
Show HN: Get a better job offer, anonymously - my weekend hack - ferrofluid
http://jobpoacher.com
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ohashi
It struck me as odd that I would want to hire people this way. As far as I can
tell everyone is just asking for more money (big surprise, I know) but it says
nothing about what they want to do, are interested in, etc. Do I just blindly
reach out to a bunch of people and hope they match my needs?

~~~
mapster
True, it also states the person has no loyalty to their current employer if it
means an extra $10k a year. This could be a red flag for some, or an
opportunity. I am not in the programming business, so wonder what the turnover
rate is at tech firms.

~~~
dsr_
Employers don't have loyalty to their employees, so this is unsurprising.
These are business relationships.

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vyrotek
I don't know how you did it, but I'm pretty sure you were spying on me. I was
literally talking to a friend about this exact idea this weekend. We're trying
to hire some developers and wondered if anything like this existed since its
becoming very difficult to poach. I almost built the same thing this weekend.

Edit - I'm curious. Have you thought about how you will tackle the potential
spam problem? Recruiters are going to go crazy over this. We tossed around a
few ideas such as charging to contact the individual and making it more
expensive based on things the jobseeker could do. Those things might be paying
to have JobPoacher contact referrals, coding tests, etc.

Good luck with everything.

~~~
ryanhuff
An effective method of filtering out recruiters would be to require a
screening (paid for by the company). A few simple checks would cut out 95% of
the problem.

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damon_c
I got contacted by a recruiter within 20 minutes of posting.

Suddenly, I'm thinking that it IS kind of strange that if I reply to their
email, I will be beginning a relationship with someone who already knows my
approximate salary.

On the plus side, they contacted me knowing that information full well. No
nonsense with lowballing. Maybe it's a great starting point!

~~~
fvryan
lowballers will unlikely be deterred.

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rfrey
Wow, I can't believe how quickly this site activated my inner voyeur.

 _I'm a CTO (Rails), and I currently make $20,000 in San Francisco. I'm ONLY
interested in jobs as a Rails Engineer that pay at least $100,000 in The Bay
Area._

~~~
DevX101
I'm assuming the $20k he/she works at a early stage startup. There are CTOs
that are working for $0 and all equity.

~~~
rfrey
Yeah, me too... just the most dramatic of the narratives I can't help but
create around these little blurbs.

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jonnathanson
The "Poachees" listings should be searchable and sortable if they're to be of
real value to would-be recruiters or hiring managers.

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illumin8
I hope you can keep out the script kiddies - I just saw one of these:

I'm a <script>alert('lulz')</script>, and I currently make $40,000 in
<script>alert('lulz')</script>. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a
<script>alert('lulz')</script> that pay at least $120,000 in
<script>alert('lulz')</script>.

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rch
This is nice, but could you add an option to indicate that I only want to deal
technically proficient people?

In fact, I would pay a few bucks up-front if you could somehow assure that I
would only be put in contact with technical people that actually work for the
company doing the hiring (no recruiters at all). And I'd pay to validate that
I satisfy that requirement from the hiring side as well.

~~~
troygoode
Great idea!

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dan_yall
I hope this results in some "Piña Colada Song" situations where employers end
up contacting their own employees.

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gte910h
Why would people disclose the current salary they have?

~~~
thematt
I agree, I've never understood why that data point is relevant to the job I'm
applying/being-recruited for.

~~~
LukeRB
I think it's even more interesting when the first number is more than the
second, as it is in the listing below:

"I'm a Mobile Product Support Specialist, and I currently make _$90,000_ in
Mountain View, CA. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a Community Manager, Product
Quality Analyst, Junior UX/Interaction Designer that pay at least _$65,000_ in
San Francisco, CA."

~~~
felideon
I assumed it is by people who want to jump-start a new career path, eg: from
developer to designer, or want to move to a different city.

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sown
Minor bug report:

I tried to fill it out with the 'links' browser. I didn't see the captcha so I
did not get a confirmation email but the app did seem to retain my email
address so I cannot delete the old one to resubmit when I use a GUI browser.

