This is super-compelling.... if you can add a lightweight ATS on the other side.
It is very hard for recruiters to remember all the people that they have interviewed. But if you give them that functionality, you have the potential to kill all the ATS out there by going from the interviewee side of things.
Candidates asking permission to audio record their interviews and upload on the site as a portfolio.
Recruiters listen to those interviews and can be much more assertive on their recommendations!
I had a business that was a modern ATS. Then lever.co [1] came along, and I don't even think their business survived on the software alone as they had to transition into a full service recruiting/hiring company (but I could be wrong about this).
Great idea. I am jealous. I thought of this exact same thing. The issue is: how to make money? It is difficult to charge the broke job seeker [ironically, it wont be the guy flush with offers using this app - it will be the guy struggling]. On the other hand, it is difficult to charge the recruiters unless you have the linkedin type volume. Even if you do, recruiters wont like the quality since these interviewees are struggling so hard they need an app to track failed interviews.
How do you plan on making money? My concern would be that you need to be extremely upfront about what data you're collecting and if you're selling it back to these companies whom the person interviewed with (even if anonymized). This is a very personal exchange between an employee and employer that could have significant impact on employment negotiations. For example, I might not want employer A, knowing that I'm also interviewing with employer B/C/D, unless I choose to use it for negotiation. This could be used to target folks into lower paying jobs if they don't have prospects, multiple offers, etc.
I'm not trying to be harsh here or blow up your idea. Maybe it's a totally free app. I'm not sure. But, if you are selling user data, you could be inadvertently increasing companies bargaining power through hidden knowledge of what someone is doing too. If a company uses this added data on me, and gets me to take an offer that's 30k less per year, and I stay there 4 years, that ends up costing me 120k over 4 years (30k*4y) all for using an interview note taking app.
Thank you for the comment! To be honest with you, I didn't expect to get this much traction but that's something I have been thinking about a lot lately for the future of the product. I'm still not sure the exact path of monetizing the product yet but I know I want After Interview to help people to get the job they want rather than selling data to companies.
Currently, companies can claim their company pages but exchange for uploading a company logo, description and maybe job listing.
You could use the fact that a candidate has been verified to have interviews at a FAANG to let other tech companies poach them. Maybe a footer saying "Have you considered ACME Corp? (sponsored)" with a bidding system based on where they're interviewing or have interviewed.
Yeah, totally makes sense. Just trying to play devils advocate here as it was the first thing that came to mind and the more I thought about it they worse it got. Likely something you could address is the privacy/terms section if it ever gets to that point. You could also flip it around, and help folks get a leg up on companies, in that you could say folks that interviewed with A/B/C choose A. You might even collect data like glassdoor on this webdev vs devops gets 150k per year for a similar job. Maybe interview-to-offer timelines, like how many interviews it takes, and typically takes 6+ months to get hired here. I'm not sure. I'd just focus on giving potential employees an advantage vs employers. As, employers typically already have a massive advantage for folks just entering the job market.
Is there an offline-only mode that does not access a server or collect data? I could see using this as a local-only way to keep organized without needing any cloudy features.
What are the odds you mentioned this product on here like a year ago and they this sprung out of your own job own hunting? This feels familiar but I can't place why.
> help people to get the job they want rather than selling data to companies
I think that's better indeed. If the model is to sell data to companies, it may feel to the user that you're telling companies which companies they're interviewing with, etc.
SaaS with a strict privacy policy should do it for most customers. You could have varying levels of privacy at different price tiers. E.g. a free tier where some PII is sold and go from there.
One potential idea is a "pay it forward" model where you're asked to pay for someone else using the service, but only after you have successfully found a job.
When a job seeker signs up they would see that their subscription was paid by someone else and it will instantly build goodwill/stickiness for the product.
It's generally hard to monetize from job seekers since they don't have an income in many cases, but many would be happy to once they land a job and may even choose to buy a subscription for personal friends/family who are looking for a job. Similarly companies could also pay to buy X # of subscriptions for job seekers to attract people to their jobs and build goodwill/positive employment branding.
