Age and skills seem to be a factor. The people in the video are 40+, with many doing marketing/sales. The HN community, based off the what is your age? poll [1], suggests the majority here are between 21-35, so we probably are not experiencing their problem. Second, networking is a major factor, if the software keyword system is really the issue, you need to find ways around the system, email your old co-workers, etc. This is why it is important to keep learning, as tech evolves, and to put your self out there, through quality work.
One thing did bother me a little, is pride a factor here? There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them, because they felt it was below them, or they were over qualified. If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better?
If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better?
I'm not sure I would call it pride. Some won't apply to jobs if they feel it is below them because the general consensus among employers is that if a better job comes along that this person is more qualified for, they will quit that "lower" job.
It seems like some people actually take pride in their technical ignorance. They boast to coworkers how unfamiliar they are with CRM platforms and lead generators, and they laugh at the notion of using very basic coding skills to script some of their more monotonous job functions. It's disheartening. They must know that, regardless of age, it's adapt or die, but they're so damn stubborn.
Does anyone know of a Coursera for older, working professionals that have begun to fall behind in their skill development? I know that Coursera and other learning platforms are not necessarily designed for young people, but I'm sure the academic design/nature of it turns a lot of professionals off.
Might be an interesting startup idea (though I'm sure someone's already on it).
> There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them
There is an interesting twist to this story. Last time I was looking for a job, I applied for a position the recruiter saw as a downgrade from my then current one. It was a very cool company that does very cool things, but no amount of talking convinced her I would not stay with them or that I would voluntarily get myself a pay cut in order to work for them and that money is not my primary motivator.
Hackers may be a weird bunch, but recruiters are not much behind.
I don't get why LinkedIn gets a free pass on a lot of the shady stuff it does. Case in point: if I have a free account, public details are hidden when browsing profiles and I'm told I need to "upgrade" my account to view them. Viewing the same profile in an incognito window reveals the "restricted" details. That seems like an ExpertsExchange level trick.
It's like the WSJ paywall. They know you can get around it, and at the end of the day they don't want to hide the information from someone who's willing to work hard to get it. Eventually, if it's worth enough, they'll pay for ease of access.
This is just because people have more permissive public profiles than default. I view this as a privacy feature for people who may want to be on LinkedIn but only use the site to communicate with their connections - if they have a limited/empty public profile, then you won't see any additional information.
Yeah, I agree they should probably check and see if the public profiles are more permissive than just the top bit of information, but I imagine something about their architecture makes that difficult.
I also agree with the point about the NYT paywall; it's likely just a tiny additional monetization strategy.
I'd assume that's for recruiters, and that what you see in the incognito window is to give them a taste (perhaps they have governors to limit how much can be found per unit of time).
Not being that sort of recruiter I've only ever wanted to see that kind of thing to confirm if a particular "John Doe" is the one I'm thinking of before asking to connect to him, and personalizing the note takes care of that well enough. Otherwise I can see the profiles of people in my network just fine.
I think the broader principle of this post is solid. It's one that I've been thinking a lot as a friend asked me to advise his dating-site startup.
I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking.
With dating/jobhunting if you create a supremely efficient market place that finds the match almost immediately your customers go away. They don't need your service any more. It behooves you to increase the inefficiency of your marketplace to deliver almost-matches that keep people interested and paying, but not quite good enough to make them leave.
Perhaps you could argue that a job board is different because employers are repeat finders and will come back again and again - the adultfriendfinder approach, people who keep getting laid keep paying.
Either way they're tough businesses to make money on AND deliver a great service.
LinkedIn does a ton of other things of course, to monetize, and isn't just a job board. But that just raises questions about some of their other practises of holding your own data hostage - which seems to be a key business model for social network monetization at the moment, and that's a whole other question.
> I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking.
For job hunting (but probably not dating), its at least conceivable that you can structure the charge model to one where one or the other party (or both) is paying for success in making a match (basically, that's what lots of non-web-based employment "matchmaking" services of various kinds do), so that you can, in fact, align customer satisfaction with profit maximization.
