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Show HN: I made a site that aggregates entry-level positions (entrylevel.io)
270 points by docoleman36 on March 26, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 109 comments



Some quick feedback specific to the listings I got when I plugged in "Germany": almost everything I found is internships. You mention in a comment elsewhere that intern is the new entry-level, but over here internships are almost exclusively for current students, and the ones I peeked at all had that restriction. And taking on internships in parallel to University is rare here (at the Universities I'm aware of), at least in CS.

Maybe you could consider adding a filter to remove internships? Otherwise the site is rather useless for non-students here.


I plugged in "remote" and got physician positions for hospitals in Ohio. This does seem rather useless and unrefined.


Yes, the "remote" jobs are still in testing. We will be adding more very soon. Thanks for your feedback.


Thank you for your feedback. Yes, we are working on adding more jobs for every country. And categories/ filtering should be ready in the next few weeks.


Great to hear! I understand adding listings from around the globe is difficult, I was honestly somewhat surprised to find any listings at all.

Good luck with the project, I hope it will be useful for many, even if not for me.


Yes, it is haha. Thank you very much!


What do you mean by internships both being exclusive to current students but rare to take on in parallel to being in university? Only during breaks?


Well, it is my impression that internships are just a lot rarer than they are in the US, for example. Many students go through a Bachelors and Masters degree without ever doing one, me included. Most internships are done by students doing a degree that explicitly requires them to do one and gives them a semester off for it.

With "in parallel" I did mean breaks, however. Depending on your school, you don't get a lot of those either. This semester my last exam would have been on 4/15 (if it weren't for the current situation), and lectures start again the same day. Admittedly I could have chosen an earlier date for that exam, but even then it would have been 3/23 (this Monday). That would have given me at most three weeks to do an internship, and that's just not worth it for me. Other semesters have been similar.

It is my understanding a lot of schools in the US do trimesters, essentially, so you could do internships over the summer, we don't. Our semesters are half a year each.


:)


The first job in the list right now is a manager position requiring 10+ years of experience!

Perhaps some filtration based on some simple regex could help get rid of at least the most basic errors? :)


  10+ years of industry experience, including 2+ years of management experience leading engineering teams


Thank you for your feedback! Yes, we have a tight regex, but still crawls through. Will improve on that.


That's pretty standard entry level in 2020


Or the ones that want 5 years experience in a JavaScript framework that has only been out for 2 years.


I've seen in the past postings for 5 years experience with Windows server 2016. And this was in 2016.

Typically they wave that error away with an, "oh we just want someone with 5 years of any Windows Server experience, we just happen to use 2016." Quite the double standard.


Could you please consider adding an RSS feed for the recent jobs? It's really popular for job seekers for staying updated on the various search sites. I'd love to add this site to our guide that we'll be expanding with general job seeking, not just remote: https://feeder.co/knowledge-base/rss-content/feeder-for-free...


Yes, that is something we are planning to do really soon. We will keep you posted!


Also, if you need any help with the RSS format dos and don'ts you can get in touch at erik@feeder.co


IMO companies like Revature and similar should be filtered out. They're plague, they infest every job board out there with dozens of "jobs" but really all they're doing is selling some training at an unreasonably high price.


Even more obnoxious is on sites like LinkedIn where your results get little red by the same position repost-spammed by various recruiting agencies. More than often my job search results yield more noise than anything else.


Yes, tbh that's our number one request. When we release our categories/filtering, a regex will be written to filter Revature and companies of the like.


So I just opened the website and the first job posting I saw was a software engineering manager position with +10 years of experience requirement. Also there seems to be a problem with HTML entity parsing (e.g. titles include & instead of &). Other than these problems, the website looks useful. Thanks for sharing.


Thank you for your feedback! We will take a look at it and filter those jobs right now. I'm glad you find Entry Level useful :)


I really like the design! I run my own job board tailored for Go engineers but design was never my strong suit, so really good job.

FWIW, I set up a twitter bot to tweet about new jobs that are posted. Creates a nice bit of traffic. Nothing earth-shattering, but gets the word out there. Might be an idea worth exploring :)


Would you mind sharing your job board/bot? On this site there are zero results for "golang" and only one relevant one for "go" :/


Sure, here it is: https://workwithgo.com

And the bot is here: https://twitter.com/work_with_go


Thank you for your feedback. I like your design and how to target just for Golang developers.


Some feedback on the site, I hope you don't mind:

- some of the images on the cards do not load; maybe they're just missing? Would be better to have a more indicative default image in that case

- getting a few CORS related errors and some TypeErrors in the console

- not a massive fan of the logo

- when the loading text is displayed after searching, the main container (jobs-container) becomes small and drags the footer up with it, leaving white space underneath the footer. Should remain a fixed size.

- when no results are found it just seems to hang on the "Loading..." text

- the Apply button does not behave like a normal link. I would like to 1) see where it's taking me when I hover over it and 2) be able to middle-click on it and open a new tab

- is there pagination?

