Show HN: TrueJob – OkCupid for Jobs

https://www.truejob.com/

by eggbrain • 12 years ago

161 63 12 years ago

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

Greetings Hacker News!

Back in 2009 I graduated with a degree in Psychology into one of the worst job markets in years. I was unemployed for about 6 months, during which I tried every job website out there, and thought each one was terrible.

I had some programming experience, so I hacked up a demo that I tried to put out there in 2010 called Scoople, but it was a single page php file that ran horribly and was really bad code. Initially I looked for a technical cofounder, but couldn't find anyone. So I decided to learn myself.

I've spent the last 4 years jumping from job to job, from IT Administrator to Computer Consultant to Web Developer to finally Rails web developer, and now I help build startups for a living. During the past 5 months I finally felt I had enough experience to build the job website I always wanted, and so I built TrueJob, which I'm calling OkCupid for Jobs.

I've made an imgur gif album of all the features here if you'd like to check out that first (more features to come!):

https://imgur.com/a/rDkaw#0

The idea is that you sign up with just an email and password, and then fill out your profile -- manually (one field at a time), by authenticating with LinkedIn, pulling from JSONResume, etc.

It then gives you a base set of recommended jobs, which you can then start to tweak by rating 1-5 stars a job posting, or favoriting/blocking certain attributes about that job posting-- company name, job title, job description keywords, etc.

My site then crunches the numbers, and reranks and reprioritizes the job postings so the most relevant matches are always at the top.

Once you apply for a job, employers look at your resume, and favorite or block things about it as well in order for them to get the best candidates -- but not to fear! Once you apply for a few jobs, you'll get back analytics on why someone didn't like your resume -- what keywords they hated, and which ones they loved, so you know what to change before you apply to the next job.

Hate my site? You can at least take the information you put in your profile, and convert it over to a hard copy PDF, with one of a few design styles. Take it to another place, or just use it to get a job! I just want to help people get into a job, whether they use my site or not -- job seekers too often get kicked in the teeth as it is, I want to help them succeed :)

A few caveats! (PLEASE READ)

* Right now, I haven't seeded the database with that many jobs, only about 1000, and all from Michigan, so if you wonder why you keep getting suggested Detroit jobs, now you know why. This is my number one priority right now -- my biggest struggle is finding a source for jobs that doesn't anonymize a lot of the important data like employer name, salary, etc, so if anyone knows of a great source to pull structured job postings from where I can link back to the original employer company page, let me know.

* The profile to PDF feature isn't working quite yet, so that will be my release next week along with creating scrapers that can get me a ton more job postings (or if you have any other ideas of how to get clean job postings, let me know). I'm also hoping it entices people to check back on the site every so often, in order to see the new stuff I'm planning!

This has been a labor of love for me guys -- I've been developing this app for the past 5 months after spending 4 years trying to get the experience to build it. I'm really hoping you guys like it, and give me any and all feedback and critiques.

Thanks,

eggbrain (scott@truejob.com)

primitivesuave• 12 years ago

I definitely think there are improvements you could make to the color scheme and UI, but it's more important that you've made something useful - I think the dragging to favorites/blocking is a brilliant idea and a concept you can apply to any kind of search, not just jobs. I also really appreciate that you posted your story here, stories of perseverance are the best part of the HN community.

I really hope this takes off - a great way to do that would be to identify the biggest job markets and leverage some kind of physical presence to sign up job posters in that area. Your tool looks professional enough as it is to get anyone on board.

nnnnni2• 12 years ago

The ability to block a company is great!

I've seen too many cases where a "job posting" on somewhere like dice.com is really a meta-posting by a recruiter that is looking to fill a position in the actual company and collect a royalty (or whatever it's called) for doing it.

I don't want to apply for Recruiters, LLC. I want to apply for RealCompany, Inc.

