Maybe job advertisers don't want to verify, maybe it's too much hassle, maybe it costs so much to verify that you need to charge too much for listings, maybe verified listings don't scale.
It's all fine to ask what-ifs like this, but since this is obviously the good thing, you need to come with a strategy for how you'll actually achieve it.
I understand your reasoning, but in practicality, I don't think this is true. This would be true if companies though with a coherent set of incentives. Instead, individual incentives are at-play here.
If a company is paying for a recruiter, it usually means:
- It isn't highly cash constrained - Values the time of its IC's, managers and HR more than the fee - Valuation for the role is not cost-based, but value-based - Only at the penny pinching startup stage is the recruiter fee a real factor in a multi-year investment that should be yielding a high return. Beyond that, the bias evaporates and the real incentives lie with individual incentives, and available budgets.
A job being “verified” doesn’t solve the main problem post around 2023. Every single job opening gets hundreds of openings within the first day of it being opened.
If you are looking for a job as any type of generic developer - full stack, front end, mobile, back end, it’s almost impossible to stand out from the crowd. No, “I reversed a btree on the whiteboard to get into big tech as a mid level developer” doesn’t make you special.
If you do have a specialized set of skills that allows you to stand out from the crowd, you still shouldn’t be randomly spamming job boards and you should be able to sell yourself to someone at the company.
My personal anecdote. In my specialty - AWS + app dev + leading strategic initiatives, I’m very well credentialed (trust me on this) and in a certain niche of AWS, I was considered one of the industry experts at the time (again trust me).
But when randomly spamming job boards on a lark in 2023, I heard nothing.
That was always a plan B while I was waiting for what ended up being three offers via my network and one by reaching out to a company who specialized in my niche of AWS.
I’m not bragging, I am old. I should have a network and credentials.
I noticed with linkedin premium - when you view a job listing it tells you how many other people have applied akready, and what number of them have masters, bachelors, phd, director level, etc.
in this day, it should be a law that all the boards must post this info clearly - just to save us all a lot of time.
The amount of time I have spent putting info together for some job listings and wondered how in the heck they found someone else with the same experience and knowledge.. and to think, there may have been 1500 that applied before hand and literally none of that matters.
They have the data, they should have to post it.
How do you vet mid level and entry developers? I know that sounds like a dumb question. But I only expect a mid level developer especially enterprise developers to turn well defined requirements into code. The bar is especially low in the age of AI. One is basically interchangeable for another. I have only interviewed senior level developers - ie people who I expect to operate on a higher level of scope, impact and ambiguity.
Those are easy to filter out via a few behavioral questions.
Surely you will not manage to hire one of the top 20 developers matching any given criterion unless you are paying too 1% compensation. (I made this number up.)
One of the criteria somehow is “will show up for work and not ghost us”.
No affiliation but they talked with me long time ago. They take upon themselves to perform the first screening… looks like something smaller startups could take advantage of. I am not sure how good they are.
That doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that “generic developers” are a dime a dozen and it’s hard to stand out from the crowd using an ATS. I just said I had the same issue when experimenting with ATS’s.
This shouldn't surprise me, knowledge of a code base is a competitive advantage. But there is just something depressing about it. Maybe it being closed source and you having to learn it by being burned by undocumented behavior? Please tell more
I talked a little bit about Connect here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241412
I worked at AWS ProServe / their internal consulting department - full time blue badge RSU earning employee - and I was one of the highest contributors to a popular at the time open source “AWS Solution” around Connect and I had my own open source projects published under AWS’s open source GitHub organization.
BTW, I would never use the “solution” now. There are a lot better ways to do it post gen AI.
The thing was, it was years before AWS introduced APIs around Connect and even longer before they have CloudFormation support. I was the first to use those APIs at scale for clients and found and reported bugs to the team while I was there.
The way I'd design a job board is require the applicant to escrow X and the job poster to escrow Y*X. Y is is the trust ratio. Given a bad experience, either the side can 'burn' the other and send both escrowed amounts to charity. An okay trust ratio might be 10, meaning they'll give you 10:1 burn ratio. A good one might be 100 or 1000. At that point they are essentially handing you a big stick to beat them with if they misbehave.
