8 ms·

A Review of 3 Hacker News Jobs Listings

64 points by giladvdn 14y ago

adrianhoward 14y ago
(My standard rant on job adverts - not aimed at startups per se - but so much of it seems to apply to startup ads too). You're dealing with four groups of people: 1) Qualified: the people who have the skills you need and would want to work for you 2) Unqualified: honest folk who either don't have the skills or don't want to work for you 3) Deluded: people who think they can do the job despite the fact their computing experience consists of knowing somebody whose cousin owns a Playstation 4) Liars: people who know they can't do the job and will lie to get it anyway So you want to: * convince that first group that you have a wonderful job working for a competent company that's just right for them * convince the others that they shouldn't waste everybody's time Two big problems: 1) Almost by definition the Qualified are in work. Why wouldn't they be? So you need to make sure that you're going to make something attractive enough for people to consider jumping ship for. 2) It's a complete bugger to get rid of the Liars and the Deluded because... well... they're liars and deluded :-) The good news is that the Unqualified are happy to exclude themselves if they're given enough info. They don't want to waste their own time applying to stuff they they know they're not going to get. So - how do you find somebody decent? 1) Best way is personal recommendation. Network away and see if anybody you know and trust knows somebody who would be interested. Assuming you have vaguely sane friends this is almost guaranteed to exclude the Deluded and the Liars. Huzzah. 2) Second best way is to use a good recruiter. Unfortunately, in my experience anyway, good agents are rarer than gold dust in the IT industry. Unless you have a personal recommendation from somebody I'd steer clear. 3) The absolutely worst way to find somebody is a job advert - but sometimes we have no choice ;-) So - how do you know if you have a decent job advert? You know the sort of person you're looking for. Pretend you're that person sitting in a fairly comfortable job, with a reasonable salary, but feeling slightly bored with your current work. Remember you know nothing at all about your company and the work you do. Read your job advert. Do you want to apply? If not you may want to consider my Patent Pending list of how not to write a job advert :-) 1) Lie. Nothing attracts that ideal recruit more than showing up at the job interview to discover that the salary is ten grand less than was advertised and that they can't telecommute like the agent told them. 2) Bad spelling and grammar. Would you trust a company that cannot even check the spelling on their job adverts? 3) Bad technical terms. The Qualified are not going to apply for a position as a "PERL programmer with Central Gate Interface experience" :-) 4) No company info. Put your company name and URL on the advert. Good candidates will want to google you and find out whether they want to work for you. Let them. That way you'll let the Unqualified filter themselves out. Does googling your company results in stuff that would make the brave run away screaming? If so fix that first :-) 5) Bad job title. Treat the job title like the subject line of an e-mail. It should be informative. It should be an abstract of the job. It should not be "Programmer" or, even worse, "GREAT POSITION IN TOP COMPANY!!!". Something like "Perl/mod_perl e-commerce developer". The Qualified are only skimming the job ads to keep a weather eye on what's happening. Don't give them an excuse to skip over the ad. Being specific also makes it harder for the deluded to remain so. 6) No salary. At the very least quote a range. The Qualified are probably working and need to know whether it's worth their while to jump ship. It's also a good indicator of what kind of role it is. This will let the Unqualified filter themselves out and reduce your pile of useless CVs. 7) Over general terms. Don't say "Perl programmer" say "Perl programmer. Must have experience writing OO modules and unit/acceptance testing of web based applications". Make it easy for the Unqualified to filter themselves out. Make it harder for the Deluded to delude themselves. Not knowing the difference between a job requirement and "it would be nice if...". Make the difference obvious in your advert. Far too many ads are a shopping list of every possible thing that might be vaguely useful. Are you really going to reject the perfect candidate because they only have four rather than five years experience? Are the Qualified going to spend the time figuring out what the job actually involves? Nope - they have lives. 