Re:Ask HN: What would you like to see in a better job board?
by ig1 on Tuesday November 08, 2011 @07:57AM
(#3210529)
Make me a good offer and I'll sell you CoderStack ;)
I didn't really appreciate it before building a job board but adding features for developers has practically zero upside, developers who are actively looking for jobs will use you anyway (assuming you have a base level of interesting jobs) and those not looking won't.
Basically for any feature you have to ask (1) will it result in more applications/candidate (2) will it attract more candidates to your site who would otherwise use another site.
But in the developer market the fundamental market problem is neither of these two, but rather that most good developers aren't in the job market. So to make a big difference you essentially have to attract developers who would otherwise not be looking for a job.
StackOverflow does this through it's stack exchange sites where they have a captive audience, CoderStack does this through a huge amount of advertising and marketing (we've bought roughly 30 million ad impressions this year - that's about 90 impressions for every developer in the UK).
You need to ask yourself what is it that you're going to do differently that will allow you to attract these developers.
If I was building something in this space from scratch I'd be much more inclined to go the route someone else suggested in this thread of the daily deal email route, because that is a feasible way of tackling the attracting passive developer problem.
I didn't really appreciate it before building a job board but adding features for developers has practically zero upside, developers who are actively looking for jobs will use you anyway (assuming you have a base level of interesting jobs) and those not looking won't.
Basically for any feature you have to ask (1) will it result in more applications/candidate (2) will it attract more candidates to your site who would otherwise use another site.
But in the developer market the fundamental market problem is neither of these two, but rather that most good developers aren't in the job market. So to make a big difference you essentially have to attract developers who would otherwise not be looking for a job.
StackOverflow does this through it's stack exchange sites where they have a captive audience, CoderStack does this through a huge amount of advertising and marketing (we've bought roughly 30 million ad impressions this year - that's about 90 impressions for every developer in the UK).
You need to ask yourself what is it that you're going to do differently that will allow you to attract these developers.
If I was building something in this space from scratch I'd be much more inclined to go the route someone else suggested in this thread of the daily deal email route, because that is a feasible way of tackling the attracting passive developer problem.