Could make for a good viral loop, could drum up some great PR, and help a lot of people
Is that really a killer feature though? Seems more like a series of conversations with those important people in your life vs. Some sort of optimization algorithm.
And rather than have competition destroy your idea, take it as one data point towards validation.
I don't think it's an unfair assessment about potential or actual security. And it's a fair critique. Whether it's a legitimate concern based on this particular implementation is another matter, but they are correct in that work history is probably sensitive personal history, perhaps not secretive. And there is evidence attached to the OP post - it's the link marked [0].
This thread is about this specific app/idea/team. It is not about potential security problems in general. The parent could have just asked "what is the security and privacy?" rather than make baseless assumptions and accusations. So no, it is not a fair critique without more information and I don't see how an article about unsecured Firebase databases is related given the current information. I can give you a similar article about unsecured, internet accessible Elasticsearch servers, but does that mean the ones I run are unsecured? You could assume that if you want but that would be an incorrect assumption.
If I'm a customer in a domain where these are concerns though, each question you make me ask during my evaluation is a chance for me to quit doing the work and move on to something else that's less effort, like the competing product that pushes their security and privacy policies upfront as a product benefit.
So don't ask me to pull myself through your sales funnel, make the process easy by addressing my major concerns before i need to ask.
Yes! Great advice! That is exactly what Show HNs are for. Tell the founders how they can improve such as including security and privacy information in their marketing materials.
I wouldn't be so blunt as the parent, but I think their comment demonstrates something that would be foolish to ignore if you're a potential business founder: credibility matters, and SaaS has a major credibility problem when it comes to personal data protection. If you're collecting personal data - and especially if you are targeting a market that is particular aware of how widespread data beaches are - it would behoove you to include your data protection approach in your sales pitch.
The next comment down is also about privacy, but in the context of business model instead of security. Maybe people (in our niche, at least) are starting to prioritize their data more than ever.
Having evidence of this particular app having poor security practices prior to expressing concerns is an impossibly high standard. The comment is clearly based on a pattern of early stage apps putting security second. I think it's fair to ask early stage apps handling highly sensitive info to at least show some evidence that they are following secure data handling practices. This is a good HN conversation to have, not unnecessarily negative.
So that would be my feedback to the poster: Detail how you ensure privacy and secure data. That should be a major part of the product description for this type of app at the outset.
> Detail how you ensure privacy and secure data. That should be…
I assume the app will target American users, but it could be useful to think through the privacy and data security with the EU GDPR — where that "should" becomes a "must".
I'll just copy a few bits, but the articles here are the most relevant:
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-13-gdpr/ : "Provide the data subject with ... the purposes of the processing for which the personal data are intended as well as the legal basis for the processing ... the recipients or categories of recipients of the personal data, if any"
Is the data shared with anyone?
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-30-gdpr/ : "...shall maintain a record of ... the envisaged time limits for erasure of the different categories of data ... a general description of the technical and organisational security measures ..."
How long is data kept after the interviews are completed?
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-32-gdpr/ : "The controller and processor shall take steps to ensure that any natural person acting under the authority of the controller or the processor who has access to personal data does not process them except on instructions from the controller, unless he or she is required to do so by Union or Member State law."
Hitchen's razor applies here: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
It's unfair to assume poor security practices. It's also ridiculous for a Show HN to be expected to meet a burden like "separation of access" when it's likely a person, singular, that has produced this app.
I just made a spreadsheet I added to over time to track this type of stuff for myself. It is interesting to see the process in a graph [0]. Would be really interesting to see this data aggregated for industries or specific positions.
Wow that's a lot of applications. I am actually shocked. How come? Are you not getting the jobs or are you striving for the perfect position? Were all those applications hand crafter for each position?
This was for my first job out of college. I just chalked it up to only having three internships and no real work experience. For jobs I found especially interesting I would adjust resume headings and the contents of my cover letter. The financial analyst market in LA is quite saturated, evidently, and people would rather hire MBAs with no experience than undergrads. The other problem was that many firms' HR departments do not understand the difference between "financial analyst" and "accountant," which is significant.