8) Hiding the job requirements. By the time they've got to the third paragraph of market speak about how wonderful the company is the Qualified's eyes are glazing over. Job requirements should be front and centre. 9) Not saying what the job is. For god's sake mention what they'll be developing. It's one of the things that attract the Qualified. At the very least mention the domain. 10) Not mentioning the work environment. If you have a small agile development team using TDD then you don't want somebody who uses RUP in a group of forty, or somebody who will only telecommute. So let them filter themselves out by saying so. 11) No location. People want to know where they'll be working. Remember - you want the best person for the job, not the most desperate. The best people are going to be comfortable and happy to skip things. The desperate are going to read everything. So, get the attractive stuff that will capture the best up front where they'll read it.
- rtpg 14y ago
  > Unfortunately, in my experience anyway, good agents are rarer than gold dust in the IT industry. Considering all the gold in computer parts (or so I've heard), seems like we get a good deal then. (/pedantic) Is it even a good idea for a startup to try and recruit through classifieds? In small teams it seems like knowing people beforehand goes a long way to quickly integrating into the team (and thus going along with the "release fast and often" we all so cherish). People in startups probably know other relatively smart people, and the cost of learning the tools would seem to be outweighed by the advantages brought by the social dynamics. Do people in startups have friends? Do they find the time to hang around with people outside their own business to work on those sorts of relations?
- carterschonwald 14y ago
  Well said! Could not articulate this better myself, even though I rant about various elements of this matter at least once a week! :) Seriously, great job summarizing all the different knobs that matter. Now if only people could manage to follow these pretty reasonable rules of thumb. Admission: I've actually helped a few friends write better job descriptions for their businesses, a good quality job description makes such a huge difference.
- sytelus 14y ago
  Job Advert is not the worst way to find somebody. Depending on how you do it, it's perhaps the best way to recruit someone. Good job adverts are intriguing even to non job seekers, for example, a cleverly crafted puzzle or challanging competition or just a pic of some office prank that demonstrates irrestiable cultural aspect. No HR professional would agree with you that quoting salary on job advert is good idea. For most jobs typically wide range of experience and skills are admittable. Even for very specific jobs 20% variance is very normal. Once you quote a number you risk turning away who are already making bit higher or over pay someone who is perfact candidate but getting significant less current pay. Even quoting range is dangerous because unless you pay high end candidate would always feel unsatiesfied. In addition, current employees can see this number as well causing moral issues if they feel their title is more important but getting less as well as loss of privacy for new hire. One situation when you do want to quote number is when your offer is 2x or more than average market rate and you will pay that regardless of their current pay and employees don't care about privacy issues.
DanielRibeiro 14y ago
I wonder how Dan would review Square and Github's job listings: https://github.com/about/jobs https://github.com/about/jobs https://squareup.com/careers/engineering https://squareup.com/careers/engineering
- danshapiro 14y ago
  They're landing pages, not one liners, so different rules apply. But they're not bad examples of the form. My favorite jobs landing page right now is http://jobs.amicushq.com/ http://jobs.amicushq.com/.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    So good I filled it out. :)
abcd_f 14y ago
It'd be interesting to see how jobs listings from "Tell HN: Who's hiring" threads perform. Both from employer and candidate perspectives. Is anyone willing to share?
eduardordm 14y ago
