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Show HN: A Webapp to Auto Apply for Jobs
- taietel 9y agoHi guys, I built this after spending over 2 months applying to 100+ jobs on all the job boards and managing everything through a spreadsheet as a senior in college. I want to make the job seeking process easier for everyone so I built JobGen, a way to auto-apply to hundreds of jobs in 2 minutes. It's built with Rails on Heroku, and on the backend uses image recognition and DOM parsing to identify fields to submit your applications (name, email, resume, etc). All feedback is welcome, you can also email me here: admin@jobgen.io
- vertigolimbo 9y agoFirst of all, make the website look more professional. I.e. Do Not Capitalise Every Single Word. Secondly, fix spelling mistakes ("Its a numbers game").
- taietel 9y agoThanks for the heads-up, I'll definitely fix those issues :)
- midgetjones 9y agoWell done on building this, it's an interesting idea. Where did the numbers come from on the homepage? I only ask because your personal account of 100+ jobs, at 5 mins per application, doesn't seem like the best approach to me. When I was jobseeking, I'd research every job description & company thoroughly first, and if it seemed like somewhere I'd want to work then I'd spend probably 20 minutes or so writing a cover letter that came across as personal. I'm sure our experiences aren't apples-to-apples, but I definitely got a very high response rate from taking this approach.
- taietel 9y agoThanks! The numbers are from a beta test I did with around 200 users. I came up with this idea as a college student, when my classmates and I would apply to dozens and even hundreds of jobs to get any opportunity available.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoI'm at work so I can't check it out right now. Does it show you the job descriptions of all the jobs you have applied to?
- taietel 9y agoYep! You can read through all the descriptions, and check/uncheck the ones you would like to apply to.
- Brajeshwar 9y agoHmmm, and we built a Job Search tool that we initially intended as our internal tool to hunt for contract works. However, we end up aggregating all sorts of jobs. I'm thinking search job with our tool - https://getbetterluck.com/ https://getbetterluck.com/ and apply with your tool.
- brailsafe 9y agoAre the keywords the only way to filter the aggregated results? I immediately ran into wanting to filter by region but I don't think full text keyword search would be so reliable
- saneefansari 9y agoRight now, you could use search to find posts based on cities or regions. We are planning have a bit more robust location based filter in future.
- 6stringmerc 9y agoCongrats on taking the time and effort to build something both functional (fills a need) and can work as an example of your work (demonstration) at the same time! As a fellow job seeker frustrated by the "Look at all these great tools for Employers to make Candidates jump through hoops" slant in SaaS, your contribution is quite welcome. I'll admit I have a Candidate Assist SaaS type program in mind as well, definitely different from yours in approach and execution, so feel very good about encouraging your success. Maybe even the scales a little!
- dimitriraj 9y agoOk, I was going through your website. i found few issues. 1. the progress bar and the percentage do not match up. 2. I think you are storing the search results in sessions. Try to clear out the sessions every time. when i did a search on a term it shows me the result when I did a new research or refresh the page, the results are not being updated with new search 3. Upper case on the nav bar tabs labels which looked weird to me. 4. Applications remaining and upgrade plan gives me the same page. I would expect application remaning 10 should be a label not anchor tag 5. when I click on my profile and try to open current resume. I would expect resume to get downloaded. But it takes me to a blank page
- Jaruzel 9y agoYou can hide that ugly 'Choose File' button by putting it inside a hidden div, and then have a nice bootstrappy button in its place that relays the onclick event to it via javascript. I only mention it, as I discovered how to do it (and auto upload) only a few days ago...
- w0rd-driven 9y agoYou may want a FAQ section or something that describes the onboarding process a little more in depth. My gut reaction when looking at the instructions is "Will it just send my information out the second I click submit?" then I realized I didn't read the word "Create profile" on the button and that step 2 is where the magic happens. Having something like an animated gif or screencast that walks through the process would be invaluable. It would also likely be good to have a privacy policy. I've been evaluating things like this and if I can figure out it isn't the right fit without jumping through the hoops or sharing personal information it would definitely be preferred.
- quaunaut 9y agoOn the one hand, this is super cool and I know some people/fields this would be great. On the other, I worry that without knowing exactly who and how these are getting sent out, that I'll seriously consider one of these companies soon after using this, and then be in the unfortunate position of having one low-quality application, and a followup high quality one. Do I have the ability to select who things are going to? Also, with a trigger this powerful, I'd appreciate a bit more implication of what that first form submission does.
- taietel 9y agoThanks for the feedback! Yes you can view the descriptions of each company and check/uncheck the ones you would like to apply to :)
- smt88 9y agoI actually really disagree that it's a numbers game. Yes, it is a numbers game if all you do is send a generic application. But it's not at all a numbers game if you only apply to companies where you have some human connection. For privileged people, that means a relative, family friend, or friend. For others, who have no useful connections, it's possible to make these connections by cold-messaging people on LinkedIn, especially alumni from your school. I have friends who have done this right out of college and only applied to 3 or 4 companies before landing a job they loved. I'd argue that a tool like this encourages and facilitates a dead-end method of applications. EDIT: Let me rephrase this a different way. Sometimes, when you're not finding success, it's not because of too few attempts. It's because your conversion rate needs to be increased. In this case, the conversion rate of "send generic app" is very low, whereas the conversation rate of "tailor your app to the specific opportunity" is much, much higher.