Most of the interviews came from younger tech firms, which were more lenient (and also willing to hire less experienced individuals due to budget constraints).
Your numbers and css’s Numbers line up pretty closely to my last job hunt, and I’m fairly senior. Around 150-200 applications, 10% communicated rejection, 5% phone screen, the rest no reply. Seems about right.
Rather different role at a different time but my early job applications were largely spray and pray. (Though I dd get my second full-time job out of grad school through an on-campus interview.)
Since then though, it's been basically through specific personal connections with essentially no applications as such.
When I last applied for jobs, I had ~20 years experience. I was 8 for 10 after the phone screen, and 4 offers out of 8 onsites. I didn't apply to a single company, I just responded to recruiters reaching out for me, and I arranged all my phone screens and onsites within a 6 week window. I'm planning on changing jobs next June, so I already have about 5 recruiters ready to contact me around April of 2019.
I ended up creating a "Find a Job" board in Trello. It works pretty well but it's hard to get data out of it. How long did I take to get a job? How many interviews did I have? What was the average time between submitting an application and getting contacted by the company?
All my job searches have been fairly intensive, switching between a notes file of some kind or a spreadsheet-alike and dozens of browser tabs (job req pages for companies I'm interested in, tabs of research on each company, etc).
Conversely, whenever I'm trying to get real work done on my phone I feel like I'm looking at and using the internet through a drinking straw. The interface just doesn't have enough bandwidth.
However, maybe there's a crop of people who don't feel this way and actually prefer phone apps? I'm definitely not going to tell these folks they're "doing it wrong", but they're ignoring at least some segment of the market if they only have a phone app.
I have similar thoughts. Years ago I had a big job search, and over a few weeks had more than 80 applications out - had a job posting page, some notes, etc. I kept track in a spreadsheet, but it was bothersome.
Later when I start freelancing (years later) I put together a tool, wrapped it in a dotcom - appliedto.com, then later a slightly more generic version - outreachto.com. Wanted to do email 'send as', and got bit hung up on making that work well (at the time, yahoo and web outlook were just PITA non-starters - I've done a bit more with outlook now and it's a bit better).
I've considered revisiting this service, but could never quite figure out any monetization. As others have mentioned, people who are looking for work are often cash strapped (or at least more mindful). Making it in to a bit more a a 'job crm' maybe...? Freemium, with sample cover letters and templates?
What I needed this for was for keeping track of which versions of resumes I'd sent to people, having multiple versions already written and uploaded, and email templates that I could save and reuse.
I don't really want to be hijacking this thread, but... at the same time, any feedback on these from the gallery would be appreciated. (and... no doubt there's some security stuff I need to revisit soon - it's an older codebase).
Wondering what companies from FANG give feedback. I am specifically not allowed to give any for HR reasons. There are situations where it can be very frustrating but it's what it is.
Or, any company in general. We're not a FANG, and
we don't give interviewees feedback after they interview, even when they write us (as a hiring manager). And our HR recruiters likely give an innocuously bane reason for not hiring the person.
Amazon doesn't give any due to HR policies.
Google gave me some general feedback, like what I was lacking in during on-site coding interview that got me knocked out.
Has anyone else had a hell of a time finding a job in SF lately? It seems like there is so much competition now I literally can't even get an in-person interview. It's a total shift from 5 years ago when people were begging you to come in after a quick phone screen. Now it's nothing but automated responses with Triplebyte quizzes and getting ghosted.
I have the same qualifications as you. And the same struggle getting my foot in the door. I used Triplebyte and it was fantastic. If you can pass their interview it's worth doing.
I haven't been looking lately, but in the past year, I had no problem getting interviews at FAANG, some unicorns, and some series C/D startups. I didn't even have to apply for several of the positions, a recruiter reached out to me.
I don't know what level you're at, but my experience (from both sides of the hiring process) is that the market is completely saturated for junior engineers. Many companies are primarily/exclusively hiring seniors, and the market there is still _very_ demand-heavy.
