Ask HN: I built a site to hire engineers x10 faster. Why is noone interested?

9 points by Riphyak 4 years ago | 37 comments

Hey Hackers,

A desperate call for feedback here.

I must be doing something utterly wrong.

After working for 5+ years in tech recruitment and having built a profitable company in the space generating $1M+ ARR - I finally admit that I know nothing about this market.

For the last 2 months I and my co-founder have been working on https://greenlight.jobs/employers/ - a marketplace that connects businesses with vetted overseas engineers looking for remote work opportunities. It is a 'reverse' job marketplace, where 'poachable' candidates list their anonymized profiles. As a result, employers see available candidates immediately - which shortens time-to-hire many times. It also gives businesses access to the new and huge 'hidden' pool of talent.

I had great faith in this idea for at least 3 reasons: 1) Post-COVID, hiring engineers became even tougher than before. 2) Remote becomes the new normal - and consequently international hiring is on the rise, with companies like Deel or Remote - that provide paperwork and payroll for foreign employees, surpassing billion-dollar valuations; 3) There are tens of thousands of brilliant engineers on local markets that speak decent English, and are happy to work for an American startup for $100K-120K + equity.

We have seen a lot of entusiasm from candidates - and quickly got a strong first batch of senior React+Node full-stack developers.

However after we launched the employers website - the interest turned to be surprisingly low. We got only 4 job postings so far, 1 from last weeks' Show HN (4 upvotes, 3 comments) and 3 from Bookface. Today Greenlight launched on Product Hunt - and got only 29 upvotes so far.

I strongly believe in the vision of work knowing no borders on the future - so don't want to give up on this easily. I would therefore be grateful for any piece of feedback that would help me understand what may we be missing.

Thanks!

this2shallPass 4 years ago |

Have you read The Mom Test? Highly recommended. Here's a summary: https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test

- Exactly who is your ideal customer, and what do they care about? Veteran CEO of 4 person seed stage start up in FinTech world trying to build an MVP? Mid career hiring manager at a Series B or C company in healthcare looking to expand their team long term? Recruiter at a Series D company with 20,000+ employees trying to meet their quota of leads for the week? Someone else? Drill down here. Once you identify it and validate that through experiments, focus on as few as possible - ideally just one.

- Is it clear to your potential customer what problem you are solving for them?

- Do they think you are the best way for them to solve it? What alternatives do they use currently? What's painful about it? What's better about your solution, so compelling that they should try it?

- Is the problem they think you solve one of their current priorities?

If the issue is with framing or marketing, here's a useful guide: https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro

Good luck!

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Thanks for that!

I'm lucky enough to know both Rob and Julian personally, but this definitely doesn't serve as an excuse not to re-read the Mom's Test.

Very good point about the ICP. We were targeting startup companies 20-250 ppl, that raised their last round in the last 6 months, sector agnostic. However we weren't sure about the right decision-maker. The three options are CTO, CEO and HR manager.

So far we had more top-of-the-funnel conversions on Linkedin ads from CEOs and HRs, but more actual sign-ups from CTO.

this2shallPass 4 years ago | | |

You're welcome!

Lucky indeed. Their resources are so valuable. The Mom Test is always worth a re-read, I recommend it so often to people.

I understand the tendency to be broader and speak to more different people (larger target market, more potential buyers), but it makes it harder to effectively communicate your message in the language of the buyer. Also different people have different priorities. The more focus, especially at first, the better.

Do some experiments and see who has the problem in the most pressing way, or who can and is willing to pay enough to solve it to make it work for you and them. Consider size of company, decision maker, potentially industry/sector, location, time since money raised, bootstrapped vs investor funded, anything that makes sense - you never know which niches will be amenable to you.

brudgers 4 years ago |

Why would an employer trust your vetting process?

I mean the primary cost of hiring is time. Signing up for your service doesn’t save big chunks of it versus working with a regular recruiter.

And it is possible to have a business relationship with a recruiter. Less so with an algorithm or website.

The problem with hiring is it’s a market for lemons. Signing up people looking for remote work doesn’t address a business problem companies can’t solve themselves with a job listing. They probably don’t even need to mention remote work to get a stack of cv looking for it.

To put it in market terms, the recruiting market is very efficient. There is a rough equilibrium between jobs and recruiters already.

Good employers have ongoing relationships with recruiters…just as good engineers already have jobs.

Good luck.

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Love this, thanks!

Riphyak 4 years ago |

UPDATE:

Thanks for your amazing feedback, everyone! One more time I see how incredible Hacker News is.

Summarizing what I learned from your comments, there are 3 key hypotheses to check:

H1: We have overestimated the problem. Time-to-hire isn't really a big concern and companies in the US aren't experiencing any major issues with hiring engineers.

H2: We have overestimated our solution. The employer's aren't prepared to pay US-level salaries to offshore devs and/or are quite happy working with recruiters.

H3: We have chosen wrong marketing channels and/or ICP to target.

Probably the truth is a combination of all the above, but it is important to understand which cause is has the strongest impact.