inDinero is seeking for, what they call, Lead Software Engineer for months now. I remember this because I would want to work there but they are seeking more than one person. What went through my head when I read the job ad. "Are you self-motivated? Do you strive to be the best? Do you want to be an integral part of our explosive growth?" - Yes, yes, but I don't like explosive things. "you'll have to be super smart, well-versed in CS concepts and studies"" - They are probably going to ask me to implement sorting algorithms on a board, from their website their product seems simple, no need to back to my old algorithms book, who knows. "Both founders (Andy and Jessica) studied computer science before starting the company, and they wrote most of the initial code until product launch." - Ok, I will be dealing with a lot technical debt. "...you will communicate across our accounting and sales teams to discover what will make our clients super happy and what will help us increase sales in new verticals..." - I'm sorry, this is not what a lead engineer does. No serious engineer would want to do that, I would be busy enough dealing with technical debt, implementing new features and actually leading a team of engineers. "Looking to the long-term, you will also need to upgrade Rails, make sure our servers will scale, ensure high-security, and modularize key parts of the code base. We know that even if you're leading a team you'll probably still want to spend time coding, so this role also affords the time to do hands-on programming." - See, you want more than one person. And you clearly don't really understand the role of a lead engineer. You are asking for a CTO/Product designer/Engineer. This is why I didn't even consider applying.
- pork 14y ago
  > "Both founders (Andy and Jessica) studied computer science before starting the company, and they wrote most of the initial code until product launch." > - Ok, I will be dealing with a lot technical debt. This made me laugh, because although the intention was well-meaning (you're dealing with technical co-founders), an experienced programmer will instantly realize that the probable case is what you pointed out. I also agree that calling this position a "lead engineer" is horribly misleading. My take is they want a combination of a DevOps person and a Product Manager. Unless the product is trivial, this is seriously a terrible gig -- jack of all trades, master of none.
  - 14y ago
niggler 14y ago
Right now on the top page: " Multi talented developer wanted for YC company"
- manys 14y ago
  And the ad itself is just as vague and meaningless as that title. I have to think that these YC job ads are used as a viability signal to the YC partners and that the company doesn't get help writing them.
kamakazizuru 14y ago
the most recent one is also undoubtedly the worst i´ve seen so far... the title is shocking in it blandness and lack of creativity and the post itself long and unexciting. Someone needs to review their job postings for them : "Multi talented developer wanted for YC company"
- rhizome 14y ago
  But make no mistake, they are "laser focused."
donnfelker 14y ago
How the heck does this hit the front page when so much other good stuff is in the "new" category. Baffling.
emperorcezar 14y ago
The most annoying job posts (anywhere, not just on HN) to me are the ones that fail to say what your company will do for me. It is a very tight market for talent right now, at least tell me your benefits. A job is a relationship, Tell me what you want me to bring to the table, but also tell me what you're bringing to the table. A job post that is just a list of requirements and nothing else rubs me the wrong way. One that I considered a good posting recently was http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/15424/problem-solving-python-engineer http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/15424/problem-solving-pyth...
nicholasjarnold 14y ago
If you are dyslexic or just not awake yet, you may have noticed that the final score (if inversed) is the closest whole number fractional approximation of π. Edit: Maths
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tmarthal 14y ago
And yet, the original author doesn't have any data to say how the various headlines are doing. A nice writeup would be if someone at HN posted the CTRs and applications (i.e. conversions) for the various job descriptions w/ headlines. Not sure if there would be enough data to make it statistically meaningful, however. In my limited analysis of a situation (which is just a summary of the above comments?), you may get a higher CTR rate on the more general headlines but a lower conversion rate. You may get a lower CTR on the more detailed headlines, but a higher application conversion rate. Deciding which headline is better most likely really depends on the underlying content, and an author using their opinion on what constitues a good job description may not always be correct.

