Feedback
- agree with below on the name, not so hot on it
- be aggressive with your promotion! the challenge is getting developers to actively use the app, so that's what you'll need to optimize
I co-created (along with my friend Sam who's fantastic!) a similar app that is in it's very early stages (started many months ago, paused for a while, but in the recent frenzy got it finished up quick!).
So how do you prevent yourself from getting scammed for the $1,000 hiring bonuses? You've incentivised people for up to 50-60 hours of effort to scam you. That's going to be tough to defend.
I would assume that the $1000 are covered by the hiring company paying them a higher sum for the referral of the applicant.
If the $1000 are coming from a larger sum being paid to them by the hiring company, I see no scam possibility (but maybe I'm just not creative enough).
Yes, we are charging 5k for a job placement, and then kicking back 1k to the person getting hired and $500 to a referral.
There's a few vectors for potential scamming but it's going to be closely monitored anyhow. If we can't do this manually because of huge growth it'll be a great problem to have.
This is a great idea and I will definitely be downloading this app. The only issue you might encounter could be, like Tinder - there are too many dudes trying to get laid (people trying to get jobs due to the 1K bonus and $500 referral, and because it is easy) and not enough girls reciprocating (companies looking to hire due to the 5K finders fee).
1 When viewing a company website on my 5c, there was no UI element or gesture I could conjure to go back to the job listing.
2 I signed up via LinkedIn. After quitting the pp to get out of the webview issue mentioned above, attempting to use the app resulted in me getting kicked out to the reg wall and the linkedin integration failing to work a second time. The error displayed was that I needed to upgrade the app.
1. Yea this should work but is a problem with how PhoneGap handles links.... it should be opening them in a new slide up browser window but is not. I should have a fix for this tomorrow.
2. If you force quit the app (by holding down home button), and then relaunch you should be good to go. I think what's happening is it's losing connection with PhoneGap... i'm hoping this is fixed in the next day or two
The upgrade error is not true in your csae, it was just meant to sniff for a phonegap variable for an older iOS shell, but in this case it's also undefined so it throws the upgrade error.
It's built from scratch. I'll be open sourcing it all very soon.
I'm using Meteor for the front and backend and the UI was just recreated with CSS. PhoneGap provides the shell and basically hijacks the DOM from the Meteor server and re-fires events. I'm going to be implementing the FastRender tomorrow so it'll render all html and json with one request.
Tinder [1] is a mobile dating application where users can swipe left or right to indicate if they are interested with another 'tinder-er'.
If it's a mutual Yes (when you swipe Yes on someone, they will see you mixed amongst random Tinder-ers on their swipe pages), then you both find out and can start talking.
I'm one of the co-founders. My name is Tom. Thanks for all of the input. If you have any questions and thoughts on what you'd like to please fire away. Also, my email address is tom@blonk.co
I would ranodomize it. I don't want to see all the positions for the same company one after the other. Also, the Filter section froze (maybe because it was still attempting to load all the filters? Maybe pagination would fix that?)
Yea sorry about that, the filters are completely unusable at the moment. The filters view is totally thrashing the DOM.
We just released the LinkedIn connect which increased the tags by a ton. This should be fixed in a day or so. A regular text search would prob. be better at this point.
Funny, I applied to YC with this exact idea. Unfortunately, I had barely done any work other than thinking through the idea so, understandably, nothing came of it but glad to see someone went through with it...good luck!
I was actually really looking forward about using this app, but I found it unusable. I've messaged Patrick about it through the app, but the app froze when I changed the filters. Also, I saw 4-5 listings only?
Sorry about that, i'm working on reducing the number of tags being sent down to the client... it's causing the filters page to totally barf. There might only be 4-5 listings because of the filters? For example if you have the ruby and javascript filter on it will only return those jobs.
In retrospect, the whole filters page is a bust... there is way to much to scroll through now, ~800.
"This item cannot be installed in your device's country", which is Hong Kong. I guess this is by design since locale is a dimension of complexity that you want to figure out later?
I, for one, would greatly appreciate if you can allow employers to specify if they're OK with Remote (distinguishing between Remote-US vs. Remote-Anywhere, I suppose), and allow me in Hong Kong to apply to them :-)
Wow, is taking a job as snap of a decision as hooking up with someone? Nope. So how does the Tinder model make sense for this? Even from a UX perspective, seems like a really horrible idea.
Personally, I think it's a great idea. It's been a while since I've needed to job-hunt, but it used to go something like:
1. Scan through indeed.com, StackOverflow, etc, job pages, bookmarking everything that seems interesting.
2. Revisit the bookmarks, checking out the company website, LinkedIn profiles, etc. Select a few favourites.
3. Write CVs and cover letters for the favourites.
At step 2, it's great if you can speak directly to your future boss / colleagues. It's like a mini-interview before you go through the hassle of step 3. It lets you get beyond the cliches of the job advert to the actual people. That said, when I've been on the recruiting side, I hated receiving those types of calls because you spend so much time dealing with poor applicants, trying to tell them not to bother applying but still leaving them with a positive image of your company. That's hard to do on the 30th phone call of the day.
So it seems that Blonk is trying to filter those phone calls only to those I've already said 'good enough to apply'.
The bit I didn't get is the signing-on bonus. As an employer, I would want to get the best possible applicants. The $1,000 seems to skew the kind of people that would be using the service to those who are desperate for cash. To use the 'Tinder for jobs' analogy, if Tinder offered free meals to those who hook up, they will get a large group of "unsociable but like free food" people.
hmmm is it strange that I hate the idea of doing 20 interviews and it leading to 1 job, but am ok with the idea of meeting 20 women and it leading to 1 girlfriend/wife?
A job is for the next few years (or so). A wife hopefully lasts you longer. And you should probably have more fun on the 20 first dates than on 20 interviews.
I think this might be an issue with location? The Google Play store is set to US and Canada and has been giving a device error if you're out of those regions.
This looks great! Francis, congrats on launching:
Feedback - agree with below on the name, not so hot on it - be aggressive with your promotion! the challenge is getting developers to actively use the app, so that's what you'll need to optimize
I co-created (along with my friend Sam who's fantastic!) a similar app that is in it's very early stages (started many months ago, paused for a while, but in the recent frenzy got it finished up quick!).
You motivated me to submit it!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262142
I'd love your feedback on Score, Francis!