As an aside, I really like this because of how people don't talk about how
much they make. When I see someone makes $164000 as a pen tester in Mountain
View and I make a smaller amount, I feel like I could be working on
interesting problems _and_ make a bit more coin. oh, well. :(

Minor suggestion: I wonder how much other people like my ad? Perhaps that's
part of the mystery. That info, perhaps shouldn't be available to poachees but
only poachers? I dunno.

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joezydeco
Same problem happened to me. I'm locked out, so I guess I'll make a mailinator
address and try again.

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bluedevil2k
This is really awesome, so awesome I think that you should think about how to
monetize it and make some serious money. (I know that's seemingly against the
"hacker ethos", but it's not often that you think of million-dollar ideas).

~~~
r00k
If I were them, I'd be scrambling to make recruiters pay $xx-$xxx to contact
people through the site.

~~~
jamiequint
You should make it so recruiters pay when they get a response. The could only
message candidates through the site initially (not via email) and their email
would also be anonymized. If the candidate replied then the recruiter could be
charged $XXX per reply.

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elliottcarlson
The most important feature is listing by locality IMHO. Without being able to
filter out candidates to where I am, it would be easy to miss them, especially
when having to search for variations (NY, New York, Manhattan).

I see in a comment you will be adding a search field which would help with the
above; however the variations could still be an issue. A simple helper could
be a predictable typing field for the location that allows people to select
already existing locations so that there is consistency?

Good job otherwise!

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araneae
I wish it allowed you enter an hourly wage, since that's what I make.

I could annualize it but I don't actually work full time so that wouldn't be
accurate.

~~~
mtrimpe
And I wish they would add the ability to specify rates in euro's.

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noobface
After posting and reading all the other listings. I've realized I'm one of the
few hardware guys on HN.

Any other hardware/low-level guys out there?

~~~
mietek
If you count C as low-level, here I am. Now what?

~~~
noobface
We revolt against the software majority. Threaten to cut off their sockets.

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SoftwareMaven
It really needs a small "experience" section. It should be small, so a
recruiter can still scan; but I really want to be able to differentiate at
least between junior and senior people.

I also would like to have an "interest". I don't want to contact somebody
wanting to do games for my web startup. That just wastes both our time.

~~~
unreal37
Thats what a resume is for.

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joedev
If a hiring company were look at this they'll naturally see the "I currently
make" amount and consider that market rate. After all, it matters not what
people want to make, but instead by the amount for which people have
demonstrated that they are willing to work.

~~~
cheald
It's worth noting that something like this will naturally self-select people
who feel they're underpaid, so you're likely seeing the lower edge of "market
rate" here.

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rg81
The recruiter that got back to me was more direct and less spammy than other
random recruiting emails I get from those who see my profile on linkedin etc.
I'm wondering if this is an accident or a change in the way the recruiter
views these postings.

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samstave
I find it odd that people would put such a wide discrepency between current
and desired salary.

If you are making 30K, as a webdeveloper and are seeking 60K as a web
developer, I dont see why anyone would read this and think "Hey, here's a guy
who wants double what he is making now, lets go get him"

Like the manager in UAE who states 130K current and 180K desired.

50K is a lot, even though its a smaller % than the 100% - Why do these people
feel that if they are worth twice what they are making now, that advertising
via this site is a good idea.

Maybe I'm confused?

Like this one:

"I'm a Generalist, and I currently make $120,000 in San Francisco. I'm ONLY
interested in jobs as a Generalist that pay at least $140,000 in San
Francisco."

This tells me absolutely nothing.

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jason_shah
Cool idea.

Small UI suggestions (realizing this was just a hack) - 1\. Add some margin-
left to the copyright notice at the bottom 2\. Autocomplete on the cities (and
other fields, like Occupation) will help standardize your dataset for search
and sort later

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samstave
This one is funny though:

"I'm a Very Unhappy Facebook User, and I currently make $10,001 in creating
Facebook's content. I'm ONLY interested in jobs as a Happy Facebook User that
pay at least $10,002 in creating awesome content."

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v33ra
Feature request: What happens when there are hundreds of listings? Would
people be reading all those listings line by line?

A search box with filters for each input data you are collecting would be a
nice fit.

