

Lean vs VC: How We're Taking on StackOverflow Careers - ig1
http://blog.coderstack.co.uk/lean-vs-vc-how-were-taking-on-stack-overflow

======
john_horton
To me, what's exciting & innovative about SO Careers is its integration w/ the
high-quality, high-bandwidth information conveyed by SO reputations---not how
SO executes the job board itself.

~~~
michael_dorfman
To me, what's exciting about SO Careers is the volume of people using it. Like
all markets, you need large quantities of both buyers and sellers present to
make things interesting.

In the case of SO Careers, the initial traction came from SO (which in turn
got its initial traction from the readers of Jeff and Joel's respective
blogs.)

Anyone wishing to compete with SO Careers better have a very good strategy for
gaining traction (and not depend on the quality of the software, etc. to
attract people on both sides.)

~~~
revorad
From the blog post:

 _it's more successful than StackOverflow Careers on most metrics in the UK.
We run more job ads, our jobs get viewed by more developers, we get more
applications/job and we have more satisfied customers._

Focusing on one country is probably a good way to compete against a global
jobs board.

------
toadi
When reading they spent money on geotargeted advertising on plenty of fish I
was baffled. Decent developers or people in charge of recruiting at a company
surf plenty of fish?

~~~
JacobAldridge
I had that thought as well, then realised that it's probably making sense, if
Coder Stack is tracking metrics like they say they are (I get all my POF news
from HN, for example).

Ven diagrammatically, I'm sure if you had a group that was unhappy with their
personal life and a group unhappy with their job, there would probably be a
big overlap.

~~~
ig1
People from the tech community are disproportionately represented on dating
sites (if you're advertising on POF, they let you target them specifically),
presumably due to the industry gender ratio and the general lack of customer
interaction meaning far less dating via work occurs than in other industries.

------
acconrad
Am I the only one who found coderstack to not be innovative at all? I went to
the first job posting on the front page and I saw a 1 page job description, 1
page of skills required. It looks exactly like every other job site. I'm not
trying to hate on the product, but I really don't get it. The description of
the company looks like it was pulled from Crunchbase or a company's about
page. The job description looks just as wordy as it would be on any other job
site. And then there's a "apply now" button. Is there a piece of this puzzle
that I'm missing?

~~~
ig1
The innovation is primarily in the business model and customer experience
rather than in the technology which is fairly standard.

