10 ms·

StackOverflow’s Careers 2.0

86 points by phwd 16y ago

baltcode 16y ago
It seems the site is grinding to a halt with the traffic. I think it's a good idea. Just the other day I was thinking, what can you really do with reputation? I think this is going to push the peer-review process to new limits with more kinds of "attacks".
- carlygeehr 16y ago
  I think this is significant not necessarily for what it is now, but for what it can evolve into and inspire in other services. I'm excited to see what comes of this!
nestlequ1k 16y ago
Site seems pretty busted at the moment. I'm sure they'll have it back up working again soon though.
- phwd 16y ago
  Joel just presented it at the Launch Conference a bit earlier, though that should not be used as a reason for the timeouts.
spolsky 16y ago
Here's our blog post announcing Careers 2.0: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/
- estel 16y ago
  Clickable: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/
- 6ren 16y ago
  Is SO profitable yet? Careers seems like a great fit, because you have definite evidence of developers' interests and abilities. btw: if you don't indent, urls get linkified, like this: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/
  - spolsky 16y ago
    we were profitable until we raised VC and started spending it :-)
    - neebz 16y ago
      really? how? (unless it's confidential ..or illegal :P )
      - billybob 16y ago
        Ads, I'm assuming. They do have those, you know - pretty well-targeted at programmers, too, and not farmed out to Google or whatever. Although if you're running Adblock, you might not know that.
        ludwigvan 16y ago
        Also Amazon affiliate links. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/our-amazon-advertising-experiment/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/our-amazon-advertising...
        edanm 16y ago
        You really shouldn't be running adblock on StackOverflow. They have really good ads, things you very well might want to know about. I've already found one service I use all the time through ads on SO.
      - mhp 16y ago
        Same as now: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-...
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  So the executive summary is the first effort didn't work and now you're trying something different? I would be curious if you've got any postmortem analysis for the last effort. But more. I would like to offer a simple theory for why no "making search as easy as possible" site is going succeed. My explanation is that this is because job search is an adversarial process. It is, at least partially, a zero sum game. Neither player wants to remove the information-asymmetry on the part of their opponent in such a game. For example, forcing the other side to work for information about you is good because it impels the other side to be committed to you (and the other side concomitantly hates having to work for their information). The fact that neither side is very rational either doesn't help. It's in my interest not to reveal my love of Labrador Retrievers to my potential employers because it's more likely they will reject me for this than that they will accept me for it. Just consider - an employers wants to know everything good and bad about an employee before they make that employee an offer. A potential employee wants the opposite - they want to know all the potential jobs available, where each company is in their search and what offers said companies are willing to make before they start revealing information about themselves. Then they want the employer to know all the desirable things about them. Then they want the employer to know any negative that they'd forced to tell anyway. And they don't want to describe any potential negatives that the employer won't need to know. AND what's negative and what's a positive varies from employer to employer. What potential employees certainly shouldn't want is a "beauty contest" where they "strut their stuff" to invisible judges. But naturally, neither side can or should get everything they want here. The adversarial situation of job search is the ultimate reason for its clunkiness. It's complex dance involving each side revealing information and making commitments. The ability of each to make commitments is important to the process as well as long as the commitment process is reasonably symmetrical (why my committing to a mere "job search" by paying money is highly disadvantageous. I only commit to specific employers after they had partially committed to me). It's a reason that job-shops exist despite seeming ignorant and irrational. It's the same reason that find "contracting agents who understands programming" to be the worst to deal with (the contracting agent isn't there to evaluate you, they're just a mediation a way for both sides to unveil their information slowly. They work good for only that).
