Show HN: Moki is a recruiting platform built on Twitter

https://www.trymoki.com/

by illdave • 14 years ago

34 18 14 years ago

illdave8• 14 years ago

Hi HN, I finally got around to launching Moki - a recruiting platform & job board that aims to make hiring easier, by using social data. It's partly inspired by pg's request for startups that use Twitter as an infrastructure.

I'd really love to hear your feedback - criticism of the landing page, copy, design & concept is all genuinely welcome.

koide• 14 years ago

How do you plan to solve the problem of, say, Paul Graham or Joel Spolsky receiving tons of job offers?

illdave8• 14 years ago

I think I may need to reword the landing page as it might not be completely clear how the site works. You can't give job offers to people who haven't applied for a job. Now, if pg applies for a job that you've listed, you'll probably find that a lot of people on your team follow him on Twitter - so his application will appear at the top of your list - but it won't list people who haven't seen your job listing and chosen to apply.

gizzlon• 14 years ago

It's too difficult to view the twitter profiles: Since I couldn't find links to them on the job listing I had to remember the name and go to twitter.com/..

Guess you don't want too many links to off-site?

illdave8• 14 years ago

No, that's a good point - if a lot of people would find it useful visiting those Twitter profiles (from the main company page?) that can be added. Thanks for the feedback.

jasonkester• 14 years ago

You might want to work on your copy. I read your whole homepage several times, and still can't figure out what it is that your product does.

You start off with: "Moki uses Twitter to make your social recruiting smarter"

OK. How? Is this your big selling point? As a guy off the streat, I have trouble even parsing that, let alone coming up with what it might mean or how it would help me (or even if this is a problem I have).

So, thus far we know that "Twitter" seems to be a big deal for your thing. You have a "why twitter" thing taking up the rest of the space above the fold:

"On Twitter, we tend to follow people we trust. And if your team follows an applicant, that's a sign they could be a great hire"

Is that true? As a job seeker, would I need to be following people on Twitter for your thing to work? As an employer, would I need to be following people on Twitter for your thing to work?

Onward, below the fold is a bunch of talk about applications, job boards, etc. But still no word on what your thing does that sets it apart (and never another mention of Twitter anywhere). I see things that look like features, but it all seems like pretty generic job-board stuff.

So yeah, here I am having read everything there is to read about your thing, with no real understanding of what it is or whether it would help me.

How about instead, above the fold, explaining in a few bullet points:

  - What your thing is
  - Why I need it
  - How it works

Then, you can tell me about Twitter below the fold.

(oh, and since you seem to be here, how about explaining to us here at HN what your thing does, why we need it, and how it works!)

illdave8• 14 years ago

Hi Jason, thanks very much for the feedback - I really appreciate it. It sounds like the copy is definitely something I need to get right.

And in answer to your question - It's a recruiting platform like The Resumator, or Jobvite, but with a job board built in. It also adds social data to job listings and to job applications - so each job listing will also show a list of people who recommend working there. If you're an employer, when people apply for you job, it shows you a list of your team members who choose to follow the applicant on Twitter.

Companies could find it useful because recruiting is extremely hard - there's a low signal to noise ratio, so you might get lots of job applications from people who aren't really suitable, and only a few applications from people who are great. Moki helps you spot the people who are most likely to fit in quicker. Job seekers can find it useful because jobs listed aren't from recruitment agencies - they're from the actual company themselves - you can see a profile page of the company that explains their culture, office & perks and you can see a list of people who recommend working there.

It works, hopefully, seamlessly - companies list jobs in the same way they would with a regular job board and people apply for jobs directly on Moki, filling in a form on the site. The only difference is that you need to log in through Twitter to sign up. Nothing is ever automatically tweeted from their account.

As you can see - I've not quite found a way to word the concept elegantly yet. Thanks again for the feedback - I genuinely appreciate it.

yashchandra• 14 years ago

"you might get lots of job applications from people who aren't really suitable, and only a few applications from people who are great"

This in my opinion is the problem that you are trying to solve through Moki. correct ? Why not make this clear on the homepage instead of saying "Hiring made simple..through twitter blah blah". So the problem is "too many applicants, only few good ones matching your company's needs/culture/environment/requirement". Moki is solving this problem by a) removing recruitment agencies layer ? b) directly connecting job seekers and employers ? c) twitter helps the employer understand more about the job applicant from his/her connections who might already work at the company ? d ) twitter helps the job seeker understand more about the company from his/her connections who already work there ? I am just thinking off top of my head here but take away whatever you can.

wiradikusuma• 14 years ago

congrats on your launch!

although i think "On Twitter, we tend to follow people we trust. And if your team follows an applicant, that's a sign they could be a great hire" is too idealistic :P a lot of people follow celebrities (can be in tech industry), bots, official twitter of some entities/websites, and even random people they find entertaining.

citricsquid• 14 years ago

and everyone uses their Twitter account differently, there are people I respect a lot and would agree 100% with the company I work for hiring them but I don't follow them because their Twitter usage doesn't appeal to me, the same in reverse: there are people I follow who would be an awful fit.

illdave8• 14 years ago

Thanks very much - you're right, I certainly follow people who are unrelated to my industry, but it shouldn't affect the results Moki displays, as it's very unlikely that a celebrity will apply for a job on Moki, or recommend working for a specific company (and even if they do - that data is still probably useful to know).

nodata2• 14 years ago

Does your job search page work? I get no hits for java, lisp, or php.

Also, I always see "Showing 1 to 4 of 4 jobs" at the bottom of the page.

illdave8• 14 years ago

Hi, it does work - it's just a brand new site that only went live today, so there are only a couple of jobs in the system at the moment.

nodata2• 14 years ago

Ah. I thought it was trawling Twitter. mea culpa.

mutewinter• 14 years ago

Those avatars look familiar http://eightbit.me/.

rmATinnovafy• 14 years ago

Tell us about the stack/code.

illdave8• 14 years ago

It's all built on Ruby on Rails, and it's running on Heroku - expect a more detailed post later on the Moki blog :)

Show HN: Moki is a recruiting platform built on Twitter

Related Stories