43 pointsby BelVisgarra8 hours ago27 comments
  • phantomathkg6 minutes ago
    This won't help in countries like Singapore.

    When you are a jobseeker, yes, you don't want to apply for job post that is destined for internal transfer.

    When you are someone who is in the process of internal transfer, you want this JD has many applicants to prove to the government that this roles has applicants but they are not as strong as the one being transferred.

    When you are the hiring manager, you want the process to be finished quickly, whether it is the internal transfer you like, or hiring externally.

    This so called verified board stop the transfer from happening.

    If you are the outside applicants, great. If you are the one being internal transfer, you want to burn this board.

    For record, I have been both side of the picture. Transferred to Singapore and now looking for job, and also as a hiring manager. So I know the pain from all angle.

  • danpalmer3 hours ago
    Ask yourself why this isn't the way already. Obviously everyone would rather only see and apply to verified listings, so why don't job boards work like that?

    Maybe job advertisers don't want to verify, maybe it's too much hassle, maybe it costs so much to verify that you need to charge too much for listings, maybe verified listings don't scale.

    It's all fine to ask what-ifs like this, but since this is obviously the good thing, you need to come with a strategy for how you'll actually achieve it.

    • idontwantthisan hour ago
      I think a big reason is that, just like dating apps, they don’t want you to get a job. They want you to stay on the site and load ads/pay a subscription.
  • antonymoose7 hours ago
    What makes a job verified in this case? You can easily verify a firm exists, but that’s not really the critical part. The question “is this a ghost job with no intention to be filled” is the real struggle.
    • neya3 hours ago
      On top of this, you also cannot verify if the position was filled through another job board. The company/HR might say "we filled it through a different portal" and in most portals, expired listings don't show up and there is no way to verify if they actually did hire someone from there.
    • BelVisgarra7 hours ago
      Good point. Verifying that a company exists is relatively easy, but confirming that the role is actually open and actively being hired for is definitely harder. I was thinking verification could include confirming the recruiter’s identity and requiring employers to periodically confirm that the position is still active. Ghost jobs are definitely an important challenge.
      • pavel_lishin7 hours ago
        > confirming the recruiter’s identity and requiring employers to periodically confirm that the position is still active.

        If a position is only listed due to a requirement, and is already basically guaranteed to someone making an internal transfer, knowing the recruiter's identity and having a manager pinky-swear the job offer is real does nothing.

        • aeonfox6 hours ago
          Add a visible count of how many verified applicants got verified jobs at the verified business. Higher count increases confidence.
        • BelVisgarra6 hours ago
          That definitely makes things harder. Roles posted for internal transfers or compliance reasons are tricky because they may never have been intended for external candidates. Maybe verification would need signals showing that the role is actually open to external applicants. I wonder if something like an “externally open role” label would help.
      • didgetmaster5 hours ago
        If I knew that a company had paid a refundable fee (e.g $1000), that was only paid back if the job was filled by someone outside the company within 6 months; then I would take it much more seriously.
        • AnimalMuppet4 hours ago
          I like it. Now, what are you going to do to employees? How do they verify (to the board and/or the employer) that they're who they say they are, and are serious about looking?

          I like this for employers. Money talks and baloney walks; if you're serious, prove it. But that could come down badly on desperate employees - Either take a job that you decide you don't like, or lose a significant amount of money. And yet, the "not seriously looking" issue is on both sides.

          And even for employers, you have to gate this. Something like, they get the $1000 back if, after six months, the board has not supplied them with N qualified candidates. (Which gets back to the employee issue: How do you prove they're qualified?)

          I like the idea in general. Really, I do. But I'm not sure it solves the whole problem. (And maybe it doesn't need to in order to be a good step forward.)

          For amusement value, consider the following wrinkle: If a company forfeits the $1000, the board keeps $200. The other $800 gets split among the candidates whose time the company wasted.

    • ipnon4 hours ago
      Put some money on the line. I'm not an economist but you could structure a market where you cannot just take up mental space in the job market for practically nil. That's the current malincentive, that companies put up job listings they have no intention of filling, even when candidates who are qualified by their own criteria apply. The current job market maladies are a perverse incentive of the price of posting a job and applying for a job are effectively nil, the spread is too big for anyone to make the trade.
      • sqircles3 hours ago
        Interesting proposal, but I think it would take a good size of money. Maybe 50% escrow of first year salary?
        • ipnonan hour ago
          Yeah something like that. A breakup fee between the job board company and the hiring company: “if you don’t hire someone within 90 days we keep half of the salary.” But there’s not much incentive for the hiring side to do this!
  • not2b3 hours ago
    What does "verified" mean here? You can verify that a real company posted that job, but you can't verify whether it is fake in the sense that they really have an H1B candidate they really want for the position and they are just advertising it to meet legal requirements.
    • giancarlostoro2 hours ago
      Friend of mine mentioned someone made a site to find those hidden jobs so people desperate for work already in the US can widen their own net. Not really sure how effective they are at it.

      https://www.jobs.now/jobs

  • raw_anon_11117 hours ago
    No.

