Hacker News Job Board?

[jgrahamc]

I'm thinking of setting up a job board that only people who are Hacker News users can post to. I would use the same arc code that is used for HN, but this board would be open to the non-YC companies.

To authenticate your account you would need to:

1. Create an account on the jobs board with the same name as your HN username

2. Place a magic string in your HN about: box to prove that it was you

3. Have at least 200 karma or have been an HN member for more than 2 years

4. Unauthenticated accounts could still comment, vote etc., just not submit jobs.

Would people use this?

[mrcharles]

Have a field for telecommuting as well. I wouldn't mind switching in to web dev, but I don't want to leave Toronto to do it. Places that would accept telecommuting would make that easier.

[wyclif]

Yes, please. It would be much more useful that way.

[jgrahamc]

Since there's enthusiasm for this I will set the site up and submit it here. Unless PG cries foul and says he doesn't like me hijacking the HN karma for this purpose.

OK. I built it. Here's the announcement: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/06/usethesource-job-board-for-hacke...

[natural219]

I don't meet your qualifications, and I'm already thinking to myself that I need to post/comment more. So here's a data point.

[wccrawford]

What's the thinking on the limitations? Is this just supposed to make the users think they are part of an elite bunch? Are the employers supposed to think that somehow selects only elite hackers?

[jgrahamc]

The biggest problem with job boards is... recruiters. The idea here is that members in good-standing of the HN community are unlikely to be recruiters and thus can be trusted to freely post jobs to the board. If it was open to anyone then it would be flooded with crap immediately.

[ColinWright]

Can I just say that you've raised a genuine and valid question, and it's nice to have seen the answer, but your phrasing of the question makes it sound as if you're being really quite snarky about it. Is that the way you feel? Or have I read you wrongly?

Thx.

[verroq]

Obviously to benefit the early adopters. /sarcasm

[themal]

Make sure that the name of the employer is a required field. There's so many job websites these days which are dominated by agency ads.

[adaml_623]

Make sure the name of the employer AND the location of the job is a required field.

Give it a try. Worse case scenario is loss of face.

[stevenj]

Direct link to jgrahamc's job board: http://jobs.usethesource.com/

[bherms]

I'm planning on building the reverse soon. Hacker Resumes I guess. If you're looking for a job, you post info about yourself, location, links to all of your relevant info, and select from a few categories. Companies can then browse and see if anyone meets their needs.

[kaffeinecoma]

You're aware that there's already careers.stackoverflow.com, right? That said, is anyone else disappointed by the lack of response there? I'm not actively looking, but in ~2 months on the site I've had "search hits: 8, employer views: 0". Kind of disappointing, considering all the hype.

[dgunn]

Now that's an idea. Good job. (Not that the other one is bad. This is just my preference)

[noinput]

aside from the fact most of us will need to have a resume again, +1 for this idea.

[ColinWright]

I'd certainly register, look at it, and play with it a bit.

[latch]

Unfortunately, I need to post a "me too" comment to let the OP know (I can't just upvote anymore!)

[stevelosh]

> Would people use this?

I definitely would have when my company was looking for a programmer a month or so ago, and would use it the next time we want to hire someone.

[vbrenny]

And, additionally, if nobody uses it.. It's just the work of shutting it down. No big harm made.

[arghnoname]

In addition to length or karma, you can look at length and karma. Lower length on HN means it takes a higher average karma to post, but not necessarily 200 karma (which I barely have, due to a low posting volume and not being very interesting, despite being here for a long time).

[ghotli]

The jobs threads are already incredibly active on the first of every month. If you want the community to get into this you might try to come up with a way to scrape that data.

Additionally! If you want people to actually remember this thing exists it needs to show up on the front page from time to time. I'd get with whoever is handling the automatic submission of job threads via the whoishiring account to see if you can get the link to your site added into the description field of the monthly threads.

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whoishiring

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

[blumentopf]

I'd welcome such a job board. And it would be wonderful if it won't be just for permanent jobs, but also for contractor jobs.

[raarky]

How about some kind of "This is an agency!" button in case one somehow manages to get onto the system?

[robinwarren]

Nice idea, and given I've had success hiring through a HN who's Hiring thread in the past I'd very likely use it. I had been working on a job board project of my own (http://www.jobstractor.com) but have struggled with traction to date. I think there's definitely opportunities for better jobs boards and especially for cutting out recruiters from the process. If I can lend a hand let me know and I'll do what I can.

[barrkel]

Danger: could encourage (more) karma gaming on HN, if such a board actually worked.

[prodigal_erik]

I comment pseudonymously so that I can speak my mind honestly. If this takes off, I would be somewhat tempted to create another account and write enough shallow, uncontroversial, professional, heavily self-censored comments to reach the threshold under my True Name.

[filipcte]

HN karma would be a great metric for vetting experience and track-record. It's one of the trickiest things when trying to hire above-average talent. May I recommend using jobberBase (http://www.jobberbase.com) as a platform? Also open-source, with a great community around it.

Disclaimer: I've built jobberBase, so I'm biased :).

[sciurus]

I would find this useful. Having a HN member in good standing submit the job sends a positive signal about the position.

(shameless plug: http://eupathdb.org/ is hiring a front-end developer, see http://bit.ly/kYH9zp for more information)

[JoachimSchipper]

One simplification: try to parse e-mail addresses from the about: box, authenticate via e-mail. Obviously, ask for permission before sending e-mail - some people have employer-(provided/monitored) e-mail.

[AlexBlom]

I think this is a great idea, and would use it very actively. What would be good is to get a shared GDOC going so you can capture the e-mails and cities of those interested?

E-mail to keep us all in the loop, and city to make local hiring easier?

[alexsherrick]

I've been hanging around the site for a long time, but I haven't been here for over two years. Is it really necessary to have that long of an account to stop spam? I believe 1 year should at least be fine.