Beyond that, the usual stuff applies: you'll have an easier time if you have name-brand schools/companies/open-source projects on your resume, or if you have connections inside the company.
I'm on the east coast and I've gotten hit up by many of the big companies in SF this month (even with the option to allow recruiters to contact me off on linkedin).
Automated responses with quizzes are really an odd trend, really midsized startups should provide a response from a human most of the time, not ghosting or quizzes.
I believe the big challenge for any job seeker is to get the interview in the first place. I'd love to see an app that could provide me with insights about my resume, and how it stands against the type of job I'm looking for.
Great idea! I guess you are open to input if you post here:
1) afterInterview is a bit of an ugly name. Maybe shorten it to afterview?
2) How do you intend to monetize? I can only think of what u/WestCoastJustin said: data. But then you'd need to be more open about that in these days I think, people are more suspicions, especially the one who are first-movers.
2a) if not data, make users pay for your services. Maybe on a monthly basis - but you would need to implement that right away, bc later it'll be hard.
Any plans on adding an ability to import job applications? I would love to switch to your product but unfortunately I already have a Google Sheets document with about 60+ applied companies and 50 rejected. If there were a way for me to at least import the company names that would make it easier to switch.
Wait.How does one give feedback to the interviewer? Thought even as the interviewee, getting post interview feedback is not your prerogative. Am I missing something here. Also someone posted this a while back essentially for the same purpose of tracking various interviews and feedbackshttps://jobhound.io
> Interview feedback - Give interview feedback to your interviewer and get feedback back.
I'd be very surprised (and impressed) if any interviewer gives honest feedback on the interview, in writing (via the app), esp. in cases where candidate was rejected / didn't receive an offer.
Cos that would have a discrimination lawsuit written all over it. HR and/or Recruiters also never gives candid feedback for the same reason. Because if they do, someone will eventually sue the company for discrimination.
Ex: The most common cookie cutter response for rejection based on ageism is "We really loved you, but unfortunate there wasn't a cultural fit."
I'm seeing more companies do this, actually. For example Dropbox gave me very specific and helpful rejection feedback. I'm sure they have guidelines in place to make sure they don't invite lawsuit. It was all strictly about my performance on specific questions. Also they tend to do it over the phone, again I assume to reduce chance of lawsuits.
Only takes one physical threat from a rejected candidate with a bruised ego to never want to provide people with feedback again. The returns are just not there.
I got clear feedback from Google, Box, and Clearbit about what they didn’t like about the on-sites in my last job search 2 months ago.
At google I did bad in one of the technical questions (they told me which), box said I didn’t seem excited about the company (true), and Clearbit said I wasn’t able to implement a simple solution to a complex problem (because I was forced to use ruby and was rusty).
That’s very suprising to me; I have given interviews at Google and Apple and they really drilled into my head that giving any feedback about performance was left to the recruiter, and any response no matter how germane it sounded could open up the company to lawsuits. That kind of answer was exactly what we were told we could not give.
I think when companies give feedback it is a recruiter or HR person doing it, and they are more aware of what could be lawsuit bait. I think companies want to avoid having engineers give the feedback, but are ok having HR do it.
>Cos that would have a discrimination lawsuit written all over it. HR and/or Recruiters also never gives candid feedback for the same reason. Because if they do, someone will eventually sue the company for discrimination.
Out of curiosity, is it just one of those inevitabilities or is it really easy to get in a bind with discrimination in rejecting (or firing I'd imagine) someone?
Several years ago I was on a job hunting expedition. I went through 10-15 interviews, both on-site and over the phone, and almost no one would tell me what I did "wrong". The most I ever got was something along the lines of "culture fit".
It was extremely frustrating to me as a candidate. How do you get better at something if know one helps you? Did I have lettuce in my teeth? Was I wet because it was raining and I forgot my umbrella? Am I truly a terrible programmer? Why did you reject my application!?
We use https://interviewing.io/ a lot, and there is ample opportunity to provide both structured and unstructured feedback from the candidate to the interviewer, and from the interviewer to the candidate. This seems like a better model than recruiters filtering the information.