I'm using Firefox. Overall, I like the design and it's a decent idea. Good job!


Thank you very much for your feedback. We love it.

- Our default company image is a blank gray square - Will look into the cors error + the other ones - Yes, lots of revisions are in the works for the next couple of weeks - Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I will have those changed - Pagination is still in progress and should be ready in a few weeks.

Thank you again!


I was happy to see the Crisp chat tool in the bottom right hand corner - the folks who make that do a great job. I used it "early on" in the product's life, back in 2016, and really appreciated how responsive they were, etc.


Yes, I really love using Crisp as well. It helps so much when the site is down or when someone finds a bug.


"To provide better results, please disable AdBlocker"

How will that help provide better results?


The website is full of tracking stuff (has both Tag Manager and Analytics) and has Google ads. So I am guessing what they mean is, we will not be able to know everything about you and advertise to you if you don't disable AdBlocker.


Exactly. Which is definitely not needed for a job aggregation site.

This is a great site, and I really like what they are doing and going towards. I just don't like how it's littered with Google trackers, etc.


Payment definitely is needed, unless you're offering to host it for them.

I hate ads just as much as everyone else, but if that's how they are planning to pay for hosting/time, it is absolutely needed.


You can have ads without the tracking, just like @andrepd mentioned.


You can, with downsides. Uninformed ads have less value. You can also make people pay, and have no ads.

You can do lots of things.


But it is needed. Nobody builds a job board "just because". There is always a monetization angle of some sort.


How much are you willing to pay to remove the ads?

If nothing then perhaps it was needed.


You can have ads without ubiquitous invasive tracking. This is a common false dichotomy used to distract from the issue.


Is the ad revenue the same with and without tracking? I have no experience of this, but economically, it seems unlikely that less personalized ads would pay as much as more personalized ads due to likely lower click-through rate?


It’s significantly less without tracking unless you have other methods of demonstrating your audience is sizable and niche.


We do not have Google Ads or other Ads on entrylevel. Our tracking is Google Analytics, Mix Panel, Sentry, and Facebook Pixel. Other tracking software has been disabled since I passed my free tier haha. We only track for analytical reasons to improve UX and for bugs.


exactly.


Thank you for your feedback! We ask for individuals to disable AdBlocker so yes we can generate revenue, but also return better results that are based on your geographic location. As of now, we have 0 ads on the site. Google Ads is not functional on our site and we do not plan on flooding the site with Ads.


It will allow the owner to make money, which means the site will continue to exist.

People deserve to be paid for their effort, and unless you want to pay a monthly subscription to an entry-level job tracker, advertising or collecting emails are really the only two ways to do it in this example.


The way job boards make money is to have employers pay to post jobs on the board. PPC and Display ads pay very little.

You could charge an employer $200 to post a job. Or you could try to reach hundreds of thousands of pageviews from non-adblock devices to get the same amount in Adsense money.


You can have ads without the tracking, just like @andrepd mentioned.


It's not up to us to validate their idea and "allow the owner to make money" by disabling ad-blockers. This site is just another shitty rent-seeking middleman among middlemen, and hopefully it dies a quick painful death that encourages the owner to make something original.


This comment breaks both the Show HN rules and the site rules. Would you please read and follow them?

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


First result I got searching for Python remote jobs required years of experience.


Thank you for your feedback. Will work on the filtering of jobs


This is cool, I like the simple interface.

Pulling in jobs from usajobs.gov could help expand the results. Anything at a grade <= GS-7 is generally considered to be entry level for the US Government.

I'm seeing ~4k jobs open to the public that meet that criteria here: https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/?g=0&g=1&g=2&g=3&g=4&g=5&g=6&... . It may be worth trying to aggregate some of those as well.


Thank you! Yes, I will look into that. I have noticed that the keyword "entry-level gov jobs" is very popular.


API access is through here: https://developer.usajobs.gov/

Good luck!


You don't get fired from government in crisis. And we are in a crisis.


Not a great experience with this one. I typed "Toronto" into the location, and the results were:

1-3: Toronto, ON 4-7: Pittsburgh, PA 8-11: null, Ohio 12-25: Toronto, ON

I also clicked to half a dozen positions and all but one returned "Sorry, this position is not available".

Finally, I noticed a few postings for "Reputable Company looking for immediate hire" (yes, this was the description). I know this tool just scrapes job boards, but that sort of vague description really hurts my confidence in the results.


Thank you for your feedback. Yes, the search results are not 100% accurate and are being improved upon on every iteration. Will make sure we include more for the description.


The Apple Software Engineering Manager - Information Security position requires 10+ years industry experience. The bar for entry level positions seems quite high.


Thank you for catching that. Looks like it slipt through our filtering. We will fix that.


Thanks for making this! It's really nice because you only have to go to one website as opposed to many. I think some folks might prefer this easy approach, but I personally prefer a more "offline" approach like JobFunnel-->https://github.com/PaulMcInnis/JobFunnel


Thank you for your feedback!