  - john_horton 16y ago
mtrn 16y ago
In this case, going with the mainstream is nice: No more fees for job seekers.
ghurlman 16y ago
It lists my first employer under "most recently at" - somebody got their sort direction wrong. Edit: Looks fixed. Quick work!
- df07 16y ago
  Whoops, looks like it's just going by the order you're displaying them in (assuming you'd show newest first). Will fix soon...
  - ghurlman 16y ago
    The "years of experience" in the header don't seem to add up either - sent an email to careers@stackoverflow with details.
    - m_myers 16y ago
      Yep, they say they are working on it right now. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80390/why-does-it-say-i-have-0-year-of-java-experience http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80390/why-does-it-sa...
Glide 16y ago
Strange. It lists jobs near Alexandria, VA just fine on the front page. But when I click on the More Jobs it tries to find jobs in Egypt.
- alexophile 16y ago
  I hear they have an opening for a librarian that they've been trying to fill for millenia.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    They also sacked their fire fighting crew at about the same time.
    - alexophile 16y ago
      On a related note, this line form the wikipedia article is priceless: "Caesar accidentally burned the library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC." It may be a gross mischaracterization, but I love the image of a Mr. Magoo-like Caeser bumping into a brazier and burning down the greatest collection of knowledge in the world.
- mwsherman 16y ago
  thanks, we'll have that fixed it our next build
johns 16y ago
I hear they addressed this in the Q&A after their presentation at LAUNCH, but I'd like to see them pull in more external services. StackOverflow is only one small part of my online identity. GitHub is much more representative and I'd like to include things like my Hacker News and Twitter stats as well. I recently made a rough mockup of what I called 'Devume' to show the concept behind a living resume for developers: http://screencast.com/t/FRwVor0hnm http://screencast.com/t/FRwVor0hnm If anyone wants devume.com and @devume to make it real, it's all yours.
- spolsky 16y ago
  Yes... we didn't have time for GitHub/Blog/Twitter integrations for today's launch, but that is our absolutely highest priority and of course you can always add links to those things.
  - john_horton 16y ago
    What if there was integration with online labor platforms e.g., a "Hire Joel on oDesk/Elance/Freelancer etc." button on profiles? More than once I've asked a question on SO, gotten excellent answers and then wished I could offer one the responders a short job. full disclosure - I work at oDesk, but I had this idea before I started.
dabent 16y ago
I did a test search and found a Erlang/Android job "by the beach." I don't job surf very often and I'm not currently looking for another day job, but this has to be one of the coolest job listings I've seen: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10048/android-development-team-leader-voalte http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10048/android-developm...
- abredow 16y ago
  They're just trying to make Sarasota sound a lot more interesting than it actually is :)
  - dabent 16y ago
    Thanks for making me chuckle. You do make a good point. If this was just another enterprise Java job, I wouldn't have listed it. I guess I was mostly curious about the Erlang/Android angle.
  - nepenthe 16y ago
    You won't be surfing in Sarasota but the beaches are in fact a reason to list "by the beach." Not many beaches (Boracay, Lombok and Sulawesi, some areas of Phuket) compare to what can be found from Sarasota down to Boca Grande and on to Sanibel and Captiva. I live in Sarasota and find it boring. But then most of my time is either coding or outdoors. I can't think of many more places I'd rather be.