Another reason why blocking is great is because sometimes you'll find have a bad experience with Scummyco and never want to see anything from them again.

peteretep• 12 years ago

    > I've seen too many cases where a "job posting" on 
    > somewhere like dice.com is really a meta-posting by a
    > recruiter

You make it sound like this is the exception, rather than the 80% of the whole recruitment market it represents.

redmattred3• 12 years ago

AngelList's API or getting a feed from TheLadders.com is probably your best bet for getting structured job data which includes salary data. There are plenty of other options (indeed, simplyhired, monster, burning glass) if salary data isn't a requirement.

I also have a job search tool I recently launched (aimed specifically at software engineers) that I'm looking to get feedback on: http://www.codejobs.io/

Any feedback/suggestions the HN community has would be really appreciated!

~Matt matt@codejobs.io

djokkataja• 12 years ago

Should probably have a separate thread for your site, but it's broken in latest Firefox on Windows: http://i.imgur.com/WNSca8S.png

monksy• 12 years ago

Why don't you have a search for jobs in Chicago?

It is a city where it has a strong yearning, connections wise and work ethic, to become a strong tech center. It won't be the next silicon valley but the results will be consistently good.

GolfyMcG• 12 years ago

Please make use of this:

```css .clickable-stuff { cursor: pointer; } ```

belzebub• 12 years ago

This is just the post I was looking for. I am from Michigan and currently looking for a software development position! Sadly there is slim pickins in Grand Rapids. While I have your attention, can you add an option to filter for "Remote" jobs? I currently work remotely and have difficulty finding similar positions.

vlbeta2• 12 years ago

Looks like there are about 43 software developer jobs in Grand Rapids, MI. Enter a programming language or skill in the search to hone in on the results.

https://jobfusion.co/grand-rapids-mi/software-developer

notastartup• 12 years ago

Absolutely LOVE the onboarding. the next and previous buttons could be bigger and spaced apart from each other.

would love if this could work in Canadian cities.

fillskills• 12 years ago

Hi Scott, Excellent to see your launch. It was great meeting you at StartupSchool. Here is a list of APIs where you can get job data: http://www.joobsbox.com/blog/job-search-apis/

Best of luck for the future.

morgante• 12 years ago

How can I, as an employer, get on the platform? (It's not very clear.)

iandanforth• 12 years ago

Hrm I think I love the tagline more than the site. I really like what OkCupid has done and would love it if someone actually built a jobs site that worked in the same way. Both sides have lists of questions which are presented to them and they answer them and/or rate how important the answers of their prospective parter are. How would this work for a job site?

Q. What's your favorite CSS preprocessor?

- sass - less - I don't write CSS

Q. Do you want to work in an office where there are dogs?

- absolutely! - that would be cool - don't really care

etc.

I think there are a LOT better ways to find good employee/employer matches than pulling in job listings and resumes. OK Cupid for jobs is a great idea, I just hope you end up building it!

vlbeta2• 12 years ago

Yeah, that type of job search would be hugely helpful. Some of the other questions that come to mind are:

Q. I'd like to bike to work - within 10 minutes - within 20 minutes - i don't bike to work

Q. I need health insurance - the full package - at least medical - not important

Q. I'd like catered meals - every day - occasionally - not important

We just built out a new job search as well and have been thinking about this quite a bit - https://jobfusion.co

Beltiras• 12 years ago

I absolutely love what you have done with the site, with the exception of the colors chosen. IMO the dark scheme is not pleasant to look at. Just read https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeo... the other day, it was a wonderful piece on aesthetics (read Part 1 first).

It seems the LinkedIn data scraper has problems with people out of the US. It fails to read my city and country.

I really REALLY like the game-ified intro. Are you using a library for those effects or are they developed inhouse? (if library: which one?)

azdle• 12 years ago

This is a great idea. I was joking with my coworkers that job hunting is just like dating. I had briefly considered setting up something like this before I remembered that my project list was already too long.

I'm getting a: "We're sorry, but something went wrong. If you are the application owner check the logs for more information." when I try to signup.