The difference is that people in relationships feel guilty shopping around. I know many people with jobs who keep one eye on LinkedIn in case they see a great opportunity.
right - like a candidate anti-pattern - this person so lacks confidence in their abilities that they're trying to game the system to get attention (unfair probably but I'd be shocked if that wasn't the perception of many employers)
No problems with the main thrust of the article, but the conclusion that "America's jobs crisis needs to be looked at as a failure of employers and job boards to ensure an accurate and fair employment process" is laughable. The problems with the re-employment engine are multifold, and not trivially reducible to a single sentence.
> But the question for everyone else is, why are employers
> (who pay to access the database) and job seekers (who
> pay for database positioning) playing along while
> LinkedIn sells everyone out with this game of payola?
>
> And where does it leave LinkedIn users who just want to
> meet one another to do business? While some of us are
> working to help job seekers form appropriate,
> substantive relationships that they can cultivate --
> and benefit from -- over time, LinkedIn keeps coming up
> with silly products that cheapen the meaning of
> networking and connecting with other people.
I'm curious about this myself... Both employers and potential employees seem extremely hesitant to change their behavior. I can't help but feel that each side doesn't really want to deal with the other, and everyone is hiding behind websites and resumes, and sites like LinkedIn reap the rewards.
There's probably some interesting social science here. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd love to hear about it.
(edit: by "change behavior" I mean relying on the old system of: "you send me your resume, I'll put it in the trash." Supposedly 80-90% of jobs go unadvertised, and yet the vast majority "job search" by hurling resumes at the remaining 10-20%.)
Personally I don't pay for any premium services for LinkedIn but I can say that my LinkedIn profile consistently gets me quality calls from recruiters. In fact, it led me into a series of consistently better paying jobs quite quickly.
I devoted consistent effort to building my LinkedIn network over time so I have a very large number of connections now. I get the sense that the system is underprovisioned for me, because the site is slow as hell, often I can't see the messages and invitations I've been sent until I've done several reloads.
I actually would pay for a premium service that is overprovisioned for me and fast enough for me that I'd want to spend more time with it.
> But the question for everyone else is, why are employers
> (who pay to access the database) and job seekers (who
> pay for database positioning) playing along while
> LinkedIn sells everyone out with this game of payola?
There is no "payola" in searching the database. Job seekers aren't paying for database positioning, they are paying only to be at the top of the list of "here are people who applied for your job". This is mentioned by Corcodilos in his article then immediately handwaved away as if it doesn't matter, but this point completely changes the thrust of his argument.
You don't show up at the top of search results no matter what kind of account you have; your payment or lack thereof does not manipulate organic search results. It only puts you at the top of a list of people who applied for jobs using the "Apply for jobs" function. The value for the free account-holder and for the recruiter is still intact.
But it's all about perception - LinkedIn has got perceptibly more slimy, less about connecting, and it has now started taking money for rankings. If the sign on the brothel door says our women will give head for cash but they have to love you to screw, do you think anyone will believe it?
Admittedly like all walled gardens, there is no business model - the value lies in the network and any and all attempts to monetize that are called taxation. We only accept that from one place
Disclaimer: I work on a competing job board site at Stack Overflow Careers 2.0
LinkedIn (as opposed to CareerBuilder apparently) isn't really cheating anyone. They're charging for a stupid feature to make a quick buck off of naive or desperate candidates. I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order. At least (apparently) they aren't biasing search results in their recruiter platform.
We've taken the route of only charging employers for access to advertise jobs and company pages on Stack Overflow, and search profiles of developers on Careers 2.0 (no crappy contingency recruiters allowed). Not only do we not want to charge candidates, I don't exactly know what we'd be charging them for that would help clear the market more efficiently.
> I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order.
It helps them get through the human keyword filter in HR faster, which (theoretically) makes them more likely to get an interview. Even many "good" companies have issues with poor HR filter functions, and on top of that a majority of the jobs seem to be with "bad" companies.
I agree, though, that its set up to prey on the naive and desperate. Those for whom any job is better than no job, or simply think this is how "the game" is supposed to be played.
While the article focuses on LinkedIn, it could likely just be titled "Are Job Boards..." because the article mentions CareerBuilder and Monster. I know CB does it but wasn't paying attention to notice if Monster did.
Something definitely feels slimy about the practice from a job seeker standpoint. Simply because I can't afford it, or place a high value on the cost I'm now at a disadvantage to another applicant. To borrow from another HN comment, it's akin to entering a cheat code while I'm just here normally playing the game. While I don't mind cheating in single player games, this is akin to wallhacking in a FPS.