Back in my cave to do my homework and book some calls with the customers :).

lhorie 4 years ago |

I may not know much about recruitment, but the one thing I know is that it requires cultivating relationships with employers, since they're the clients (this goes for pretty much any B2B endeavor, really).

The three approaches I see most often are: mass marketing (e.g. what indeed/ziprecruiter/etc do), bringing in clients from your networking connections (presumably one would have a decent amount given 5+ years experience) or cold calling (basically everyone and their mothers in linkedin). "Build and they will come" isn't that viable of a strategy </two-cents>

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Thanks, that makes sense.

Yes, I understand that hiring is always a big decision - which means you need to build trust. This would explain the low % of end conversions, but the question of low interest at top of the funnel (e.g. conversions from HN of PH) still remains.

lhorie 4 years ago | | |

Think of it this way: say you need to buy milk. Why would you go to my store instead of wherever you normally go? Just seeing my store sign once one week ago isn't going to compel you to drive in when you need milk again next week, even if I did mention that my milk is better in some way.

Going back to your business: I'm replying to you now but I already forgot what the business is called (I had to go back to the post to check whether you had even mentioned it). I will forget again in 30 minutes. I can recall indeed's name instantly because they've been on the radio daily for the past 3 months (and not to rain on your parade, but their pitch is the same as yours - "faster hiring"). And if not indeed, I can recall ziprecruiters name because they've also bombarded me with marketing and I can recall this small recruiting firm in Toronto because the way they reached out to me was legitimately personalized instead of the generic mailmerge crap you often see. So if I were to think "hey now I'm in need of some milk", which recruiting companies do you think will pop up in my head? That's managing top of the funnel, IMHO.

is_true 4 years ago |

You are looking for candidates in the wrong places. I'm from Argentina and the developers that would be interested in this don't know about HN, PH. Try to use freelancer.com or local job boards as a place to get developers to sign up.

Senior developers work for less than USD20K here

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Thanks for that.

We're investing a lot in expansion in LatAm at my other company - and one thing I learned about Argetina's job market is that you have 2 tiers of developers: one working mainly for internal market and the other - for US customers. The salaries may differ by the factor of 3 or even more.

Here is a great piece of research about similar situation in Europe: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Actually, the idea of Greenlight has a lot to do with this salary gap phenomenon. I see this as a big potential for a win-win.

is_true 4 years ago | | |

Unfortunately we are bleeding talent because our national market is really bad.

muzani 4 years ago |

Going to https://greenlight.jobs/ shows that it's invite only. No offense, but it smells like another of those BS landing pages where the product doesn't exist and just overpromises and then drops you on a "Sorry, this doesn't work yet" page.

There's no evidence that the people on the site are real. You'd expect it to have a sign up page for candidates. There's a "See the CVs" button on the employer link, but it's a link that tricks you into creating a job post. Ideally it should hint a little, like what Glassdoor or Quora does.

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Thanks for pointing our those details.

https://greenlight.jobs/ - is the candidates' website: we're sending access codes to candidates individually via LinkedIn or Email.

softwaredoug 4 years ago |

Do folks in your markets use LinkedIn?

One thought is sure, you save time by saying the candidates are open BUT on LinkedIn recruiters can get all the CV AND personal info. They can know they are real people. They can bulk email 50 interesting looking candidates and get 10 responses from people passively searching and forward those to a hiring manager.

I wonder if you’re optimizing for the real bottleneck? Recruiter time isn’t THAT much of a bottle neck AND they have tools to overcome this problem.

I also suspect recruiters want to use fewer familiar tools, not more tools

I trust you know the space/your problem though almost certainly more than we would. Best of luck!

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

This is a very good point. Actually, the arrival of LinkedIn disrupted the way recruiters worked. Before LinkedIn the core of their job was indeed building the relationship with candidates. LinkedIn provided them with the opportunity to mass-message the candidates - which is more efficient from recruiter's ROI perspective, but also creates a lot of noise and eventually discourages candidates.

ToFab123 4 years ago |

The site is invitation only, so I can't actually use the site for anything and there is no info on how to get invited.

All links that says "See the CVs" takes me to a "create a job" page and not to the CV.

check spelling: styartups

Good luck!

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Wow, thanks for spotting that typo, man!

frantzmiccoli 4 years ago |

Hi,

Personal experience: I have never seen customers coming by flock to anything - even though "product market fit" is supposed to make it magic. You have to fight for them.

Having the candidates is already something great you achieved. I think that you are on a vertical where you need to get known by people. How are current "hiring intermediates" getting their customers? They do sales. They try to reach out and try to convert peoplen, even if the product is "self checkout".

gameman144 4 years ago |

The site looks nicely designed, but one bit of (hopefully) constructive feedback is that you might want to run through some of the phrasing/grammar of the copy on the site with a native English speaker, as they diminish a bit from the perceived value even though the rest of the site is really nice. Some examples that sound a bit odd:

- "How does the recruitment process look like?" vs. "What does the recruitment process look like?"