    - khafra 16y ago
      Clearwire Wimax covers the Tampa Bay area now; you should take your laptop out to Fort Desoto and code with inspiration. edit: In fact, I may have just talked myself into signing up with Clearwire; care to start a co-working space just around the bend from the northernmost parking lot?
hopeless 16y ago
It's a shame there's still no decent PDF export option other than the less-than-ideal print-to-file route. I don't want to have to maintain yet another copy of my CV.
- spolsky 16y ago
  working on it!
  - hopeless 16y ago
    That's very good to hear. I wonder, did you get any benefits from implementing the hResume microformat? Was it worth the effort (I don't see many tools using it)?
    - robeastham 16y ago
      Mighty CV is in private beta at the moment and is just about to roll out dynamic PDF generation. It's essentially a big button located on your online résumé that generates a printer friendly PDF whenever you need it. This PDF output is also useful for recruitment companies that require a PDF as part of their registration process, usually they need one for their internal candidate database. You can sign up for the Mighty CV beta at: http://www.mightycv.com http://www.mightycv.com There is also a LinkedIn importer that creates a new résumé in seconds by using information that you've already entered in to your LinkedIn profile. Hacker News profile integration is coming soon and soon after there will be GitHub and StackOverflow integrations too. I'd still encourage everyone to check out Careers 2.0 from Joel and his team. It looks great to me and is a slightly different animal to Mighty CV. For example there are no plans to integrate job listings as part of the Mighty CV service. Take a look at some of the other benefits at the site.
phillytom 16y ago
Can anyone comment on whether or not they have found advertising on the SO jobs board to be a good source of candidates? I listed a position there in December for a systems engineer with EC2 experience and got no responses - I've had much better luck with Startuply for example.
- eli 16y ago
  I posted an ad for a Junior PHP Developer last year and also got no responses. Ended up hiring someone off Craigslist. Maybe it works better for upper-level developers?
- dangrossman 16y ago
  I'm not sure why I would look for postings and contact you. I just listed my CV there and employers started contacting me through the site. Do you have to pay extra for that or something?
  - phillytom 16y ago
    It's 350 to list a job in the job section, 500 for the ability to search and contact people based on their profile (for 1 week).
- Korneel 16y ago
  It's somewhat hard to say what makes a listing successful as it depends on a combination of factors such as location, technologies wanted, the company, the position and people looking to work with all of the above. And sometimes there's just no match. That said, we'll follow up with you directly to see how we can help you get the best out of your posting (and there's always our money back guarantee if your not entirely happy).
rhizome 16y ago
This is excellent, I'm working on something identical for a different demo! There must be something in the internet-water.
adityakothadiya 16y ago
For a new user who visits this site for the first time, the "2.0" doesn't make any sense. Why add version number to your product name? It's fine to write about it in blog post announcement. But when I visit your site, I don't care which version it is. I know I'm using latest version that is live.
- rudd 16y ago
  I think the name is "Careers 2.0" as in, this is the new version of how you manage your career. Before, you searched for jobs on job boards, sending out your resume, etc. Now, the employers come to you. Careers 2.0.
AndrewHampton 16y ago
This seems like a great fit for the stack exchange sites in general. They're building communities of experts in various fields and now you can hire someone who proven to be an expert in that field by going to careers.[stack exchange site].com.
tomh- 16y ago
There are still bugs, I cannot change how many years of experience I have with languages. Currently stackoverflow thinks I have 10 (!) years of C# experience. That must mean I have designed the language...how can I change this?