~~~
ferrofluid
I can already see it cluttering up. Thanks, I'll add that shortly!

~~~
powrtoch
I was going to suggest this, as well as a way to browse by category. Employers
probably don't want to look for "iOS developer" and "iOS programmer" and "iOS
engineer", so some kind of automatic way to combine these seems useful.

Also, filtering by salary.

Overall though, love the idea.

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cheald
I like this, because it's difficult to get honest numbers about salary for a
given position/location. Entirely apart from the "job seeking" part of the
equation, the raw data is very interesting to me.

There will be a fake/fudge factor to account for, but it's so hard to get
people to talk about their salaries honestly that it's very interesting to see
some raw data there.

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joshaidan
I like the idea. A nice start to something I'm sure will grow into something
pretty neat.

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sakopov
It's an interesting idea, but pretty much unusable at this point. Definitely
needs filtering, searching and a better UI with clean separation of
submissions (think StackOverflow).

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rpledge
Interesting idea. I'd like to see some stats when you get enough data, stuff
like number of responses, number of people who found a job through the
service, etc....

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danberger
One of the unintended uses for this tool is for founders to figure out what
the competitive market salary is for positions they're trying to fill.

~~~
elliottcarlson
Since you don't know the persons background and skill level you still can't
accurately determine this - even with the guess that someone has grown over
time in compensation because of skill, there are plenty of people who have
managed to slip through the cracks or have done enough job hopping to allow
them to achieve a higher salary without actually have the knowledge to back it
up.

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zekel
Suggestions:

-Filter by job, location, salary (as suggested by others)

-RSS

-A "find other poachees" like this one button. (Could use ranges with the filter feature to make it even more convenient.)

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benvanderbeek
Error when trying to delete: We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been
notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

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ilcavero
how are you going to avoid head hunters' spam, either as fake candidates to
discover new clients or with fake offers for CV mining?

~~~
unreal37
I don't think this is a huge problem. The value to an employee is in the
$10,000s per year, and so its worth it to go through a few spam emails to find
the good offers. The value to companies is also $10,000s in saved recruiter
fees. So on both sides, to go through 50 spam emails to find one good
opportunity is worth it.

And the penalty for being such a spammer is that clients/employees won't want
to work with you, and potentially expose you on twitter as being someone to
avoid. The risks are high to spam this.

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zeratul
Maybe instead of "and I currently make ___" you should have "and I have ___
years experience in ____". Or at least have both.

~~~
randomdata
Pay is probably a better indicator though. People can have years of experience
and still not be good at the job, but pay highlights what kind of value they
are generating. Someone who is not good at the job is unlikely to be in the
position to earn top dollar.

There will be outliers. Like the talented person who is willing to work for
peanuts just because the job is amazing. But that is why there is an infinite
number of ways to find a job.

~~~
ajuc
Well, in my city average pay for programmers is 12 000 $. I know of people
earning 35 000 $, but that's the upper limit.

So if I wanted to use this site I would be considered bad programmer.

~~~
randomdata
I'm not sure that is true. The location is noted, so it is still calculable
where you stand. I don't think there is anyone who thinks $100K in the Bay
Area is the same as $100K in India.

But if you're making $8,000 in your city, that raises some questions.

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fam
The footer would better if centered or placed inside the 940 grid (rather than
stick to the left with 0 margin) - IMO.

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johnbender
Any chance we could see a freelance/contract version of the form? About the
only difference would be $/hr support.

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benharrison
I think a great feature for this would be a map to visualize the results in
your area.

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functionform
Whoa, this is a scary good idea. Wondering if I should post tonight. I feel
dirty!

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ednc
nice. Where are you getting the recruiting traffic from?

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dps
Do you have plans for how to get rid of spam?

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PaulAnunda
op, i just reserved @jobposter for you on twitter. email me and i'll transfer
ownership to you.

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playhard
twitter bootstrap?

