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Jobseekers Invited to “Apply Via API”
- leeoniya 15y agoneat idea. now if only every employer had the same standard REST api at an agreed upon URI, (like sitemap.xml) so you can mass-apply, mass-update resumes. on their side they can mass-flag, mass filter, prioritize.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- gstar 15y agoWe've been doing this at EDITD for a while too: http://editd.com/jobs/senior-engineer/ http://editd.com/jobs/senior-engineer/ (for example)
- soult 15y agoI like your zmqrpc idea. I had a very similar RPC/MQ-combination running for a while, using RabbitMQ instead of 0mq, Ruby instead of Python and JSON instead of BSON (switched to bencode later for better binary data support). But other than that it was pretty much the same mechanism. edit: Your "Join the Team" page has an opening titled "Internships: Fashion Design, Journalism, Software & Statistics" but then in the description it's unfortunately only for "Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Statistics or Journalism".
- devs1010 15y agoIs the purpose mainly just to prevent spam / completely unqualified candidates? Its rather trivial to do the post for anyone with dev experience so I can't imagine its much use to actually gauge their skills
- ryanms 15y agoFizzBuzz is trivial, but there's a reason why it is used so often; the half-foot high fence keeps out 100% of people too stupid to step over it.
- baddox 15y agoI thought employers generally gave FizzBuzz during an in-person interview. Surely a 5 minute phone call from a halfway technical interviewer could provide a way better filter than FizzBuzz, and avoid wasted time by having woefully unqualified people come into the office.
- Jach 15y agoThere are lots of filters, if I ever end up in a hiring role I intend to make use of several. Someone may be able to talk the jargon well enough during a 5 minute phone call but I think they should always be asked to write code at the in-person interview stage, and if they can't do FizzBuzz when they're being hired to program it doesn't matter what magic they weaved during the call.
- msmith 15y agoI've done a fair amount of resume screening and it's definitely useful to be able to filter out the obviously unqualified or uninterested candidates. I checked out the EDITD test and it's a little more involved than Parse's.
- gstar 15y agoThat's what we thought too - this was the definite first pass, and we always intended to have a challenge/response type question for extra credit. But we didn't need it - it turns out the kind of people that are intrigued enough to apply, and have enough ability to install a few libraries are likely great people.
- bostonvaulter2 15y agoHow has it been working for you? Has it increased the overall quality of your applicants?
- gstar 15y agoIncredibly - applicants through this vector are about 99% quality.
- bitops 15y agoKudos to whoever set up this box, by the way. I ran nmap against it a few different ways and the correct port number was not listed.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bitops 15y agoNoooo! Don't give away the keys to the kingdom. :) Instead, maybe say "no ping scan". On the other hand, if you're aware of nmap and know how to use it to get past the first hurdle, you're probably more than capable of solving the actual challenge.
- zeraholladay 15y agoSorry, my bad. Deleted the post.
- mrud 15y agoThe reason (as pointed out by zeraholladay) is that nmap scans per default only about ~1000 ports. If the service is running on a non standard port it will not show up in the default scan
- bitops 15y agoI ran it with the widest port range possible.
- tseabrooks 15y agoThis is great. I'll be keeping this entire thread in mind if I find myself looking for a job.
- fractallyte 15y agoReally? (I'm being slightly sarcastic...) I spent a couple of hours on this late one evening a few months ago, delightedly fired off my details, and - never heard anything back. I'm still pleased that I actually jumped through all the hoops, but the utter silence from the other end? Not sporting at all.
- gstar 15y agoStrange. No email in your profile, drop me one at geoff@editd.com and I'll see what happened.
- eekfuh 15y agoThere is a billboard around Utah that has a base64 string on it, if you decode it, it reads "head /hi" and if you HEAD their domain/hi it says POST then some params about yourself to /apply.
- bryanh 15y agoPerhaps this one? https://twitter.com/#!/brutes_/status/158025883536461824/photo/1 https://twitter.com/#!/brutes_/status/158025883536461824/pho...
- vyrotek 15y agoYep that's the one. My startup's office used to be right above them. Cool guys.