EDIT: Although it seems that it worked one of the times because I'm logged in when I go back to the homepage.

EDIT2: Seems to be completely down now.

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

Sorry about that! Should be better now -- sign ups were going through the roof, so I had to scale up. Hope it should be smoother now.

s_baby• 12 years ago

I like the idea but it seems like a great way to make yourself liable to discrimination laws.

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

No worries! I anonymize data before submitting to employers, meaning that name and gender are removed. If I still do find employers who are blocking or favoriting based on discriminatory criteria, I can find these employers more easily so I can take action.

danso• 12 years ago

A. Great idea, and thank you for the long explanatory comment...for you to be a jobless psych grad in 2009 to be conceptualizing (and researching, and building!) something like this is quite remarkable, and you should be very proud of yourself.

B. This particular comment thread is so fascinating, it deserves its own blog post someday. But I'll be flippant: if the idea of an OKCupid for Job Seekers is viable...then maybe there could be a Tinder for Job Seekers? But instead of the actual Tinder, the JobTinder omits the physical attributes (i.e. many of the protected attributes under job discrimination law) of the user, and instead, just shows important, "sexy" bullet points...like "Rails Dev, 4 years"...the Employer then does a swipe left/swipe right during their lunch break, and at the end of the hour, has a small stack of candidates that may be worth following up. Even having a better filter would be a win...and hell, if you make it fun, in the same way that Tinder feels more fun than OKCupid, HR people may just love it.

justboxing• 12 years ago

I love everything about your site, except the choice of background colors.

Why black / dark grey? It's really really hard on the eyes and I have seen that dark theme used only for nightclub websites and boxing websites (and it doesn't make sense even there.)

joshuak• 12 years ago

Wow, this is very interesting. I find this an amazing comment. I'm curious what the bias for white backgrounds is (or at least not 'dark' backgrounds). It's very common in web design, yet relatively neutral for application and other graphic design. Document based applications are usually white of course, but games, content creation, utilities, and many other app types are not.

I have often wondered why white is so amazingly prevalent in web design. I'd never have expected such a strong reaction, but more than one person has commented on the background of this site.

memonkey• 12 years ago

It's mostly aesthetic, but lighter visuals (dark text on light background) are better on the eyes during the day and darker (vise versa) visuals are better at night.

SyncTheory13• 12 years ago

I like the color scheme! I think it's refreshing since every polished website is light-colored. What do I know about UI design though? Not much...

Kiro• 12 years ago

I think it's refreshing.

slashnull• 12 years ago

Did they just pull a reverse xkcd 624?

keithwarren3• 12 years ago

I went to Startup School in SV this year and must have met 3 dozen startups but the only one I kept thinking about was this one. Scott is brilliant and is thinking about this space in a refreshing way. I am actually a bit blown away TrueJob is not in the W15 batch - SamA and team often say they mess up and miss big things, if any partners read this - please take another look, he is the real deal.

scobar• 12 years ago

I met him the same weekend, and remember him vividly because of his "throwing star" business cards. Unfortunately, we didn't discuss our startups, but I'm very glad to learn of his here and now. I'm very passionate about this domain too. Hiring needs so much improvement, and there's a lot of people trying to find the best solution. I wish Scott the best of luck.

I'll be providing some more thorough feedback to Scott, but at a glance, one thing I really think is great is the JobStats feature. Being rejected with feedback like, "We found someone better for the position," doesn't help struggling job seekers identify areas they should focus on improving.

tmsh• 12 years ago

Great to see another Reactjs app in the wild (I poked under the hood a bit). I really like the use of animated gifs in a gallery. Very fast understanding for me of how the site worked. Awesome!

nether• 12 years ago

Any effort on branching out to non-tech jobs?

timcederman2• 12 years ago

A head's up for Hacker News folks - this is entirely for jobs in Detroit.

Some other feedback:

- Bait and switch sucks. Showing salaries before signing up, and then saying "whoops, we don't have salaries" after signing up is poor form