Having said that, I also don't mind it at all because if I get a job this way it proves I did so on my own merit and those that paid were complete suckers. There is definitely a sense of achievement that comes with that.
I will always wonder how this came about though. How this became acceptable. I understand it's a business but creating unfair advantages in what amounts to some people's livelihood (in their mind at least) seems like playing with fire. There's also the very real threat that this is snake oil. Can anyone prove paying actually improves your chances? These companies could easily be charging for a "service" that only exists in name and actually does absolutely nothing behind the scenes.
I'm a student at a bush league school that doesn't have many connections to my field. Would it be in my interests to make a LinkedIn account for internship purposes?
I doubt it hurts to create a standard free LinkedIn account, it's still useful for networking, putting a resume on the web (well, there's advantages and disadvantages to that), etc.
But I agree with Nick Corcodilos, which is almost a tautology, he's by far the best author I've ever found on these subjects. One of the best things you can do for yourself in the long run is to read the appropriate stuff on his http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/ site, and you might want to sign up for his weekly newsletter, the July 23rd one was on this topic, and previous ones and/or items on the site have generally and specifically covered job boards.
His general specific advice for getting a job is not so relevant until you, say, get some of those internships or otherwise get the experience necessary to make a good case to an employer that you can do the job, but it's all worth reading. It's also very well written.
While you're at it, read his "Death by Lethal Reputation" essay and avoid what it talks about.
It really depends on your field, however networking should never require money. Build your network with those in your target field. That will pay off far more than a paid LinkedIn account.
The problem comes down to trust and incentives. The "promoted" job board model leads to a middle man agent ("agent" in the Economics sense) with asymmetric information who is incentivized to give poor advice. LinkedIn wants you to trust their matching algorithm, but then goes behind your back and supplants the best matches with whoever the highest bidder happens to be.
Instead of benefiting when their customers get value from their service (successful placements), LinkedIn is profiting from desperation and frustration (the more unsatisfied costs - "free" grade users, the more potential paying customers), and simultaneously making the search process more difficult for all parties involved.
LinkedIn's position in the job search marketplace is as a monopolist provider of up-to-date candidate information, a valuable side effect of their primary virtue: being the winner take all social network for the corporate world.
Rent-seeking behavior from monopoly providers with asymmetric information should surprise no one. Rent-seeking behavior leading to angry market participants should surprise no one.
Rent-seeking in silicon valley isn't spoken about enough. Rent seeking has and will always be around, but is it increasing?
When we are talking about rankings and matching algo's in the hands of monopolies be it Google, Facebook, YouTube et al its a great mystery to me why the advertising industry trusts them so much.
Worst case scenario seems to be that you're advertising to potential employers that you're having trouble finding a job... That doesn't seem like a good thing to point out...
I run a user group and network a lot with other developers. I noticed that in the past two years all the elite developers that I knew, the top half of one percent, were pulling their profiles from LinkedIn.
Have to laugh because companies looking for the proverbial 'rockstar developer' are increasingly never going to find them on LinkedIn.
Charging the applicant for a monthly premium listing service does nothing to help companies find good employees, though I think a small change could make it beneficial to both parties.
Offer "premium" application placement on a per application basis instead of monthly. This would provide a signal to the employer that the applicant is particularly interested in this listing and not just spamming resumes.
It would provide a similar signal to a customized cover letter, but the employer can see the signal without the necessary investment of time to read a cover letter.
New headline game: if a headline suggests linkedin or facebook or google may be doing something a little bad, they're actually doing something five times worse.
I hate LinkedIn. The pay walls and forced semi-hidden profiles are insanely annoying.
I wish I had the resources to build a competitor centered around openness and UX. It should monetize on really strong programmatic job matching, driven by the improved data from reducing all the UX friction. Somebody, please accept the challenge.
TheLadders has been claiming that the data-driven matching approach is their mission for the past few years, but unfortunately they still seem to want to put everything behind a paywall.