Getting an interview is the biggest hurdle. I can usually count the number of interviews with my fingers, at least from the companies I'd want to work for - that is, it's usually under 5, most often 2-3, sometimes just 1.
Definitely don't need another login/app to manage them.
132 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadIt is very hard for recruiters to remember all the people that they have interviewed. But if you give them that functionality, you have the potential to kill all the ATS out there by going from the interviewee side of things.
Kind of like Github for interviews!
Candidates asking permission to audio record their interviews and upload on the site as a portfolio. Recruiters listen to those interviews and can be much more assertive on their recommendations!
[1] https://www.lever.co/
I'm not trying to be harsh here or blow up your idea. Maybe it's a totally free app. I'm not sure. But, if you are selling user data, you could be inadvertently increasing companies bargaining power through hidden knowledge of what someone is doing too. If a company uses this added data on me, and gets me to take an offer that's 30k less per year, and I stay there 4 years, that ends up costing me 120k over 4 years (30k*4y) all for using an interview note taking app.
Currently, companies can claim their company pages but exchange for uploading a company logo, description and maybe job listing.
What does the company get in exchange for the monthly subscription fee?
Would HN consider that an invasion of privacy?
I haven’t looked at your product, but the premise is very real. It would be good to know what companies to apply for based a bunch of variables.
In theory Glassdoor could build that, but their interests are not best aligned to the candidate.
I think that's better indeed. If the model is to sell data to companies, it may feel to the user that you're telling companies which companies they're interviewing with, etc.
When a job seeker signs up they would see that their subscription was paid by someone else and it will instantly build goodwill/stickiness for the product.
It's generally hard to monetize from job seekers since they don't have an income in many cases, but many would be happy to once they land a job and may even choose to buy a subscription for personal friends/family who are looking for a job. Similarly companies could also pay to buy X # of subscriptions for job seekers to attract people to their jobs and build goodwill/positive employment branding.
Could make for a good viral loop, could drum up some great PR, and help a lot of people
One killer feature I would propose is to help candidates weigh up multiple offers; salary, equity, commute time, enjoyment, advancement, etc.
And rather than have competition destroy your idea, take it as one data point towards validation.
Personal and Senstitive data is probably stored in a totally unencrypted manner and developers have unrestricted access to production.
We’ve seen what happens in terms of security when you give something like Firebase to startups « developers »[0]
Love the concept , but I Care more about privacy.
[0] https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252443616/Unprote...
So don't ask me to pull myself through your sales funnel, make the process easy by addressing my major concerns before i need to ask.
So that would be my feedback to the poster: Detail how you ensure privacy and secure data. That should be a major part of the product description for this type of app at the outset.
I assume the app will target American users, but it could be useful to think through the privacy and data security with the EU GDPR — where that "should" becomes a "must".
I'll just copy a few bits, but the articles here are the most relevant:
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-13-gdpr/ : "Provide the data subject with ... the purposes of the processing for which the personal data are intended as well as the legal basis for the processing ... the recipients or categories of recipients of the personal data, if any"
Is the data shared with anyone?
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-30-gdpr/ : "...shall maintain a record of ... the envisaged time limits for erasure of the different categories of data ... a general description of the technical and organisational security measures ..."
How long is data kept after the interviews are completed?
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-32-gdpr/ : "The controller and processor shall take steps to ensure that any natural person acting under the authority of the controller or the processor who has access to personal data does not process them except on instructions from the controller, unless he or she is required to do so by Union or Member State law."
Can your developers access private data?
It's probably coming straight out of the Kremlin. We've all seen how they get someone elected and polarize nations.
Love the idea of a comment, but I care more about not enabling evil people from getting control.
It's unfair to assume poor security practices. It's also ridiculous for a Show HN to be expected to meet a burden like "separation of access" when it's likely a person, singular, that has produced this app.
A fairer way to post something about this would have been to ask a question about privacy concerns.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/NnzXT6K.jpg
Most of the interviews came from younger tech firms, which were more lenient (and also willing to hire less experienced individuals due to budget constraints).
