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To me, what's exciting & innovative about SO Careers is its integration w/ the high-quality, high-bandwidth information conveyed by SO reputations---not how SO

To me, what's exciting & innovative about SO Careers is its integration w/ the high-quality, high-bandwidth information conveyed by SO reputations---not how SO executes the job board itself.

ig1 16y ago
The primary problem in hiring developers isn't measuring ability (although that is of course an important problem) but in sourcing candidates. If SO can make SO Reputation the standard way of pre-filtering candidates, then there's certainly potential in that, but it doesn't seem to be what SO is focusing on.
- JasonPunyon 16y ago
  I don't think SO Rep is really a good candidate for "the one number to rule them all" when it comes to hiring. As much as we'd like it if everyone used SO, they don't. A great majority of the users of SO never gain enough reputation to distinguish them from each other based solely on rep. You can look at the reputation distribution for SO at http://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/week/stackoverflow http://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/week/stackoverflow in the sidebar under Total Reputation. Even if we say that having 200+ rep is the signal, that's only 41K people in the world. So if someone decides on using SO Reputation alone to qualify candidates, they can't effectively solve the primary problem of sourcing those candidates.
  - robeastham 16y ago
    I sort of figured this when building Mighty CV. It's a résumé building app aimed at hackers that I've just launched. As Jason's point illustrates, I think what's most useful to potential employers is to be able to see a snapshot of activity across a broad number of relevant sites. That's why Mighty CV allows you to include stats on your résumé from StackOverflow, Github and Hacker News. You just have to supply your user id for each site when creating your résumé. Here's what my Mighty CV résumé looks like: http://robeastham.mightycv.com http://robeastham.mightycv.com The service is in private beta at the moment but I've just added a beta signup code in the first entry for experience in my résumé above. If this service sounds interesting to you then check then sign up for the beta. I really need as much feedback as possible at this point as I only launched the private beta yesterday. I'm hoping to provide integration with pinboard soon so the last five posts from pinboard with the tag 'mightycv' will also automatically show up on your résumé. All Mighty CV's have an on demand PDF export feature, private cover letter URL's and a bunch of other cool stuff too. Hope you all like it.
- inscitekjeff 16y ago
  As Jason pointed out in his reply, it’s not really just about reputation, but we do see the two things you mention as entirely related. ie: The primary problem in hiring developers is not in acquiring piles of resumes for the job, but actually in sourcing a handful of QUALIFIED candidates. In other words, it’s not about quantity, but the fit and quality of applicants feeding the hiring pipeline. To get quality, you need good filters; filters in the form of what types of people who will even see the listings before applying and good filters for evaluating the applicants once they do apply. Most systems fail on both accounts because they target a mass audience of all job seekers (the dreamers, not just actual programmers) and the resumes they submit are easy to trump up and can be expensive to validate. The cool thing about Stack Overflow is that the community is great for both types of filters. At the first level, basically everyone who is a programmer is coming to the site regularly and also conversely, for the most part, programmers are the only people coming to the site. Second, participation in Stack Overflow (to the extent that they actually contribute content) leaves behind a great peer reviewed bread crumb trail of their actual experience and programming knowledge. Therefore, this content is a great thing for programmers to be able to include and feature on their Stack Overflow Careers profiles and also good value add for prospective employers evaluating candidates.
michael_dorfman 16y ago
To me, what's exciting about SO Careers is the volume of people using it. Like all markets, you need large quantities of both buyers and sellers present to make things interesting. In the case of SO Careers, the initial traction came from SO (which in turn got its initial traction from the readers of Jeff and Joel's respective blogs.) Anyone wishing to compete with SO Careers better have a very good strategy for gaining traction (and not depend on the quality of the software, etc. to attract people on both sides.)
- revorad 16y ago
  From the blog post: it's more successful than StackOverflow Careers on most metrics in the UK. We run more job ads, our jobs get viewed by more developers, we get more applications/job and we have more satisfied customers. Focusing on one country is probably a good way to compete against a global jobs board.
- robryan 16y ago
  It's about attracting the right kind of listings, from a quick look it doesn't seem like their quality of listing is overly high. If I was coming to coder stack without knowing anything about the site they don't really sell me with a couple of paragraphs of about us. I'd add a link to the blog somewhere on the page to, give a bit more of a feel for the site.
- shaggyfrog 16y ago
  "Volume" is relative. I'm totally underwhelmed about the number of employers from my neck of the woods using SO Careers (Vancouver, Canada). It's not like there aren't a lot of high-tech companies and a solid IT scene located here. What's the deal?