This would entirely eliminate spam and ghost jobs - suddenly everyone would be magically really responsive and polite.
A rejected candidate may burn the company but it requires burning their own stake as well so the incentive is really only there if they feel they've been significantly mistreated.
When you are a jobseeker, yes, you don't want to apply for job post that is destined for internal transfer.
When you are someone who is in the process of internal transfer, you want this JD has many applicants to prove to the government that this roles has applicants but they are not as strong as the one being transferred.
When you are the hiring manager, you want the process to be finished quickly, whether it is the internal transfer you like, or hiring externally.
This so called verified board stop the transfer from happening.
If you are the outside applicants, great. If you are the one being internal transfer, you want to burn this board.
For record, I have been both side of the picture. Transferred to Singapore and now looking for job, and also as a hiring manager. So I know the pain from all angle.
The poster has an account? No
The poster has confirmed an email address? No
The poster has a confirmed email address that is associable to the business? Maybe
The poster has a confirmed email address that is associable to the business and their name is verifiable as HR/Hiring Manager/Someone in a legitimate position to post this offer? Sure
Has a confirmed business phone number, called by a human that verifies another human is on the other end.
Has a confirmed business address (mail them the confirmation code).
Has a website that's been around longer then 6 months.
Has a Google Maps location that's been around longer than 6 months.
Also, I don’t think I have ever applied to a fake job.
While we are focused specifically on technical roles in AI startups, and we don't "verify" per se, we do enrich jobs data with investor-grade intelligence on the startups themselves, so you can see which companies have legitimate backing.
Variations of advance fee scams: Can be simple like you got a job but have to pay a fee to the head hunting agency that you'll get reimbursed on top of your first salary from your new employer of course, or more advanced: Your job involves buying products or services and testing or auditing them.
Money mules and laundering: As part of your job you have to forward money between your and external accounts. This is less obvious than the advance fee. You get the money first, you just don't know that you are funnelling the money from other scams to the scammers.
These things might seem easy to see through in theory, but they prey on desperate people in hardship. You believe to have finally found a job and all seems well during the onboarding process. Maybe it takes a little longer with a little back and forth or multiple interviews until you are emotionally invested into the job offering. Of course it seems weird that you have to pay out of your own pocket for a product you do QA testing for before you receive any money from them. But you have to deliver if you want to keep the job. After all they have many more options of applicants to choose from while for you this is the only job offer you got after months of searching.
In my early days, I once went through three interviews for a small "start up." On the third round, the founder admitted he couldn't pay me in anything but "equity" even though I specifically asked about funding and compensation on the first interview. (I got a very early "Craigs List" to pull the job listing--with an personal reply from Craig Newmark--and the "employer" settled with me for several thousand after I sent a demand letter and filed a claim in Santa Clara County small claims court for fraud.)
And like, sure, there are some terrible ones. But I've worked some incredible groups, too.
I built a mobile app dev team in fintech years ago. I remember one person was literally selling their house and moving and was looking for a job. Call it luck, serendipitous, what you will, but the "connection" was made at the right time, right place.
How do we solve that problem more effectively? Cuz right now it's a roll of the dice, constant linkedin messages, etc.
what are you offering to candidates - a better interview experience (been tried before etc, those companies closed)
you want to solve a problem, however you are trying solve the problem at a wrong abstraction level -
the problem with the tech market hiring is a coordination problem
On the one hand, applicants are applicant who cannot find a job through people they know and the companies are companies who cannot find candidates through people they know Good jobs and good employees come through relationships and you cannot automate relationships.
Relationships are hard. Good luck.
Another site I like is cord.com, which seems to prioritise companies where recruiters are active on that website, I've had a good experience with that one as well, as you get to chat with an actual recruiter in a matter of hours or days.
Everyone likes to pretend this and that, "I wouldn't do it", "what problem do you solve", etc. I've published many jobs and they all come like hyenas fighting over scraps.
Don't listen to them, just build the thing; they'll use it, they need the bread, lmao.