I plugged in “software engineer” and mostly got back intern positions. I’m not sure that really counts as “entry-level”?


Intern is the new entry level.

Once a consulting company told me they'd be happier if I had 2 years of experience because then they could pitch me as a senior engineer.

Overall the title inflation and title obfuscation in this industry is starting to become an issue.


Thank you for your feedback! Yes, for most industries intern positions are considered "entry-level". Most internships require that an individual is a current student, graduate, bootcamp, or have less than 3 years of experience.


That's a serious problem though. A lot of people looking for entry level developer jobs aren't kids in college. We need something that filters out all the internship stuff. I'm not against internships per se, but I can't afford to work for no pay.


Internships at good companies do pay. Not all internships are unpaid.

When my company was considering our internships (aka apprenticeships here in the UK) I told the CEO I'd leave if they were unpaid, because I didn't want to mentor people who were worrying about money instead of concentrating on learning how to become a good developer.


> I can't afford to work for no pay

I’ve never seen a CS internship that wasn’t paid. Many pay upper five figures.


Yes, I understand. Categories/filtering is still in beta and should be released in a few weeks.


I can't get your site to display. Once everything is loaded, all I get is a white page and the favicon.


What browser are you using so we can do some testing?


For me too. Brave 1.15


Can confirm. The site works when turning Brave's tracker blocker off.


Thank you for confirming this!


Same here even after I turn off the tracker blocker and UBlock Origin


I can also confirm that after disabling Brave shield I was able to view entrylevel and search.


Thx this is, something I needed. Maybe add a proper filtering for VISA / relocation sponsorships? Keyword search for Visa doesn't seem to work as expected. Remote filtering seems somewhat working tho.


Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad you liked the site. Yes, that is something we will be including in our categories/ filtering.


Can you add the ability to sort by recent? In most cases in my experience jobs that have been sitting out there for more than 10 days are already filled and the company just hasn't removed the listing yet.


Yes, that will be included with our categories/filtering


Result shows "6d" (posted 6 days ago?). When I click on "Apply", it takes me to ZipRecruiter and says "Expired: over a month ago. Applications are no longer accepted."


Thank you for your feedback. We will write a script to filter expired jobs.


I built https://www.jrdevjobs.com

Shoot me an email if you want to chat. I can share with you how we overcame some similar challenges.


Thank you! Will do


All I get is a blank screen and a bunch of errors in the console.


Thank you for your feedback. What browser are you using?


I don't like that the logo is different than the domain.


Thank you for your feedback. The logo is not final and is still being improved upon.


As you want to expand your country coverage, if you need support for regex development for foreign job boards tell me. Good work so far.


Thank you very much!


Is this problem not already solved by search filters on job search sites?


Yes, you can filter by "entry-level" on job-boards, but you have to do that for every job board. There is not one source for specifically "entry-level" positions.


This website seems to be combining ziprecruiter and neuvoo results into one. It seems to just search for "entry level", "grad", "internship" and "entry level developer" at those two websites and present the results. While passing your IP, geolocation, user agent and a bunch of other stuff to them to get location specific results.


Nuevoo. Ugh.


Are you planning to show jobs outside of the US?

Edit: My bad, I saw jobs in China.


Yes, right now, jobs are displayed based on your geographic location. Soon, we will change to where anyone can search for a country they would like to work in.


Not loading on Brave with privacy protections turned on.


Is your shield disabled? It worked for me after disabling adblocker


What a cool tool! Really handful for students!


Thank you for your feedback. Happy you enjoyed it!


This is genius. Thank you.


Really glad you like it!


Nice work!


Thank you very much!


This is pretty cool. Sure there are some inaccurate results, but he'll, I often play in search terms in something like LinkedIn and get all useless results.

On a somewhat related note, I'm trying to understand what entry-level means. Is it a college grad? Is someone with large amounts of experience who switching to a similar role in a widely different domain entry level? What about someone with years of experience in hobbyist / open source work in a domain, but lacks any professional experience? Are they entry level? What about a long time web developer trying to move to graphics programming or an embedded engineering wanting to move to web development?


Thank you for your feedback!

Entry-Level, to us, means students, recent grads, career changers, individuals with less than 3 years of experience and so much more. I think those with years of experience as a hobbyist / open source work in the domain should be counted, but many employers only count professional experience. Someone with lots of experience and switching to a different domain may be categorized as "entry-level" in that new industry. And for your last questions, I believe that a person with that profession would still have professional experience/skills that transfer to web development.


Entry-level generally means the minimum point someone will accept you for that title/role. It has no meaning with respect to experience since some entry-level roles require prior experience. However, there are not widely enforced definitions of the minimum requirements in many roles. Amazon asks more of its entry level developers than a small company might for example and for good reason. In other cases, entry-level is an attempt to hire people more cheaply.


nice


Thank you!




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