To me, what's exciting & innovative about SO Careers is its integration w/ the high-quality, high-bandwidth information conveyed by SO reputations---not how SO executes the job board itself.

ig1 16y ago

The primary problem in hiring developers isn't measuring ability (although that is of course an important problem) but in sourcing candidates. If SO can make SO Reputation the standard way of pre-filtering candidates, then there's certainly potential in that, but it doesn't seem to be what SO is focusing on.

JasonPunyon 16y ago
I don't think SO Rep is really a good candidate for "the one number to rule them all" when it comes to hiring. As much as we'd like it if everyone used SO, they don't. A great majority of the users of SO never gain enough reputation to distinguish them from each other based solely on rep. You can look at the reputation distribution for SO at http://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/week/stackoverflow http://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/week/stackoverflow in the sidebar under Total Reputation. Even if we say that having 200+ rep is the signal, that's only 41K people in the world. So if someone decides on using SO Reputation alone to qualify candidates, they can't effectively solve the primary problem of sourcing those candidates.
- robeastham 16y ago
  I sort of figured this when building Mighty CV. It's a résumé building app aimed at hackers that I've just launched. As Jason's point illustrates, I think what's most useful to potential employers is to be able to see a snapshot of activity across a broad number of relevant sites. That's why Mighty CV allows you to include stats on your résumé from StackOverflow, Github and Hacker News. You just have to supply your user id for each site when creating your résumé. Here's what my Mighty CV résumé looks like: http://robeastham.mightycv.com http://robeastham.mightycv.com The service is in private beta at the moment but I've just added a beta signup code in the first entry for experience in my résumé above. If this service sounds interesting to you then check then sign up for the beta. I really need as much feedback as possible at this point as I only launched the private beta yesterday. I'm hoping to provide integration with pinboard soon so the last five posts from pinboard with the tag 'mightycv' will also automatically show up on your résumé. All Mighty CV's have an on demand PDF export feature, private cover letter URL's and a bunch of other cool stuff too. Hope you all like it.
inscitekjeff 16y ago
As Jason pointed out in his reply, it’s not really just about reputation, but we do see the two things you mention as entirely related. ie: The primary problem in hiring developers is not in acquiring piles of resumes for the job, but actually in sourcing a handful of QUALIFIED candidates. In other words, it’s not about quantity, but the fit and quality of applicants feeding the hiring pipeline. To get quality, you need good filters; filters in the form of what types of people who will even see the listings before applying and good filters for evaluating the applicants once they do apply. Most systems fail on both accounts because they target a mass audience of all job seekers (the dreamers, not just actual programmers) and the resumes they submit are easy to trump up and can be expensive to validate. The cool thing about Stack Overflow is that the community is great for both types of filters. At the first level, basically everyone who is a programmer is coming to the site regularly and also conversely, for the most part, programmers are the only people coming to the site. Second, participation in Stack Overflow (to the extent that they actually contribute content) leaves behind a great peer reviewed bread crumb trail of their actual experience and programming knowledge. Therefore, this content is a great thing for programmers to be able to include and feature on their Stack Overflow Careers profiles and also good value add for prospective employers evaluating candidates.

michael_dorfman 16y ago

To me, what's exciting about SO Careers is the volume of people using it. Like all markets, you need large quantities of both buyers and sellers present to make things interesting. In the case of SO Careers, the initial traction came from SO (which in turn got its initial traction from the readers of Jeff and Joel's respective blogs.) Anyone wishing to compete with SO Careers better have a very good strategy for gaining traction (and not depend on the quality of the software, etc. to attract people on both sides.)

revorad 16y ago
From the blog post: it's more successful than StackOverflow Careers on most metrics in the UK. We run more job ads, our jobs get viewed by more developers, we get more applications/job and we have more satisfied customers. Focusing on one country is probably a good way to compete against a global jobs board.
robryan 16y ago
It's about attracting the right kind of listings, from a quick look it doesn't seem like their quality of listing is overly high. If I was coming to coder stack without knowing anything about the site they don't really sell me with a couple of paragraphs of about us. I'd add a link to the blog somewhere on the page to, give a bit more of a feel for the site.
shaggyfrog 16y ago
"Volume" is relative. I'm totally underwhelmed about the number of employers from my neck of the woods using SO Careers (Vancouver, Canada). It's not like there aren't a lot of high-tech companies and a solid IT scene located here. What's the deal?