    A job being “verified” doesn’t solve the main problem post around 2023. Every single job opening gets hundreds of openings within the first day of it being opened.

    If you are looking for a job as any type of generic developer - full stack, front end, mobile, back end, it’s almost impossible to stand out from the crowd. No, “I reversed a btree on the whiteboard to get into big tech as a mid level developer” doesn’t make you special.

    If you do have a specialized set of skills that allows you to stand out from the crowd, you still shouldn’t be randomly spamming job boards and you should be able to sell yourself to someone at the company.

    My personal anecdote. In my specialty - AWS + app dev + leading strategic initiatives, I’m very well credentialed (trust me on this) and in a certain niche of AWS, I was considered one of the industry experts at the time (again trust me).

    But when randomly spamming job boards on a lark in 2023, I heard nothing.

    That was always a plan B while I was waiting for what ended up being three offers via my network and one by reaching out to a company who specialized in my niche of AWS.

    I’m not bragging, I am old. I should have a network and credentials.

    • lazypenguin6 hours ago
      Yes, we recently posted for an entry/mid level position and we got 1800 applications in a few days. It’s impossible to filter the list, I spent several hours to see how feasible it was and after getting through maybe 150 applications I gave up. We’re a small team, we don’t have the resources to cut through the noise without just blanket rejecting people. There doesn’t need to be a board that vets jobs, there needs to be a board that vets candidates and makes it easier for companies find their ideal candidate.
      • raw_anon_11116 hours ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

        How do you vet mid level and entry developers? I know that sounds like a dumb question. But I only expect a mid level developer especially enterprise developers to turn well defined requirements into code. The bar is especially low in the age of AI. One is basically interchangeable for another. I have only interviewed senior level developers - ie people who I expect to operate on a higher level of scope, impact and ambiguity.

        Those are easy to filter out via a few behavioral questions.

        • throwawaysleep4 hours ago
          But if that is the standard, what is the point of the mid level developer in the first place? I have a tool to turn well defined requirements into code and it is $20-200 a month.
          • raw_anon_11113 hours ago
            I wouldn’t trust AI to do anything that I didn’t know how to do myself. You still need SMEs for mobile, web etc. you just need fewer of them.
      • operatingthetan6 hours ago
        Do what everyone is doing (for better or worse): feed those into a CLI LLM, have it give you a csv of the top 20 candidates based on some criteria, manually review those.
        • raw_anon_11115 hours ago
          What are the top 20 candidates if you just need a random “full stack developer”? All of their resumes look exactly the same.
          • operatingthetan5 hours ago
            If they are actually "exactly the same" and your criteria is a "random" developer then does it matter which you pick? Look for extracurriculars like active github, personal website/blog, open source contributions, vibe coding skills, etc. I bet 75% of the job market right now is being done on referrals anyway. Tap your network.
          • throwawaysleep4 hours ago
            Keep raising the bar until all but 20 are excluded.
            • fn-mote3 hours ago
              That’s not enough.

              Surely you will not manage to hire one of the top 20 developers matching any given criterion unless you are paying too 1% compensation. (I made this number up.)

              One of the criteria somehow is “will show up for work and not ghost us”.

              • throwawaysleep3 hours ago
                They applied for the job, so there’s at least some signal that they’d be willing to work there.
          • ikiris4 hours ago
            If you're truly looking this generic, then what is the problem exactly with taking the bottom 20% of the stack since that's what your pay is going to be anyway?
            • raw_anon_11113 hours ago
              In any second tier city the range for mid range developers is only $10K-$20K. You don’t really need rockstar ninja developers to do your standard CRUD LOB or SaaS app.
    • 6 hours ago
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    • sdevonoes6 hours ago
      99% of the engineers out there are generic ones (including myself)… and most of us are working.
      • raw_anon_11115 hours ago
        If you take away my AWS account and my ability to “add on to what Becky said” and “look at things from a 1000 foot view”, I am a “generic developer” and was one for 25 years.

        That doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that “generic developers” are a dime a dozen and it’s hard to stand out from the crowd using an ATS. I just said I had the same issue when experimenting with ATS’s.

    • tryauuum6 hours ago
      Jesus christ, AWS has niches

      This shouldn't surprise me, knowledge of a code base is a competitive advantage. But there is just something depressing about it. Maybe it being closed source and you having to learn it by being burned by undocumented behavior? Please tell more

      • raw_anon_11116 hours ago
        It’s Amazon Connect - a popular hosted call center solution ported to AWS from Amazon Retail. There are people and companies that do nothing but Amazon Connect. But that’s all they know. I’m a developer first with well rounded experience with AWS. It’s just the niche that helps me stand out a little when I was looking for a job and now internally where I work for a third party consulting company. But you can throw me at almost any AWS related project and I’ve probably done something related over the past 8 years.

        I talked a little bit about Connect here:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241412

        I worked at AWS ProServe / their internal consulting department - full time blue badge RSU earning employee - and I was one of the highest contributors to a popular at the time open source “AWS Solution” around Connect and I had my own open source projects published under AWS’s open source GitHub organization.

        BTW, I would never use the “solution” now. There are a lot better ways to do it post gen AI.