300~ applications. ~25 actual rejections. ~15 phone interviews. ~5 onsites. ~1 accepted.
It felt both necessary and successful, considering the junior dev market is flooded and treacherous.
Since then though, it's been basically through specific personal connections with essentially no applications as such.
I've found it helps me keep much better track and stay on top of where everything is with recruiters.
Conversely, whenever I'm trying to get real work done on my phone I feel like I'm looking at and using the internet through a drinking straw. The interface just doesn't have enough bandwidth.
However, maybe there's a crop of people who don't feel this way and actually prefer phone apps? I'm definitely not going to tell these folks they're "doing it wrong", but they're ignoring at least some segment of the market if they only have a phone app.
Later when I start freelancing (years later) I put together a tool, wrapped it in a dotcom - appliedto.com, then later a slightly more generic version - outreachto.com. Wanted to do email 'send as', and got bit hung up on making that work well (at the time, yahoo and web outlook were just PITA non-starters - I've done a bit more with outlook now and it's a bit better).
I've considered revisiting this service, but could never quite figure out any monetization. As others have mentioned, people who are looking for work are often cash strapped (or at least more mindful). Making it in to a bit more a a 'job crm' maybe...? Freemium, with sample cover letters and templates?
What I needed this for was for keeping track of which versions of resumes I'd sent to people, having multiple versions already written and uploaded, and email templates that I could save and reuse.
I don't really want to be hijacking this thread, but... at the same time, any feedback on these from the gallery would be appreciated. (and... no doubt there's some security stuff I need to revisit soon - it's an older codebase).
Mostly mid-size startups. I have 5 years experience as a front end dev, but being self taught with no degree I look pretty bad on paper.
It's never been a problem for me in the past, but it seems like the market for mid-level self taught developers is drying up.
What actual benefits did you receive?
Beyond that, the usual stuff applies: you'll have an easier time if you have name-brand schools/companies/open-source projects on your resume, or if you have connections inside the company.
1) afterInterview is a bit of an ugly name. Maybe shorten it to afterview?
2) How do you intend to monetize? I can only think of what u/WestCoastJustin said: data. But then you'd need to be more open about that in these days I think, people are more suspicions, especially the one who are first-movers.
2a) if not data, make users pay for your services. Maybe on a monthly basis - but you would need to implement that right away, bc later it'll be hard.
0) Good luck!
You might consider making a web based version, then it could be accessed on desktop as well.
I will come back tonight to answer all your questions but my lunch break is over and I need to go back to work rn :)
Creating these kind of tools are really good ideas for disrupting the markets. Because once you get the users you get everything.
I'd be very surprised (and impressed) if any interviewer gives honest feedback on the interview, in writing (via the app), esp. in cases where candidate was rejected / didn't receive an offer.
Cos that would have a discrimination lawsuit written all over it. HR and/or Recruiters also never gives candid feedback for the same reason. Because if they do, someone will eventually sue the company for discrimination.
Ex: The most common cookie cutter response for rejection based on ageism is "We really loved you, but unfortunate there wasn't a cultural fit."
At google I did bad in one of the technical questions (they told me which), box said I didn’t seem excited about the company (true), and Clearbit said I wasn’t able to implement a simple solution to a complex problem (because I was forced to use ruby and was rusty).
The only thing I didn’t like about it is that the requirements never said they were looking for ‘simple solution’.
Ah well.
Out of curiosity, is it just one of those inevitabilities or is it really easy to get in a bind with discrimination in rejecting (or firing I'd imagine) someone?
It was extremely frustrating to me as a candidate. How do you get better at something if know one helps you? Did I have lettuce in my teeth? Was I wet because it was raining and I forgot my umbrella? Am I truly a terrible programmer? Why did you reject my application!?
1) how do I delete my account? Pretty sure GDPR won't like not having a button for it.
2) you should probably test the UI a bit more with different settings. The top buttons, on my iphone 6s with bold text enabled, don't fit on one line.
Definitely don't need another login/app to manage them.