- yahelc 15y ago$curl -I moneydesktop.com/hi HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Server: nginx/1.0.11 Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:19:34 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 185 Connection: keep-alive Location: http://moneydesktop.com X-Career-API: http://careerapi.moneydesktop.com/docs
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Fizzer 15y agoI can imagine a time when this practice becomes so common that spambots start mass-applying, and then employers need to use a CAPTCHA to ensure that only humans are using their API. CAPTCHAs on an API. Never thought I'd see the day...
- bitops 15y ago> CAPTCHAs on an API. Never thought I'd see the day... You could argue that this is essentially accomplished through API keys/secrets and rate limiting.
- ohyes 15y agoMore useful: We'll put our qualifications up using JSON at our own websites and they will crawl them with a bot.
- joshu 15y agoActually, I specced this out for Delicious around 2007. I wanted to have the API be able to reply with "break this CAPTCHA/challenge/etc to continue" before actually applying the write/read/etc. (Delicious was very aggressively spammed.)
- chrisacky 15y agoDELETE http://parse.com/jobs/apply http://parse.com/jobs/apply POST http://parse.com/jobs/apply http://parse.com/jobs/apply = Job?
- arethuza 15y agoProbably should be: PUT http://parse.com/jobs/chrisacky http://parse.com/jobs/chrisacky :-)
- jacques_chester 15y agoI've seen job listings embedded in <meta> tags, in HTTP headers, all sorts of odd places. The trick is that some smart person stumbles on it by accident, posts it on their blog, then gets picked up by a major tech site. It's fantastic publicity.
- pdenya 15y agoI doubt I could stand the waiting between implementing something awesome like that and someone actually finding and reporting it.
- rcthompson 15y agoThen I'm sure you could think of a strategy to discreetly "leak" information about it to get it discovered more quickly.
- mathattack 15y agoAre they looking for PR or for that smart person who finds it to apply?
- jacques_chester 15y agoI think that the publicity is worth more, because it says "come work here, we're interesting enough to put job offers in HTTP headers".
- steve-howard 15y agoAlthough they still haven't migrated from the X-Job-Offer header to the preferred Job-Offer header. ;)
- jacques_chester 15y agoI don't know if I could apply to a place that doesn't at least wait until that proposal moves from Internet-Draft to a full RFC.
- shanemhansen 15y agoMake a request to any zappos.com page and look at the response headers. Found this while checking out their site prior to flying out there. They've got flair.
- ajtaylor 15y agoI should do this more often. Look at the wealth of information returned in the headers: 1) They're using nginx (which is powered by Ponies!) 2) The site is fronted by varnish with a ttl of 1 hour, of which there appear to be at least 4 varnish servers. 3) Links to the various CSS files. Do browsers actually use these headers instead of the <link>s in the html? 4) Drupal is somewhere in the mix. 5) Mention one of the company core values, of which there are at least 8. 6) Anyone geeky enough to be reading this should apply for a job. $ lwp-request -e -d www.zappos.com 200 OK Cache-Control: max-age=2452 Connection: close Connection: Transfer-Encoding Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:53:38 GMT Server: nginx/1.1.14 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Client-Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:53:39 GMT Client-Peer: 203.206.129.48:80 Client-Response-Num: 1 Client-Transfer-Encoding: chunked Link: </favicon.ico>; rel="shortcut icon"; type="image/ico" Link: </styles/main.p.20120201135153.css>; media="screen"; rel="stylesheet"; type="text/css" Link: </css/print.20120115152845.css>; media="print"; rel="stylesheet"; type="text/css" Link: </styles/home.p.20120201135153.css>; media="screen"; rel="stylesheet"; type="text/css" Link: </>; rel="canonical" Title: Shoes, Clothing, and More | Zappos.com X-Cache-Hits: 117 X-Core-Value: 8. Do More With Less X-Meta-Description: Free shipping BOTH ways on shoes, clothing, and more! 365-day return policy, over 1000 brands, 24/7 friendly customer service. 1-800-927-7671 X-Meta-Keywords: index, zappos, zeta, clothing, shoes X-Powered-By: Ponies! X-Recruiting: If you're reading this, maybe you should be working at Zappos instead. Check out jobs.zappos.com X-UUID: 970dff52-4df6-11e1-a3ab-001a645b7cf4 X-Varnish: 1001890813 1001890584 X-Varnish-Host: varnish04.zappos.net X-Varnish-ID: drupal X-Varnish-TTL: 60m
- kevinburke 15y agoShouldn't their jobs site return a 204 instead of an empty 200 response?