86 points by phwd 16y ago

It seems the site is grinding to a halt with the traffic. I think it's a good idea. Just the other day I was thinking, what can you really do with reputation? I think this is going to push the peer-review process to new limits with more kinds of "attacks".

carlygeehr 16y ago
I think this is significant not necessarily for what it is now, but for what it can evolve into and inspire in other services. I'm excited to see what comes of this!

nestlequ1k 16y ago

Site seems pretty busted at the moment. I'm sure they'll have it back up working again soon though.

phwd 16y ago
Joel just presented it at the Launch Conference a bit earlier, though that should not be used as a reason for the timeouts.

spolsky 16y ago

Here's our blog post announcing Careers 2.0: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/

estel 16y ago
Clickable: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/
6ren 16y ago
Is SO profitable yet? Careers seems like a great fit, because you have definite evidence of developers' interests and abilities. btw: if you don't indent, urls get linkified, like this: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/
- spolsky 16y ago
  we were profitable until we raised VC and started spending it :-)
  - neebz 16y ago
    really? how? (unless it's confidential ..or illegal :P )
    - billybob 16y ago
      Ads, I'm assuming. They do have those, you know - pretty well-targeted at programmers, too, and not farmed out to Google or whatever. Although if you're running Adblock, you might not know that.
      - ludwigvan 16y ago
        Also Amazon affiliate links. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/our-amazon-advertising-experiment/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/our-amazon-advertising...
      - edanm 16y ago
        You really shouldn't be running adblock on StackOverflow. They have really good ads, things you very well might want to know about. I've already found one service I use all the time through ads on SO.
    - mhp 16y ago
      Same as now: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-...
joe_the_user 16y ago
So the executive summary is the first effort didn't work and now you're trying something different? I would be curious if you've got any postmortem analysis for the last effort. But more. I would like to offer a simple theory for why no "making search as easy as possible" site is going succeed. My explanation is that this is because job search is an adversarial process. It is, at least partially, a zero sum game. Neither player wants to remove the information-asymmetry on the part of their opponent in such a game. For example, forcing the other side to work for information about you is good because it impels the other side to be committed to you (and the other side concomitantly hates having to work for their information). The fact that neither side is very rational either doesn't help. It's in my interest not to reveal my love of Labrador Retrievers to my potential employers because it's more likely they will reject me for this than that they will accept me for it. Just consider - an employers wants to know everything good and bad about an employee before they make that employee an offer. A potential employee wants the opposite - they want to know all the potential jobs available, where each company is in their search and what offers said companies are willing to make before they start revealing information about themselves. Then they want the employer to know all the desirable things about them. Then they want the employer to know any negative that they'd forced to tell anyway. And they don't want to describe any potential negatives that the employer won't need to know. AND what's negative and what's a positive varies from employer to employer. What potential employees certainly shouldn't want is a "beauty contest" where they "strut their stuff" to invisible judges. But naturally, neither side can or should get everything they want here. The adversarial situation of job search is the ultimate reason for its clunkiness. It's complex dance involving each side revealing information and making commitments. The ability of each to make commitments is important to the process as well as long as the commitment process is reasonably symmetrical (why my committing to a mere "job search" by paying money is highly disadvantageous. I only commit to specific employers after they had partially committed to me). It's a reason that job-shops exist despite seeming ignorant and irrational. It's the same reason that find "contracting agents who understands programming" to be the worst to deal with (the contracting agent isn't there to evaluate you, they're just a mediation a way for both sides to unveil their information slowly. They work good for only that).
- john_horton 16y ago

mtrn 16y ago

In this case, going with the mainstream is nice: No more fees for job seekers.

ghurlman 16y ago

It lists my first employer under "most recently at" - somebody got their sort direction wrong. Edit: Looks fixed. Quick work!

df07 16y ago
Whoops, looks like it's just going by the order you're displaying them in (assuming you'd show newest first). Will fix soon...
- ghurlman 16y ago
  The "years of experience" in the header don't seem to add up either - sent an email to careers@stackoverflow with details.
  - m_myers 16y ago
    Yep, they say they are working on it right now. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80390/why-does-it-say-i-have-0-year-of-java-experience http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80390/why-does-it-sa...

Glide 16y ago

Strange. It lists jobs near Alexandria, VA just fine on the front page. But when I click on the More Jobs it tries to find jobs in Egypt.

alexophile 16y ago
I hear they have an opening for a librarian that they've been trying to fill for millenia.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  They also sacked their fire fighting crew at about the same time.
  - alexophile 16y ago
    On a related note, this line form the wikipedia article is priceless: "Caesar accidentally burned the library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC." It may be a gross mischaracterization, but I love the image of a Mr. Magoo-like Caeser bumping into a brazier and burning down the greatest collection of knowledge in the world.
mwsherman 16y ago
thanks, we'll have that fixed it our next build

johns 16y ago

I hear they addressed this in the Q&A after their presentation at LAUNCH, but I'd like to see them pull in more external services. StackOverflow is only one small part of my online identity. GitHub is much more representative and I'd like to include things like my Hacker News and Twitter stats as well. I recently made a rough mockup of what I called 'Devume' to show the concept behind a living resume for developers: http://screencast.com/t/FRwVor0hnm http://screencast.com/t/FRwVor0hnm If anyone wants devume.com and @devume to make it real, it's all yours.

spolsky 16y ago
Yes... we didn't have time for GitHub/Blog/Twitter integrations for today's launch, but that is our absolutely highest priority and of course you can always add links to those things.
- john_horton 16y ago
  What if there was integration with online labor platforms e.g., a "Hire Joel on oDesk/Elance/Freelancer etc." button on profiles? More than once I've asked a question on SO, gotten excellent answers and then wished I could offer one the responders a short job. full disclosure - I work at oDesk, but I had this idea before I started.

dabent 16y ago

I did a test search and found a Erlang/Android job "by the beach." I don't job surf very often and I'm not currently looking for another day job, but this has to be one of the coolest job listings I've seen: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10048/android-development-team-leader-voalte http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10048/android-developm...