64 points by giladvdn 14y ago

(My standard rant on job adverts - not aimed at startups per se - but so much of it seems to apply to startup ads too). You're dealing with four groups of people: 1) Qualified: the people who have the skills you need and would want to work for you 2) Unqualified: honest folk who either don't have the skills or don't want to work for you 3) Deluded: people who think they can do the job despite the fact their computing experience consists of knowing somebody whose cousin owns a Playstation 4) Liars: people who know they can't do the job and will lie to get it anyway So you want to: * convince that first group that you have a wonderful job working for a competent company that's just right for them * convince the others that they shouldn't waste everybody's time Two big problems: 1) Almost by definition the Qualified are in work. Why wouldn't they be? So you need to make sure that you're going to make something attractive enough for people to consider jumping ship for. 2) It's a complete bugger to get rid of the Liars and the Deluded because... well... they're liars and deluded :-) The good news is that the Unqualified are happy to exclude themselves if they're given enough info. They don't want to waste their own time applying to stuff they they know they're not going to get. So - how do you find somebody decent? 1) Best way is personal recommendation. Network away and see if anybody you know and trust knows somebody who would be interested. Assuming you have vaguely sane friends this is almost guaranteed to exclude the Deluded and the Liars. Huzzah. 2) Second best way is to use a good recruiter. Unfortunately, in my experience anyway, good agents are rarer than gold dust in the IT industry. Unless you have a personal recommendation from somebody I'd steer clear. 3) The absolutely worst way to find somebody is a job advert - but sometimes we have no choice ;-) So - how do you know if you have a decent job advert? You know the sort of person you're looking for. Pretend you're that person sitting in a fairly comfortable job, with a reasonable salary, but feeling slightly bored with your current work. Remember you know nothing at all about your company and the work you do. Read your job advert. Do you want to apply? If not you may want to consider my Patent Pending list of how not to write a job advert :-) 1) Lie. Nothing attracts that ideal recruit more than showing up at the job interview to discover that the salary is ten grand less than was advertised and that they can't telecommute like the agent told them. 2) Bad spelling and grammar. Would you trust a company that cannot even check the spelling on their job adverts? 3) Bad technical terms. The Qualified are not going to apply for a position as a "PERL programmer with Central Gate Interface experience" :-) 4) No company info. Put your company name and URL on the advert. Good candidates will want to google you and find out whether they want to work for you. Let them. That way you'll let the Unqualified filter themselves out. Does googling your company results in stuff that would make the brave run away screaming? If so fix that first :-) 5) Bad job title. Treat the job title like the subject line of an e-mail. It should be informative. It should be an abstract of the job. It should not be "Programmer" or, even worse, "GREAT POSITION IN TOP COMPANY!!!". Something like "Perl/mod_perl e-commerce developer". The Qualified are only skimming the job ads to keep a weather eye on what's happening. Don't give them an excuse to skip over the ad. Being specific also makes it harder for the deluded to remain so. 6) No salary. At the very least quote a range. The Qualified are probably working and need to know whether it's worth their while to jump ship. It's also a good indicator of what kind of role it is. This will let the Unqualified filter themselves out and reduce your pile of useless CVs. 7) Over general terms. Don't say "Perl programmer" say "Perl programmer. Must have experience writing OO modules and unit/acceptance testing of web based applications". Make it easy for the Unqualified to filter themselves out. Make it harder for the Deluded to delude themselves. Not knowing the difference between a job requirement and "it would be nice if...". Make the difference obvious in your advert. Far too many ads are a shopping list of every possible thing that might be vaguely useful. Are you really going to reject the perfect candidate because they only have four rather than five years experience? Are the Qualified going to spend the time figuring out what the job actually involves? Nope - they have lives. 8) Hiding the job requirements. By the time they've got to the third paragraph of market speak about how wonderful the company is the Qualified's eyes are glazing over. Job requirements should be front and centre. 9) Not saying what the job is. For god's sake mention what they'll be developing. It's one of the things that attract the Qualified. At the very least mention the domain. 10) Not mentioning the work environment. If you have a small agile development team using TDD then you don't want somebody who uses RUP in a group of forty, or somebody who will only telecommute. So let them filter themselves out by saying so. 11) No location. People want to know where they'll be working. Remember - you want the best person for the job, not the most desperate. The best people are going to be comfortable and happy to skip things. The desperate are going to read everything. So, get the attractive stuff that will capture the best up front where they'll read it.

rtpg 14y ago
> Unfortunately, in my experience anyway, good agents are rarer than gold dust in the IT industry. Considering all the gold in computer parts (or so I've heard), seems like we get a good deal then. (/pedantic) Is it even a good idea for a startup to try and recruit through classifieds? In small teams it seems like knowing people beforehand goes a long way to quickly integrating into the team (and thus going along with the "release fast and often" we all so cherish). People in startups probably know other relatively smart people, and the cost of learning the tools would seem to be outweighed by the advantages brought by the social dynamics. Do people in startups have friends? Do they find the time to hang around with people outside their own business to work on those sorts of relations?
carterschonwald 14y ago
Well said! Could not articulate this better myself, even though I rant about various elements of this matter at least once a week! :) Seriously, great job summarizing all the different knobs that matter. Now if only people could manage to follow these pretty reasonable rules of thumb. Admission: I've actually helped a few friends write better job descriptions for their businesses, a good quality job description makes such a huge difference.
sytelus 14y ago
Job Advert is not the worst way to find somebody. Depending on how you do it, it's perhaps the best way to recruit someone. Good job adverts are intriguing even to non job seekers, for example, a cleverly crafted puzzle or challanging competition or just a pic of some office prank that demonstrates irrestiable cultural aspect. No HR professional would agree with you that quoting salary on job advert is good idea. For most jobs typically wide range of experience and skills are admittable. Even for very specific jobs 20% variance is very normal. Once you quote a number you risk turning away who are already making bit higher or over pay someone who is perfact candidate but getting significant less current pay. Even quoting range is dangerous because unless you pay high end candidate would always feel unsatiesfied. In addition, current employees can see this number as well causing moral issues if they feel their title is more important but getting less as well as loss of privacy for new hire. One situation when you do want to quote number is when your offer is 2x or more than average market rate and you will pay that regardless of their current pay and employees don't care about privacy issues.