[+] [-] WestCoastJustin|12 years ago|reply
One thing did bother me a little, is pride a factor here? There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them, because they felt it was below them, or they were over qualified. If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734ps. I created the bar graph via https://github.com/holman/spark
[+] [-] danielweber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dev1n|12 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I would call it pride. Some won't apply to jobs if they feel it is below them because the general consensus among employers is that if a better job comes along that this person is more qualified for, they will quit that "lower" job.
source: my Econ professor
[+] [-] ngoel36|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redschell|12 years ago|reply
Does anyone know of a Coursera for older, working professionals that have begun to fall behind in their skill development? I know that Coursera and other learning platforms are not necessarily designed for young people, but I'm sure the academic design/nature of it turns a lot of professionals off.
Might be an interesting startup idea (though I'm sure someone's already on it).
[+] [-] samspenc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|12 years ago|reply
There is an interesting twist to this story. Last time I was looking for a job, I applied for a position the recruiter saw as a downgrade from my then current one. It was a very cool company that does very cool things, but no amount of talking convinced her I would not stay with them or that I would voluntarily get myself a pay cut in order to work for them and that money is not my primary motivator.
Hackers may be a weird bunch, but recruiters are not much behind.
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|12 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237478
Several people ported it to other languages. Here was my humble effort:
https://gist.github.com/quandyfactory/1368953
[+] [-] minouye|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngoel36|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gergles|12 years ago|reply
Yeah, I agree they should probably check and see if the public profiles are more permissive than just the top bit of information, but I imagine something about their architecture makes that difficult.
I also agree with the point about the NYT paywall; it's likely just a tiny additional monetization strategy.
[+] [-] hga|12 years ago|reply
Not being that sort of recruiter I've only ever wanted to see that kind of thing to confirm if a particular "John Doe" is the one I'm thinking of before asking to connect to him, and personalizing the note takes care of that well enough. Otherwise I can see the profiles of people in my network just fine.
[+] [-] bad-news|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardjordan|12 years ago|reply
I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking.
With dating/jobhunting if you create a supremely efficient market place that finds the match almost immediately your customers go away. They don't need your service any more. It behooves you to increase the inefficiency of your marketplace to deliver almost-matches that keep people interested and paying, but not quite good enough to make them leave.
Perhaps you could argue that a job board is different because employers are repeat finders and will come back again and again - the adultfriendfinder approach, people who keep getting laid keep paying.
Either way they're tough businesses to make money on AND deliver a great service.
LinkedIn does a ton of other things of course, to monetize, and isn't just a job board. But that just raises questions about some of their other practises of holding your own data hostage - which seems to be a key business model for social network monetization at the moment, and that's a whole other question.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|12 years ago|reply
For job hunting (but probably not dating), its at least conceivable that you can structure the charge model to one where one or the other party (or both) is paying for success in making a match (basically, that's what lots of non-web-based employment "matchmaking" services of various kinds do), so that you can, in fact, align customer satisfaction with profit maximization.
[+] [-] ondross|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henrik_w|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardjordan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polarix|12 years ago|reply
An interesting, and more nuanced take on the issue from a very different angle, which at least starts to grasp the enormity of the problem: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_a...
[+] [-] jt2190|12 years ago|reply
There's probably some interesting social science here. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd love to hear about it.
(edit: by "change behavior" I mean relying on the old system of: "you send me your resume, I'll put it in the trash." Supposedly 80-90% of jobs go unadvertised, and yet the vast majority "job search" by hurling resumes at the remaining 10-20%.)
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PaulHoule|12 years ago|reply
I devoted consistent effort to building my LinkedIn network over time so I have a very large number of connections now. I get the sense that the system is underprovisioned for me, because the site is slow as hell, often I can't see the messages and invitations I've been sent until I've done several reloads.
I actually would pay for a premium service that is overprovisioned for me and fast enough for me that I'd want to spend more time with it.
[+] [-] gergles|12 years ago|reply
You don't show up at the top of search results no matter what kind of account you have; your payment or lack thereof does not manipulate organic search results. It only puts you at the top of a list of people who applied for jobs using the "Apply for jobs" function. The value for the free account-holder and for the recruiter is still intact.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|12 years ago|reply
Admittedly like all walled gardens, there is no business model - the value lies in the network and any and all attempts to monetize that are called taxation. We only accept that from one place
[+] [-] raverbashing|12 years ago|reply
I don't pay for this "featured job seeker" thing, havne't gotten in the way.
