

StackOverflow is hugely relevant to hiring decisions - their biz model? - aresant

As we all know StackOverflow is on the road raising money.<p>Lots of the discussion in the HN boards focused on why they need more $$$, and what about their model scaled.<p>Here’s my best guess: in our ongoing odyssey to hire a few add’l great programmers I’ve found myself relying more and more on StackOverflow to decide who to spend time interviewing.<p>They also have a $500 a month premium access option for hiring managers to sift through candidates.<p>Unlike linkedin, which let’s candidates kiss their own asses, StackOverflow lets you really get a sense for who you’re hiring, what their skills are, what their problem solving skills are, and find the BEST candidates, as reviewed by their peers.<p>This is an ingenious way to qualify talent and could be scaled in many other industries.
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marshally
I love the /idea/ of using StackOverflow Careers to identify and retain
talent. But there just aren't enough candidates there to justify the
$1000/month fee.

You used to be able to see the number of candidates that would be returned for
specific searches without paying for an employer account. A recent search for
Ruby developers in the DFW area came back with only 5-10 hits. I can no longer
find the search page. I wonder why?

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dangrossman
So, if someone is not a member of this one particular Q&A board site, you
aren't interested in hiring them?

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aresant
First, it's not "this one particular Q&A board" IMO - StackOverflow is now in
the top 600 largest sites on the web, and the central hub for programming
discussion.

I would consider somebody else if they gave a sufficiently compelling reason,
but again when making the decision about where to focus time (think 20 - 30
resumes a day coming in) it's an easy way to qualify people.

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dangrossman
I've made over 20,000 posts in programming forums, most of which have been
around a decade or more, but none at Stack Overflow. Filtering resumes by
having an account at a single specific site, no matter how popular that site,
is rather arbitrary.

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aresant
As for "Filtering resumes by having an account at a single specific site. . .
is rather arbitrary":

I never in my post say that's the only mechanism we use to qualify - we get
candidates from all over the usual candidates (monster / cb / hotjobs / dice /
etc) but we use SO to help qualify.

I see lots of value in SO when trying to filter through the HUGE amount of
resumes that come through the door.

I hire lots of technical people, this system works for me.

Their business model is charging $500/month to hiring managers for access to
candidates and slapping in some advertising.

The fact that they’re out on the road raising VC says that they’re probably
having a lot of success in this model because it works for others too.

StackOverflow centralizes, VERY VERY SUCCESSFULLY, a huge talent pool of
programmers.

And it gives hiring managers a lot of data that is hard to collect (multiplied
x30 resumes a day) from a variety of “programming forums” to make hiring
decisions.

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adelevie
If SO really becomes the Go To place for background checking a job applicant's
skill, people's posts on it will just become more self-serving. Instead of
posting to genuinely find something out, you post a question for the sake of
trying to appear smart.

It reminds me of a college course I'm taking. The other day we had someone
filming a documentary shoot some of the class. The discussion that day was as
vibrant as ever. Everybody wanted to survive the cutting room floor, including
me.