- "no matter where she or he was born. " vs. the commonplace "no matter where they were born."

- "The talent of such the highest tier is traditionally a headhunting material" vs. "Such top-tier talent is traditionally headhunting material" (I don't actually know if "headhunting material" is a term used in recruiting, but I'm assuming it is).

These phrases don't dilute the content of the site, but getting a native English speaker to go over the wording of the site would help add that extra bit of polish.

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Ah, this is indeed helpful. English isn't my first language - so such subtleties are definitely beyond my linguistic perception. I did use someones help to proof-read the content, but it looks like there is always room for improvement.

paulcole 4 years ago |

What's the problem? Demand, awareness, consideration, or conversion?

Do people not want the solution you're selling, are they not aware you're selling it, are they not considering you as an option, or are they not choosing you to solve the problem?

Start from the end and work backwards and you might find your answer (although it might not be the answer you want).

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Good point, thanks. And a useful thinking framework indeed.

Looking at the funnel, it looks like the problem is at the very top. Further conversions seem to be OK-ish - if you can draw any statistically significant conclusions from 6 total conversions of course.

IOW, I feel like it is mostly that they don't want the solution.

And yes - I'm hoping to have enough intellectual courage to seek the actual truth, not a comforting story.

paulcole 4 years ago | | |

Do they not want the solution or are you solving the wrong problem?

Is speed to hire the problem? If so, who specifically is it a problem for?

I don’t know the space (technical hiring) at all. But I do hiring for a small marketing agency and I don’t care at all about speed to hire. I’ve had roles filled by the first applicant and roles that took months (same job btw) to fill. I want to be sure I hire the right person when they come along and I don’t care how long it takes.

Of course, this doesn’t make me the ideal audience for your idea, but who is? And is their problem speed to hire? Why is that the problem you think they’ll pay to solve?

giantg2 4 years ago |

Many companies have policies or even laws that they have to follow concerning overseas employees. It's possible these are barriers to adoption.

"and are happy to work for an American startup for $100K-120K + equity."

As are many American devs. Companies that are outsourcing are looking for a deal. If you can hire remote workers in the US for under $100k, why hire foreign workers and have to deal with more regulatory hurdles? (Average US dev salary is $110k)

Time to hire is not a big issue for companies. They might tell you it is, but that's BS self-evaluation talking. It's the same way as all the stories you see about companies not finding qualified candidates. Usually it's the company's fault by paying too little, demanding unrealistic qualifications, or just having terrible work environments. Everyone wants senior devs that are 10 year experts on the exact stack the company uses, even if some of that tech has existed for less than 10 years, but companies aren't willing to cultivate that specific talent or set realistic expectations. It shouldn't surprise them if they have trouble finding talent in a system they created and perpetuated by limiting entry and growth for prospective hires. This results in cognitive dissonance and leadership claiming they can't find people rather than adjust pay, working conditions, etc to correct the problem.

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Thanks for this! Indeed, I may have overestimated the problem and our solution.

ksaj 4 years ago |

The concept seems pretty sound. You haven't mentioned how you are marketing to the hiring people. It sounds like marketing to the candidates has been successful, but that is only half the picture.

Riphyak 4 years ago | |

Thanks!

The only channel we used for candidates has been LinkedIn. Got 30%+ conversion with very little effort.

ksaj 4 years ago | | |

Are you doing that with the potentially hiring people as well?

mattbrewsbytes 4 years ago |

Is time to hire a problem companies want to solve? If a company is hiring a lot of people, that might be quantifiable but if its a couple hires per quarter then maybe this isn't a problem a company needs help with.

Maybe the vetting process needs more attention since if I'm using a third party to help with hiring, I want some amount of filtering to happen. Testimonials from hiring companies might help too.

bwh2 4 years ago | |

More specifically, I would ask if time to hire offshore developers is a perceived existing problem? As a hiring manager, I already assume that I can get offshore developers started immediately if I want them - I just reply to any of the hundreds of LinkedIn and email spam messages I get from existing offshore agencies.

Riphyak 4 years ago | | |

Wow, I didn't really think about it from this perspective. You are absolutely right! This is an extremely noisy space.

Do you think the fact that you're not going to pay a margin to outsourcing firm, but instead employ the offshore developer directly, doesn't compensate for the additional hassle?

satya71 4 years ago |

May be because employers are not hanging out on HN and PH?

Edit: I mean if you have a 1M+ ARR recruiting company, have you talked to your existing clients?

marto1 4 years ago |

You need social proof.

One way can be to partner up with a high velocity VC. This might be a lot of work and probably strings attached.

Another could be partnering with HR hiring companies. In all cases you'll need to have a somewhat established reputation and clients rolling in way before going the "marketplace" route.

Good luck!

meiraleal 4 years ago |

Get this 4 job postings to hire a 10x engineer and they will use more, recommend and you will get a lot of interest. If you need tons of job postings for it to start work your vetting process isn't better than what is available currently.