It may backfire since some people may filter the paying candidates as 'ads'
[+] [-] willcole|12 years ago|reply
LinkedIn (as opposed to CareerBuilder apparently) isn't really cheating anyone. They're charging for a stupid feature to make a quick buck off of naive or desperate candidates. I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order. At least (apparently) they aren't biasing search results in their recruiter platform.
We've taken the route of only charging employers for access to advertise jobs and company pages on Stack Overflow, and search profiles of developers on Careers 2.0 (no crappy contingency recruiters allowed). Not only do we not want to charge candidates, I don't exactly know what we'd be charging them for that would help clear the market more efficiently.
[+] [-] vonmoltke|12 years ago|reply
It helps them get through the human keyword filter in HR faster, which (theoretically) makes them more likely to get an interview. Even many "good" companies have issues with poor HR filter functions, and on top of that a majority of the jobs seem to be with "bad" companies.
I agree, though, that its set up to prey on the naive and desperate. Those for whom any job is better than no job, or simply think this is how "the game" is supposed to be played.
[+] [-] w0rd-driven|12 years ago|reply
Something definitely feels slimy about the practice from a job seeker standpoint. Simply because I can't afford it, or place a high value on the cost I'm now at a disadvantage to another applicant. To borrow from another HN comment, it's akin to entering a cheat code while I'm just here normally playing the game. While I don't mind cheating in single player games, this is akin to wallhacking in a FPS.
Having said that, I also don't mind it at all because if I get a job this way it proves I did so on my own merit and those that paid were complete suckers. There is definitely a sense of achievement that comes with that.
I will always wonder how this came about though. How this became acceptable. I understand it's a business but creating unfair advantages in what amounts to some people's livelihood (in their mind at least) seems like playing with fire. There's also the very real threat that this is snake oil. Can anyone prove paying actually improves your chances? These companies could easily be charging for a "service" that only exists in name and actually does absolutely nothing behind the scenes.
[+] [-] no-opinion|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hga|12 years ago|reply
But I agree with Nick Corcodilos, which is almost a tautology, he's by far the best author I've ever found on these subjects. One of the best things you can do for yourself in the long run is to read the appropriate stuff on his http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/ site, and you might want to sign up for his weekly newsletter, the July 23rd one was on this topic, and previous ones and/or items on the site have generally and specifically covered job boards.
His general specific advice for getting a job is not so relevant until you, say, get some of those internships or otherwise get the experience necessary to make a good case to an employer that you can do the job, but it's all worth reading. It's also very well written.
While you're at it, read his "Death by Lethal Reputation" essay and avoid what it talks about.
[+] [-] auctiontheory|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zcarter|12 years ago|reply
Instead of benefiting when their customers get value from their service (successful placements), LinkedIn is profiting from desperation and frustration (the more unsatisfied costs - "free" grade users, the more potential paying customers), and simultaneously making the search process more difficult for all parties involved.
LinkedIn's position in the job search marketplace is as a monopolist provider of up-to-date candidate information, a valuable side effect of their primary virtue: being the winner take all social network for the corporate world.
Rent-seeking behavior from monopoly providers with asymmetric information should surprise no one. Rent-seeking behavior leading to angry market participants should surprise no one.
[+] [-] Sven7|12 years ago|reply
When we are talking about rankings and matching algo's in the hands of monopolies be it Google, Facebook, YouTube et al its a great mystery to me why the advertising industry trusts them so much.
[+] [-] etler|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmason|12 years ago|reply
Have to laugh because companies looking for the proverbial 'rockstar developer' are increasingly never going to find them on LinkedIn.
[+] [-] lrei|12 years ago|reply
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rastered|12 years ago|reply
Offer "premium" application placement on a per application basis instead of monthly. This would provide a signal to the employer that the applicant is particularly interested in this listing and not just spamming resumes.
It would provide a similar signal to a customized cover letter, but the employer can see the signal without the necessary investment of time to read a cover letter.
[+] [-] seiji|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kvcrawford|12 years ago|reply
I wish I had the resources to build a competitor centered around openness and UX. It should monetize on really strong programmatic job matching, driven by the improved data from reducing all the UX friction. Somebody, please accept the challenge.
[+] [-] benburton|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rgbrgb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stokedmartin|12 years ago|reply