- IshKebab 9y agoI agree, but also it is true that the mechanical process of actually filling in an application is very tedious. If that bit can be eliminated then it is definitely worth it. That said, I think you can apply to jobs with a single click on LinkedIn (and I assume StackOverflow?) so that has kind of been solved. Ish.
- cpfohl 9y agoI've never gotten a job with a resume I didn't taylor for the job in question. Thoughtful tweaking is overwhelmingly the longest part of applying for any job. I've never found the 10 minutes (or so) of filling out the internet forms difficult.
- 6stringmerc 9y agoOn the first point, I've spent a lot of time tayloring for jobs in question and never got more than a form letter of rejection, if any, even though it was a short note of alignment with abilities. And, you're flat out wrong about the 'longest part' of applying for a job if you have to go through each company's individual "Job Applicant System" and fill out basic info over and over and over because the auto-fill systems are garbage 80% of the time. Redundant data entry is overwhelmingly the worst part, and Employers/HR people love to pretend that's not the case.
- Sharma 9y agoGood idea. One important feature that can make it great idea is to match open positions based on the resume's text and the job title and description text(NLP). Then present a screen with the list of the companies with job information algorithm matched with check-boxes. So that user can decide where to apply.
- taietel 9y agoThanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it! That's definitely on the roadmap, right now users can still select which companies they would like to apply to before sending out their applications.
- jorgemf 9y agoI really hate when a recruiter sends a predefined message to me for a job. Most of the time my CV and the job description matches in a couple of keywords but I do not match for the job position at all. I see this tool as a way of fighting the recruiters spamming, now we can spam back them! I also see this tool for first-time job application, I doubt it will work with a person with a lot of experience. Once you get experience in a field you know where to apply and it is not a numbers game anymore.
- cwt137 9y agoMy department just finished a cycle of hiring developers. We could tell which applicants mass applied to jobs and used a generic cover letter. They are probably was just playing the numbers game. Since they didn't care enough to at minimum change or add one or two sentences to make the cover letter unique to our job posting, they didn't get far in our hiring process.
- StavrosK 9y agoWhen evaluating a developer, do you care more about whether they're a good fit for the job, or whether they spent more time than necessary applying for your job? I mean, how much time did you spend approaching each developer individually? Since you used an ad, I'm guessing zero. I'm not saying you should have tailored your ad to each person, but why do you care if they burn time for you, rather than evaluate them on what they can do for the company?
- nathantotten 9y agoIf someone can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes writing a cover letter for a job they want then I would consider them unqualified. I don't want to work with somebody who refuses to put in a bit of effort to get what they want. I spend at least a few hours writing job posts. Why shouldn't I expect the same?
- bjt 9y agoBut you don't customize the job post to each applicant, right? So "the same" would be a developer spending a few hours writing a cover letter and resume that are sent to a bunch of potential employers without customization.
- pkaye 9y agoIt is more common for the applicant to apply for the job so the job post has to be generic. Now if the company is recruiting someone unique they will approach them and tailor the opportunity to that person. Also I don't think one has to spend a few hours to customize the resume. Make one for each industry you are considering and spend 5-10 minutes tweaking it for the employers you really care about.
- nathantotten 9y agoI pretty much disregard every application that doesn't have at least a basic note explaining why you want this particular job. Maybe getting a job is a numbers game, but I don't agree that getting a good job is.
- netaustin 9y ago100%. My company does too, and in many cases, we ask applicants to include a secret phrase (usually "Welcome to the World of Tomorrow") to indicate that they've actually read the job description. I think if you're going to look at it as a numbers game, you're going to be better off sending 10 quality applications than 100 shots in the dark.
- tomjen3 9y agoThat is what I did when I was looking. Turns out that takes less than 10s if you have their website - "I have always been interested in $TECH_THEY_USE and would love to work on a team that works on $WHAT_EVER_PRODUCT_THEY MAKE because it sounds like a challenge". That wasn't exactly the words I used, but close. Then you include the name of whomever is the recipient, because people love to see their own name and feel important.
- falcor84 9y agoI was really hoping that it's about an app that can generate a cv for itself and auto-applies for jobs, hoping to get itself hired. Are we not at that point yet?
- throwaway47861 9y agoIf the author reads here and is accepting feedback: please let go of these ancient and inefficient tropes called Resume and Cover Letter. They're quaint, meaningless and "work" because of old people's habits and for no other reason. They have no real useful purpose. "I am really enthusiastic about not ending up living in the streets" can be a good cover letter too, you see. EDIT: The classic letters are a one-way tool. That's not okay. A 20-minute chat serves the same purpose and gives more info to both sides.
- lj3 9y agoDoes the site have support for remote jobs? From what I can tell, you must choose a single city when searching and there's no way of telling which jobs might allow remote work and which ones are onsite only.
- skytreader 9y agoWould love to try this (out of curiosity) but do you have a list of jobs you'd send my profile to? I'd bet most jobseekers would want that to, as an assurance that they won't get messages just from _any_ recruiter.
- agentgt 9y ago@taietal great job. My company (SnapHop) researched that path for a little but decided to stick with recruitment marketing tools. We couldn't figure out a quick way to monetize and since we are self funded for 5 or so years it just wasn't worth it yet. Anyway I might be able to provide some insight and some connections in the industry if you like (email is in profile).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cyberfart 9y agothe tinder-auto-right-swipe of job hunting