(I want to try something different here. Instead of a fully fleshed out post, I’d like to just start with a draft of some ideas and I hope that it is enough to generate a conversation. I’ll take the relevant responses and use them to keep improving this article)
StackOverflow is nowadays famous for being the site that you only go after you’ve given up ChatGPT to stop hallucinating, but one of its lesser known products was StackOverflow Careers (sorry, couldn’t find the link to the original announcement), which absolutely raised the bar in how job sites worked. It was one of the first sites every job listing had to provide information about the hiring company and a direct contact. This might seem weird for anyone born in this century… but boy, how refreshing it was in 2010 to be able to see a job listing who was not from a recruiting withholding information.
It seems like the social media and Big Tech broke job searching again. Companies that are hiring are drowned by “content creators” on LinkedIn or taking a “spray and pray” approach by posting to whatever site is popular at any given month. Job seekers are now playing a game of cat-and-mouse with AI tools, figuring out whether their changes are going to help them stand out or make their CVs look exactly like everyone else’s.
Here is my tentative list of things that should be created for a job site that fixes those issues:
Remove siloes and walled gardens.
This one is obvious. People shouldn’t have to sign up to any specific site to access information. Applying could be as simple as sending a message via email. With protocols like ActivityPub, we could have a simple “like this job posting indicates interest”.
I am not saying that it has to be built on ActivityPub, but anything that brings some form decentralization (maybe Solid?) would certainly be an improvement over the status quo.
Create a standard measurement to allow people to know where they are, skills-wise.
This could be one good use of gamification. Imagine that every job listing had a well defined matrix of required skills to do that job and at what level of expertise. People could figure out even before applying whether they had a chance at the job or - most importantly - they could see exactly what is separating them for the next step up in the professional career.
If this is properly implemented, we would be able to get rid of the whole “CV analysis” and all forms of subjetive evaluations.
Make it functional for people who are not looking for a job
If you are happy at your job and you prefer to do your networking offline, there is a good chance you only keep your LinkedIn account for the entertainment value. For most, joining and participating in a professional-focused site makes sense only when job seeking. Sure, that by itself is already enough to bring a massive user base, but couldn’t we make things even better by also making things interesting and useful for those who want to help others?
Just an example: there are so many companies that create incentives for employees who make good referrals. Couldn’t we perhaps think of a system that enables established professionals to do that at a wider scale?
Or consider the ATS systems that are (mostly) managed by the recruiters. They are built in a way where recruiters are kept in control of the top of the funnel, and prospects are only introduced to the hiring manager after they have passed some pre-screening interview. This is not only slow, but it is also inneficient: even the best of recruiters can not evaluate a potential candidate better than their eventual team mates and direct reports. What if we could simply get rid of pre-screening interviews by allowing everyone in the team to join in the triage?
Reduce the stakes: prospecting should not indicate commitment
The days of being rewarded by being loyal to any particular company are long over. This means that the default state for anyone should be “do your best, prepare for the worst”. Keeping a constant pulse on the job market and being open to talk about new opportunities, even when you are perfectly happy with your employer, should be normalized and not automatically treated as a sign that you are “ready to jump ship”.
Default to transparency
There is so much information that a company can disclose that could and should be available before we even get to the “apply now” button: who is on the team? What is the current org-chart and who are they are hiring for? How are they going to assess candidates for the skills being required? Can this evaluation be done prior to the application?
No gated features to extract revenue from job seekers
Paying for reach or access to a valuable contact is criminal.
More?
Thoughts? Suggestions? Let me know on @raphael@communick.com