-US vs. Remote-Anywhere,
I suppose), and allow me in Hong Kong to apply to them :-)

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bradhe
Wow, is taking a job as snap of a decision as hooking up with someone? Nope.
So how does the Tinder model make sense for this? Even from a UX perspective,
seems like a really horrible idea.

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blowski
Personally, I think it's a great idea. It's been a while since I've needed to
job-hunt, but it used to go something like:

1\. Scan through indeed.com, StackOverflow, etc, job pages, bookmarking
everything that seems interesting. 2\. Revisit the bookmarks, checking out the
company website, LinkedIn profiles, etc. Select a few favourites. 3\. Write
CVs and cover letters for the favourites.

At step 2, it's great if you can speak directly to your future boss /
colleagues. It's like a mini-interview before you go through the hassle of
step 3. It lets you get beyond the cliches of the job advert to the actual
people. That said, when I've been on the recruiting side, I hated receiving
those types of calls because you spend so much time dealing with poor
applicants, trying to tell them not to bother applying but still leaving them
with a positive image of your company. That's hard to do on the 30th phone
call of the day.

So it seems that Blonk is trying to filter those phone calls only to those
I've already said 'good enough to apply'.

The bit I didn't get is the signing-on bonus. As an employer, I would want to
get the best possible applicants. The $1,000 seems to skew the kind of people
that would be using the service to those who are desperate for cash. To use
the 'Tinder for jobs' analogy, if Tinder offered free meals to those who hook
up, they will get a large group of "unsociable but like free food" people.

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gsaines
Nice work Tom and Patrick, great to see you on HN, hope you guys are getting
some traffic and helpful feedback!

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freefrancisco
Needs the ability to filter by city, select San Francisco only and don't see
Mountain View or San Jose.

~~~
adambrod
This is coming soon. Since we're focussed on the bay area we put it on the
backburner.

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restlessdesign
Downloaded the iOS app, but nothing ever displays. There's no contact info to
get support either!

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adambrod
Yea we should probably have the support email more prominent. Shoot me an
email at adam@blonk.co if you have any issues.

Cheers!

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CisSovereign
Downloaded this. Got the landing screen with the loading circle for ~4
minutes. Closed the app.

~~~
adambrod
We were experiencing a load balancer problem, should be fixed now. Sorry for
the inconvenience.

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plandrem
Patrick here -- another one of the cofounders. Let us know if you have more
questions!

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brianbreslin
I'm afraid this oversimplifies job hunting. Or am i overthinking it?

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gkoberger
You could say Tinder oversimplifies marriage hunting.

Just like first dates, initial job interviews are relatively low-commitment.

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brianbreslin
hmmm is it strange that I hate the idea of doing 20 interviews and it leading
to 1 job, but am ok with the idea of meeting 20 women and it leading to 1
girlfriend/wife?

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eru
A job is for the next few years (or so). A wife hopefully lasts you longer.
And you should probably have more fun on the 20 first dates than on 20
interviews.

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dethstar
"This app is incompatible with your device." whoa

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adambrod
I think this might be an issue with location? The Google Play store is set to
US and Canada and has been giving a device error if you're out of those
regions.

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undantag
Aww. I guess let me know when you're open in the UK.

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phreanix
slight typo @ "...you're intereseted in."

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RussianCow
Also "Bob form Acme Corp" should be "from".

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abelnation
Value aside... what a terrible name.

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adambrod
But you won't forget it ;)

One of the co-founders picked it and I couldn't think of anything better.