DanielRibeiro 14y ago

I wonder how Dan would review Square and Github's job listings: https://github.com/about/jobs https://github.com/about/jobs https://squareup.com/careers/engineering https://squareup.com/careers/engineering

danshapiro 14y ago
They're landing pages, not one liners, so different rules apply. But they're not bad examples of the form. My favorite jobs landing page right now is http://jobs.amicushq.com/ http://jobs.amicushq.com/.
- javajosh 14y ago
  So good I filled it out. :)

abcd_f 14y ago

It'd be interesting to see how jobs listings from "Tell HN: Who's hiring" threads perform. Both from employer and candidate perspectives. Is anyone willing to share?

eduardordm 14y ago

inDinero is seeking for, what they call, Lead Software Engineer for months now. I remember this because I would want to work there but they are seeking more than one person. What went through my head when I read the job ad. "Are you self-motivated? Do you strive to be the best? Do you want to be an integral part of our explosive growth?" - Yes, yes, but I don't like explosive things. "you'll have to be super smart, well-versed in CS concepts and studies"" - They are probably going to ask me to implement sorting algorithms on a board, from their website their product seems simple, no need to back to my old algorithms book, who knows. "Both founders (Andy and Jessica) studied computer science before starting the company, and they wrote most of the initial code until product launch." - Ok, I will be dealing with a lot technical debt. "...you will communicate across our accounting and sales teams to discover what will make our clients super happy and what will help us increase sales in new verticals..." - I'm sorry, this is not what a lead engineer does. No serious engineer would want to do that, I would be busy enough dealing with technical debt, implementing new features and actually leading a team of engineers. "Looking to the long-term, you will also need to upgrade Rails, make sure our servers will scale, ensure high-security, and modularize key parts of the code base. We know that even if you're leading a team you'll probably still want to spend time coding, so this role also affords the time to do hands-on programming." - See, you want more than one person. And you clearly don't really understand the role of a lead engineer. You are asking for a CTO/Product designer/Engineer. This is why I didn't even consider applying.

pork 14y ago
> "Both founders (Andy and Jessica) studied computer science before starting the company, and they wrote most of the initial code until product launch." > - Ok, I will be dealing with a lot technical debt. This made me laugh, because although the intention was well-meaning (you're dealing with technical co-founders), an experienced programmer will instantly realize that the probable case is what you pointed out. I also agree that calling this position a "lead engineer" is horribly misleading. My take is they want a combination of a DevOps person and a Product Manager. Unless the product is trivial, this is seriously a terrible gig -- jack of all trades, master of none.
- 14y ago

niggler 14y ago

Right now on the top page: " Multi talented developer wanted for YC company"

manys 14y ago
And the ad itself is just as vague and meaningless as that title. I have to think that these YC job ads are used as a viability signal to the YC partners and that the company doesn't get help writing them.

kamakazizuru 14y ago

the most recent one is also undoubtedly the worst i´ve seen so far... the title is shocking in it blandness and lack of creativity and the post itself long and unexciting. Someone needs to review their job postings for them : "Multi talented developer wanted for YC company"

rhizome 14y ago
But make no mistake, they are "laser focused."

donnfelker 14y ago

How the heck does this hit the front page when so much other good stuff is in the "new" category. Baffling.

emperorcezar 14y ago

The most annoying job posts (anywhere, not just on HN) to me are the ones that fail to say what your company will do for me. It is a very tight market for talent right now, at least tell me your benefits. A job is a relationship, Tell me what you want me to bring to the table, but also tell me what you're bringing to the table. A job post that is just a list of requirements and nothing else rubs me the wrong way. One that I considered a good posting recently was http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/15424/problem-solving-python-engineer http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/15424/problem-solving-pyth...

nicholasjarnold 14y ago

If you are dyslexic or just not awake yet, you may have noticed that the final score (if inversed) is the closest whole number fractional approximation of π. Edit: Maths

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tmarthal 14y ago

And yet, the original author doesn't have any data to say how the various headlines are doing. A nice writeup would be if someone at HN posted the CTRs and applications (i.e. conversions) for the various job descriptions w/ headlines. Not sure if there would be enough data to make it statistically meaningful, however. In my limited analysis of a situation (which is just a summary of the above comments?), you may get a higher CTR rate on the more general headlines but a lower conversion rate. You may get a lower CTR on the more detailed headlines, but a higher application conversion rate. Deciding which headline is better most likely really depends on the underlying content, and an author using their opinion on what constitues a good job description may not always be correct.