- Building powerful filters won't help most job seekers. Most job seekers keep the net wide because it's hard to predict what the perfect job is going to have as a keyword in it. (I helped build trovix.com, acquired by Monster, and ran dozens of user research sessions)

- Your tour is way, way too long. At the end, there's a next button that doesn't do anything

- Why can't I upload my resume? I have to cut and paste everything in to your fields?

- I have a 13" Macbook Pro, and the site doesn't even come close to fitting in the horizontal width of my browser

- green/red/blue buttons are ugly

- There are numerous z-index problems around the site

- the video, particularly of the mouse moving back and forth over the star ratings, is super distracting

+ a lot more issues - you guys should spend some time dogfooding this.

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

Hey! Thanks for the feedback.

I mentioned that there were only Michigan jobs in the comments below, but it's good to get more coverage on this.

Bait and switch sucks. Showing salaries before signing up, and then saying "whoops, we don't have salaries" after signing up is poor form

My salaries I had apparently came from a bad source, meaning they weren't representative of the real job. I want to make sure I'm representing the data correctly, and I don't want job seekers to apply for a job under false pretenses.

Why can't I upload my resume?

Pdf and word document resumes are notoriously hard to parse. I originally had a parser for that, but people put their data in many places -- bottom of resume, top of resume, etc. Other sources ended up being easier to parse, so I went with them first. Stay tuned!

... Doesn't come close to fitting the horizontal width of my browser

I'm just one guy! I tried a bunch of devices, but I'm sure there are things I still need to fix. Same thing for z-index -- I'm sure I'll be tweaking for weeks to come. Stay tuned!

video is distracting

Sorry about that! I will fix this in the next few days. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

you guys should spend some time dogfooding this

I am! Up until a few days ago, only about 10 people had ever seen my site. I'll contine to improve it to make it a better experience.

jnbiche• 12 years ago

Dude, it's 1 guy. Not "you guys". How about focus on the positive, too? I think the getting back in-depth analytics for job-seekers on suboptimal aspects of their job-seeking campaign -- particularly those who aren't getting many bites -- is the most powerful and refreshing job site feature I've heard about in years.

I hope he makes it big, because I'd like to use that feature. It would be a great way for the constant self-improvers to find the most effective upgrades to make to their job profile ("should I learn OCaml, or go deeper with SQL"?), and could also be a godsend to those folks who are being blocked from the job of their dreams by a single "cringe-worthy" aspect of their profile, but who don't know it and don't have friends who will tell them.

keithwarren3• 12 years ago

This is a little tone deaf and lacking deeper thought. Surface level stuff like x color buttons are ugly is not really helpful. Telling a guy who has been focused on this for months he should spend more time dogfooding - again, not helpful.

What really got me though was complaining that you could not upload a resume. Seriously, give it some thought. Parsing non-structured data in an accurate way is a very hard problem and I would venture getting highly accurate results on 80% of resumes would take hundreds or even thousands of man hours to build a system, getting it on 90% or more could be exponentially more difficult. It simply is not worth the investment of time unless you have a breakthrough technique, and if you have that - well that is your startup, not a job site.

Feedback is awesome, but not everything that crosses your mind is worth sharing.

timcederman2• 12 years ago

I've given it three years of thought, particularly on the resume parser. It's not tone deaf either. Do we want to give everyone who has built something a pat on the back, or do we want to help them build something awesome?

Also, you complain about that my feedback is too hard to address, but then simple stuff like non-ugly buttons is unhelpful?

re: dogfooding - often folks will build something and then not holistically test it. You don't need a user study to try something from end to end and pretend to be a user. Just a helpful reminder to do the simple stuff to make something great.

tibbetts2• 12 years ago

It's all the right stuff to be thinking about. Pull from linkedin or something if you can't extract from a resume. Or hire some low wage work at home english majors to manually extract the resume data and offer people a "build my profile for me" option where they just send a resume.