- robryan 15y agoShould have to make a request to get the resources that you can post to.
- rjbond3rd 15y agoRight, the bar should be much, much higher for a programming job. Since there's no challenge in it, no weeding of applicants is performed. To me, though, it's self-defeating to simultaneously accept resumes via email -- it shows there's nothing actually at stake. Don't they want only the smartest, most persistent candidates? It doesn't seem so to me.
- Cushman 15y agoFor the lazy: javascript:$('div.code.plain').last().html('<form action=#>name:<input name="name"><br />email:<input name="email"><br />about:<input name="about"><br />urls:<input name="urls"><br /><p id="status"></p><button>submit</button></form>').find('button').click(function(){var f,o={};for (var k in f=$('form').serializeArray()) {o[f[k].name] = f[k].value};o.urls = o.urls.split(',');$.ajax({url:'/jobs/apply',type:"POST",data:JSON.stringify(o),contentType:"application/json; charset=utf-8",dataType:"json",error: function(d,s){$('#status').text(d.status)}});return false;}) Or is that unsporting somehow? Downvotes suggest yes, but on the other hand it'd be pretty silly for someone to expose an API intending people not to write tools that use it.
- butayni 15y agoAnother one for the lazy: curl https://www.parse.com/jobs/apply https://www.parse.com/jobs/apply -d '{"name":"somebody", "email": "me@hotmail.com", "about": "some blurb about me", "urls": ["url1","url2"]}' -H "Content-Type:application/json" Enjoy
- X-Istence 15y agoIs this really so hard that it sets the bar higher to the point that it really works as a filter?
- vandahm 15y agoI know software developers who wouldn't be able to figure it out.
- michaelcampbell 15y agoSadly "yes". That said, it's not "so hard" in absolute terms, but that is precisely why it works so well as a zero'th order filter. You wouldn't want to hire based on passing that, but you certainly want to NOT hire based on failing. (Depending on what you're hiring for, of course; I can't see not taking a sales guy to do sales if he couldn't do it.)
- scotty79 15y agoThey could take it a bit further and provide full recruitment process and the employment itself via api.
- minikomi 15y agoThe first thing which sprang to mind was an ASCII art profile photo in the about string
- angusgr 15y ago- This seems to almost invite abuse. - Surely a better challenge would be to publish a brief but involved spec, then say "implement this API that returns your job application details." Then they can retrieve the job application from the applicants. Ideally, applicants also publish the source code somewhere, so they can see how you code. - Oh wait, this is #1 on HN and getting tons of views. It has already worked out perfectly for them, and I should stop criticising. :)
- Deestan 15y ago> Surely a better challenge would be to publish a brief but involved spec, then say "implement this API that returns your job application details." I would personally interpret this as intolerably arrogant and lazy. "Dance, code monkey, dance!" They require me to spend a few hours coding instead of them looking at my resume and projects for a few minutes.
- angusgr 15y agoThat's fair enough. Then again, some companies do similar things, like Dropbox with the Dropbox Challenge: http://www.dropbox.com/jobs/challenges http://www.dropbox.com/jobs/challenges
- drfloob 15y agoLiterally the worst developers I've ever known are the sort that would eat this kind of thing up. The worst developers in my opinion are those that appear highly proficient and effective until they're asked to actually produce something, then never produce anything of value whatsoever. They're infinitely worse than those who are clearly ineffective from the beginning. They're talented but immature; unwilling to do anything they don't see as a game; unable to see everyday tasks as games.
- gexla 15y agoThere are also a bunch of Chrome and Firefox add-ons which would make this very easy.
- dedene 15y agoI think it's brilliant! It shows creativity and maybe they will attract less applicants, but for sure applicants who are a fit to their company, their culture and someone with the right set of skills.
- michaelcampbell 15y agoThat's pretty cool; a variation of the FizzBuzz theme I need to come up with some more of these; FizzBuzz equivalents in various knowledge areas.
- killernoob 15y agoIs the page down?? Anyone? I am getting a 406 network error!