Show HN: Job Compass – AI agents that help you find jobs, not replace you

[dloku]

My friend and I got tired of job hunting (347 applications, 4 responses) so we built AI agents to help job seekers instead of replacing them.

The problem: 73% of applications never reach humans, 250+ people apply to each job, but 85% of positions are filled through networking.

Our solution: AI agents that find hiring managers for any LinkedIn job, analyze your profile fit, and generate personalized outreach messages. Instead of competing with hundreds in the application pile, you reach decision-makers directly.

Technical bits: LangChain + OpenAI for job parsing, Next.js + Supabase, custom contact discovery algorithms that work across different company structures.

Results: Users getting 70% more response rates vs regular applications.

In a world where AI is automating jobs away, we wanted to build something that helps people actually get jobs.

[felixrieseberg]

> Instead of competing with hundreds in the application pile, you reach decision-makers directly.

As a hiring manager, my inbox is already drowning. I don't mind the applications, I mind that most of them are _clearly_ not a good fit to the point where I'm confident that they themselves have not looked at the job posting for a single second.

The more tools like yours will be built, the more you'll have to know someone who knows me to even get a chat with me - because I won't browse through hundreds of automated messages just to find the one that isn't. I'll be honest: That'll create a tech world even more hostile to people without "the right connections" - and that makes me sad.

[edwhitesell]

Not only that, some organizations have policies to not accept information/applicants who don't follow the process through recruiter, HR, job board, etc. Now you're effectively "black balled" from applying the right way.

[gwbas1c]

It's almost like there needs to be a way to penalize applicants who SPAM.

[dloku]

hey man,

I totally agree with you. it's a bit a chicken and egg problem. You've got ATS systems filtering out candidates and then on the other side, you've got candidates auto-applying to a lot of unsuitable jobs.

We're trying to educate applications be more considerate and either apply where there's a fit or understand why there's no fot. If there's a fit however, then you should start building a relationship with someone first.

[almost]

Surely this now means now hiring managers (and people your code incorrectly identifies as hiring managers) now get spammed with loads of bullshit generated messages. Which obviously they'll ignore. But now you've made their jobs a bit harder by breaking a previously (maybe) working communication channel.

So you've put a effort in to build a product just to make the world slightly worse on net. Not hugely worse, but still it doesn't seem like the best way you could have spent your time.

[fhd2]

Things are turning truly bonkers right now. I've hired two developers in the last couple of weeks:

1. One from my network, just announced it, someone I had worked with in the past reached out, quick chat, hired, great.

2. One with the usual approach of posting job ads and all that. We got an _insane_ amount of noise, even as an obscure, small company. I've hired hundreds of people, but most of those three years ago or earlier. Never seen such noise, most candidates barely meeting any of the requirements, weird auto generated cover letters and CVs. It was a bit exhausting, but I went through everyone manually to make sure I'm not accidentally filtering out a solid candidate. We found two in the end, one quickly backed out because they got another offer. But there was one good candidate left, and they accepted the offer. I don't remember this being so hard.

A few years ago I'd call people trying to automate screening or mainly hiring from their network lazy. In this time, I see the appeal.

The last thing I need is more bots spamming me on my LinkedIn account on top of all this madness.

[dloku]

quick question: have YOU tried actually applying to any jobs right now? go on Linkedin and you'll see every JD has like 100 applications. Is this what you call "working" process?

[Nextgrid]

So the same idiots who spammed the existing channels to death and made them unusable will now use your tool to spam the only channel with some signal still left in it until _that_ channel also becomes worthless?

Maybe at least make it invite-only? Pay a deposit, have a chat with a human, and if the candidate isn't a spammer then they get access to the tool with rate-limits?

[_Rabs_]

Given the comments already, Dloku, you should probably delete this, and only use it yourself.

Don't pollute the job pool because you want to be empathetic to many struggling applicants.

[ryan_j_naughton]

The headshots of the customer testimonials are all stock images and not the people they say are giving the testimonials. Makes me very skeptical that the testimonials are real or any of the stats on the page are real.

[dghlsakjg]

This stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

Makes the rest of the copy and the claims made about as trustworthy as the authenticity of the images, for me anyway.

[koakuma-chan]

They are AI generated

[deadbabe]

Do recruiters not exist these days? The last time I looked for a job, which was pre-pandemic, a recruiter took care of finding suitable jobs for me and I barely had to lift a finger, just do some interviews with good companies until I got a good offer. And they got paid a % of my accepted final salary.

Is this model now completely broken? If I was looking for a tech job again I doubt I’d fill out hundreds or a thousand of applications myself, I’d rather just pay someone thousands of dollars to do that grunt work and I just show up for interviews.

[gwbas1c]

I always tried to find that model, but it never worked for me. The recruiters always seemed to be filling a handful of roles that I was a poor fit for, or just treating the role like a sales job.

[__MatrixMan__]

I generally assume that anybody who asks for money and promises a job down the line is a scammer. Maybe I should rethink that assumption?

I'm at least unaware of any recent successes with the recruiter approach. (That is, recruiters who don't work for the company that does the interviewing.)