abredow 16y ago
They're just trying to make Sarasota sound a lot more interesting than it actually is :)
- dabent 16y ago
  Thanks for making me chuckle. You do make a good point. If this was just another enterprise Java job, I wouldn't have listed it. I guess I was mostly curious about the Erlang/Android angle.
- nepenthe 16y ago
  You won't be surfing in Sarasota but the beaches are in fact a reason to list "by the beach." Not many beaches (Boracay, Lombok and Sulawesi, some areas of Phuket) compare to what can be found from Sarasota down to Boca Grande and on to Sanibel and Captiva. I live in Sarasota and find it boring. But then most of my time is either coding or outdoors. I can't think of many more places I'd rather be.
  - khafra 16y ago
    Clearwire Wimax covers the Tampa Bay area now; you should take your laptop out to Fort Desoto and code with inspiration. edit: In fact, I may have just talked myself into signing up with Clearwire; care to start a co-working space just around the bend from the northernmost parking lot?

hopeless 16y ago

It's a shame there's still no decent PDF export option other than the less-than-ideal print-to-file route. I don't want to have to maintain yet another copy of my CV.

spolsky 16y ago
working on it!
- hopeless 16y ago
  That's very good to hear. I wonder, did you get any benefits from implementing the hResume microformat? Was it worth the effort (I don't see many tools using it)?
  - robeastham 16y ago
    Mighty CV is in private beta at the moment and is just about to roll out dynamic PDF generation. It's essentially a big button located on your online résumé that generates a printer friendly PDF whenever you need it. This PDF output is also useful for recruitment companies that require a PDF as part of their registration process, usually they need one for their internal candidate database. You can sign up for the Mighty CV beta at: http://www.mightycv.com http://www.mightycv.com There is also a LinkedIn importer that creates a new résumé in seconds by using information that you've already entered in to your LinkedIn profile. Hacker News profile integration is coming soon and soon after there will be GitHub and StackOverflow integrations too. I'd still encourage everyone to check out Careers 2.0 from Joel and his team. It looks great to me and is a slightly different animal to Mighty CV. For example there are no plans to integrate job listings as part of the Mighty CV service. Take a look at some of the other benefits at the site.

phillytom 16y ago

Can anyone comment on whether or not they have found advertising on the SO jobs board to be a good source of candidates? I listed a position there in December for a systems engineer with EC2 experience and got no responses - I've had much better luck with Startuply for example.

eli 16y ago
I posted an ad for a Junior PHP Developer last year and also got no responses. Ended up hiring someone off Craigslist. Maybe it works better for upper-level developers?
dangrossman 16y ago
I'm not sure why I would look for postings and contact you. I just listed my CV there and employers started contacting me through the site. Do you have to pay extra for that or something?
- phillytom 16y ago
  It's 350 to list a job in the job section, 500 for the ability to search and contact people based on their profile (for 1 week).
Korneel 16y ago
It's somewhat hard to say what makes a listing successful as it depends on a combination of factors such as location, technologies wanted, the company, the position and people looking to work with all of the above. And sometimes there's just no match. That said, we'll follow up with you directly to see how we can help you get the best out of your posting (and there's always our money back guarantee if your not entirely happy).

rhizome 16y ago

This is excellent, I'm working on something identical for a different demo! There must be something in the internet-water.

adityakothadiya 16y ago

For a new user who visits this site for the first time, the "2.0" doesn't make any sense. Why add version number to your product name? It's fine to write about it in blog post announcement. But when I visit your site, I don't care which version it is. I know I'm using latest version that is live.

rudd 16y ago
I think the name is "Careers 2.0" as in, this is the new version of how you manage your career. Before, you searched for jobs on job boards, sending out your resume, etc. Now, the employers come to you. Careers 2.0.

AndrewHampton 16y ago

This seems like a great fit for the stack exchange sites in general. They're building communities of experts in various fields and now you can hire someone who proven to be an expert in that field by going to careers.[stack exchange site].com.

tomh- 16y ago

There are still bugs, I cannot change how many years of experience I have with languages. Currently stackoverflow thinks I have 10 (!) years of C# experience. That must mean I have designed the language...how can I change this?