And it's easy to spend a lot of time on dogfooding.

If people don't want free advice, they wouldn't need to post here.

justintbassett• 12 years ago

I actually assumed there were libraries written for that sort of thing already -- so many company sites let you upload a resume and parse it.

patronagezero• 12 years ago

Doesn't seem to be a workable way to override the geo-ip location settings. I attempted to set the zipcode which just spins as in-progress indefinitely for me. Finally managed to save the zipcode by hitting save but the listing still shows the previous ip location.

I have to say as a tangent, I hate what the JS-dependent UI people are doing to the internet. The experience sucks with only ghostery enabled and shows as blocking analytics and relic. What happened to the top-shelf web designers using javascript and a UX enrichment as opposed to a dependency?

astangl• 12 years ago

Hi Scott,

Site looks good, but didn't bring in anything from LinkedIn. Also, the "blocked" filtering doesn't seem to do anything, and I keep getting random Server Errors when clicking on certain positions.

Do you support any kind of Markdown, or plan to, or to provide links to resume, github, etc?

I look forward to seeing this take off.

Alex

anonfunction• 12 years ago

Another site gone down after getting to the top of the HN.

Lesson to the wise: Use cloudflare if you are not prepared to scale up and expecting a lot of traffic. It's saved me more than once.

ankurpatel• 12 years ago

Nice build using Ruby on Rails https://www.truejob.com/500.html

jackmaney• 12 years ago

There's a lot to like here and a lot of potential, but I'm not sure I buy the "OkCupid for Jobs" description. OkCupid matches people up based on answers to (multiple choice) questions (along with how important you think a prospective match's answer is to the given question). I'm not seeing anything like that here...

But I like the filtering features, and I'm definitely interested in seeing where this goes. Well done!

iskander• 12 years ago

I strongly recommend connecting profile pages to github and/or technical blogs.

posnet• 12 years ago

There is a memory leak or some ridiculous sized photos on the site, it ate 1.5G of my system memory in 30s of use.

fapjacks• 12 years ago

This.

mercnet• 12 years ago

Same here, memory drastically increased as page was left open and eventually went to swap. Linux 3.17.3-1-ARCH with Chromium 38.0.2125.122 (290379) (64-bit).

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

Sorry about this, my guess is it's the slideshow on the homepage -- there's about 30MB of gifs in that slideshow (terrible, I know), and it should be "lazily loading" them in, but it looks like there might be a bug with either the slider code or the way I'm doing it because it keeps taking up more memory the longer you have the homepage open. It's on my bug list.

geogra4• 12 years ago

Awesome. Great to see more good work out of Michigan!

Great idea as well

saumil07• 12 years ago

Holy Cow this is a very good idea.

gabemart• 12 years ago

Something is seriously wrong with the gif slider on the front page. It eats unbelievable amounts of memory and makes my machine much less responsive. Are you actually hiding the gifs properly when they're not the slide on display? Are you doing opacity transforms on them? Whatever it is, it's extremely noticeable.

Chrome 38.0.2125.111, Windows 8.1

frontsideair• 12 years ago

The homepage hogs my memory; but I think it's not your fault, opening the imgur link also killed the Chrome tab. Maybe the images are too big?

panon• 12 years ago

Probably somebody is panicking over this, but I still thought I should share.

Love the concept.

"We're sorry, but something went wrong.

If you are the application owner check the logs for more information."

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

Doh! This is what I get for falling asleep. I think I need to scale up again, but I'll be watching the logs more carefully now that I'm up and about.

tibbetts2• 12 years ago

I was hoping for support for ethically non-monogamous careers.

hazelnut• 12 years ago

30mb for the first page? That's kind of big.

You should convert all your gifs to videos. Otherwise a lot of people will drop cause their browsers crash. And don't think about people from mobile devices. Sometimes they're about 50% of the traffic.

eggbrain8• 12 years ago

I completely agree. This was a struggle for me -- I wanted to show off features on the homepage, but adding a Gif slideshow added a crap ton of load to the page.

I wanted to create a video, but my video editing skills are pretty poor and I wanted the experience to be great (even my gifs have a few bugs in them if you look closely). I'll work on this for sure.

Show HN: TrueJob – OkCupid for Jobs

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