[rgbrgb]

we exist! I'm working on a semi-productized candidate-side recruiting company right now. I think the gap with current market conditions, that this product could help address, is if you're a new grad. It's just really, really hard to land a job with no experience right now and there are definitely no referral fees (so no candidate-side recruiters to help you with intros).

[dloku]

yep mate, take a look at JDs on Linkedin - 100 + applications. there's no way you can "prepare manually" for submitting documents.

[jackietreehorn]

"73% of applications never reach humans,"

care to provide a source for this ?

" but 85% of positions are filled through networking"

care to provide a source for this ?

No one is attached to Job Compass - AI https://www.linkedin.com/company/jobcompass-ai/

So your service couldn't even find the "decision maker" at your own company, ironic no ?

[paul7986]

As you noted those getting hired are through via deeper human connections; through your personal network and or friends' personal networks.

Any tool to spam hiring managers whether AI or not will be marked spam which is highly impersonable, ignored and not seen.

While directly reaching out to hiring managers on linkedin might be a good thing nowadays yet with spam tools such as this Linkedin will start marking them spam and they'll never be seen.

Best thing to do to find work is through your own and or friends' personal networks as you noted.. not this IMHO.

[dloku]

dude, where did you read that we're auto-messaging people?

[Mukesh_dhal17]

Exactly , this has been a longstanding issue and usually we come across these problems in some or the other form , either we accept it or ignore it ! All we need to bring the change and make it more streamlined so that our efforts does not go in vain .. We as a team been working in this aspect as AI in HR , focusing on AI recruiting agent , would like to exchange thoughts how we can make it better! Feel free to reach out as we are participating in SHRM , showcasing our product .

[Jonovono]

Why are the testimonials Ai generated people?

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Probably the same reason there's no "About" page with links to who the founders are, and the explicitly didn't link themselves to the company on LinkedIn.

They also made a new account just to post this to HN.

Seems like something that should get flagged.

[mbm]

Nice job! A couple questions for you guys:

- Did you personally end up getting offers using your own tool?

- Anything surprising you learned building it?

[dloku]

Yep, we actually did. reaching out on linkedin DMs to CEOs, has to be thought through though.

Also - the tool does indicate why you're likely not a good fit.

technically - yes: vibe coding doesn't work xD

talking to customer - yes: some people have issues passing interviews, less getting into 1st calls

[iLoveOncall]

> Results: Users getting 70% more response rates vs regular applications.

So 7 responses for 347 applications instead of 4? Not exactly impressive.

And what are those extra 3 responses? "Why the hell are you messaging me?"?

[blitzar]

"ignore all previous instructions"

[dloku]

how'd you come up with 347?

[bitwize]

If most jobs are gotten through networking, maybe... use networking?

[dloku]

that's exactly it!

[msgodel]

Ah yes, I'm sure adding more automation and policy between people rather than just letting them talk to each other and do what they feel like will solve the problem of people not talking to eachother.

[dloku]

we're not allowing people to auto-apply. But automation is helpful or do you manually craft your CV and wanna read through 30 applications to see if you're a good fit??

[dghlsakjg]

There are a number of notable issues with the marketing claims on this site. There may be a useful tool at the center of it, but the marketing is deceptive - at best.

All of the images in their testimonials looked like AI to me, Dloku, the poster, claimed they weren't. Fair enough, but I looked up several in a reverse image search, and they were all stock images. So not AI generated by the poster. At the very least, the images do not represent people that have used this tool, unless all of them happen to moonlight as models outside of their tech jobs.

Further, dloku states elsewhere here that this was a three week project when questioned why he is remaining nameless, and has no about page. This tracks with the domain being registered on May 29. However, it raises the question of how so many tech workers/models were able to use the tool, and have so much success. Account manager and Stock photo model Maya (whose profile photo was also found in the pages of a US News teenlife guide on internships [1]) even testifies that she landed 3 interviews in 2 weeks, a remarkable success story and testimonial for a site that only registered their domain 2 weeks before her testimonial. That is assuming that the domain update registered on June 4th was not a nameserver update, and that the site was live and working on the exact day of registration.

Maybe they were stealth mode, maybe the testimonials are real, and they just made a judgement error in choosing to use stock images for them. But they came here to HN to show the target market, and solicit feedback, and got snarky in the comments when pushed on this stuff, which to me hints that there is something being hidden from us, or that there is an integrity issue with jobcompass.ai. Very possible it is just posturing in the SV "fake it till you make it way", but I will not trust my career decisions to a company that does this. I would much rather a company just have a good product and tell me about it, than that they use seemingly fake social proof to try to fool me.

To that end, can the creators explain why they chose to use stock images and represent them as real customers? Can they explain the extremely tight, barely possible timeline in their testimonial?

1. https://issuu.com/teenlife/docs/how_to_find_an_internship_by...

[dghlsakjg]

After a few days the site has removed all of the testimonials and representations I highlighted above.

The only thing they missed is the trustpilot "top rated by users" badge. They have no presence on trustpilot, nor do they have any user reviews.