        The thing was, it was years before AWS introduced APIs around Connect and even longer before they have CloudFormation support. I was the first to use those APIs at scale for clients and found and reported bugs to the team while I was there.

  • siliconc0w5 hours ago
    Cyrpto had some interesting takes on these sort of problems that we haven't really applied more broadly.

    The way I'd design a job board is require the applicant to escrow X and the job poster to escrow Y*X. Y is is the trust ratio. Given a bad experience, either the side can 'burn' the other and send both escrowed amounts to charity. An okay trust ratio might be 10, meaning they'll give you 10:1 burn ratio. A good one might be 100 or 1000. At that point they are essentially handing you a big stick to beat them with if they misbehave.

    This would entirely eliminate spam and ghost jobs - suddenly everyone would be magically really responsive and polite.

  • pluc6 hours ago
    Verified how?

    The poster has an account? No

    The poster has confirmed an email address? No

    The poster has a confirmed email address that is associable to the business? Maybe

    The poster has a confirmed email address that is associable to the business and their name is verifiable as HR/Hiring Manager/Someone in a legitimate position to post this offer? Sure

    • aeonfox6 hours ago
      Has a registered business that's been around longer than 6 months.

      Has a confirmed business phone number, called by a human that verifies another human is on the other end.

      Has a confirmed business address (mail them the confirmation code).

      Has a website that's been around longer then 6 months.

      Has a Google Maps location that's been around longer than 6 months.

  • neom6 hours ago
    https://www.news.google.com/search?q=ghost+jobs - ghost jobs are a real problem - I don't know if this is the solution.
  • nbhdcity4 hours ago
    I don’t want my application to be swallowed up in the deluge of bot applications either tho. Can you verify the other applicants too even maybe clearing that they meet a minimal qualification so my qualifying application actually gets reviewed?
  • 1970-01-015 hours ago
    Hiring is so broken that this just isn't enough. We really need an IETF RFC for open positions. A full-blown TCP-like protocol for an open position, with TTL, SYN ACK handshakes, and data encryption. Anything else is half-assing it. I'm only half joking. It's pretty bad today.
  • hmokiguess6 hours ago
    What’s an example of a job scam? How does the scammer benefits from it? I have never heard of this, just looking to learn more about it.
    • basilikum5 hours ago
      Identity theft: You have to verify your identity for the job, but in reality they trick you into handing over personal data, your SSN or id scans or completing some actual identity verification – that isn't just copying pixels or numbers – where you think you are verifying for the job offer, but in reality you complete the verification for e.g. opening a bank account in your name that they then control. Of course the identity verification service should check that you really know what you are verifying for, but that doesn't mean they actually do or the scammers might have some excuse to explain the discrepancy; like you get a job at a bank and to start working you have to open an account with them because salary or benefits get credited there. Helpfully they create the account for you and all you have to do is do the identity verification.

      Variations of advance fee scams: Can be simple like you got a job but have to pay a fee to the head hunting agency that you'll get reimbursed on top of your first salary from your new employer of course, or more advanced: Your job involves buying products or services and testing or auditing them.

      Money mules and laundering: As part of your job you have to forward money between your and external accounts. This is less obvious than the advance fee. You get the money first, you just don't know that you are funnelling the money from other scams to the scammers.

      These things might seem easy to see through in theory, but they prey on desperate people in hardship. You believe to have finally found a job and all seems well during the onboarding process. Maybe it takes a little longer with a little back and forth or multiple interviews until you are emotionally invested into the job offering. Of course it seems weird that you have to pay out of your own pocket for a product you do QA testing for before you receive any money from them. But you have to deliver if you want to keep the job. After all they have many more options of applicants to choose from while for you this is the only job offer you got after months of searching.

    • SlightlyLeftPad6 hours ago
      For one, it’s a form of personal information harvesting. People tend to apply with non-burner accounts
      • hmokiguess6 hours ago
        and I assume the value here would be some data broker deal? feels odd to me still
        • apothegm5 hours ago
          Also used for identity theft.
  • spy8886 hours ago
    You have to think through the applicant issue. As a hiring manager every time I post a job i get hundreds of applicants and most are not viable for different reasons. A verified listing does nothing to help me deal with the influx of low quality and fake applicants.
    • ZDisket4 hours ago
      Upwork has candidates buy "connects" with real money that are spent when applying to jobs. Ultimately it seems some form of payment is a proven gate.
    • maxaw5 hours ago
      Curious - are there not good tools for filtering through applications? there must be a lot of llm related offerings
    • fortran776 hours ago
      There's two sides to this. Companies need to be able to make sure they're able to locate (and not miss) viable candidates. But job-seekers need to know there's a legitimate company and an actual job. There are many job scams out there, especially for entry level, low-skill jobs.

      In my early days, I once went through three interviews for a small "start up." On the third round, the founder admitted he couldn't pay me in anything but "equity" even though I specifically asked about funding and compensation on the first interview. (I got a very early "Craigs List" to pull the job listing--with an personal reply from Craig Newmark--and the "employer" settled with me for several thousand after I sent a demand letter and filed a claim in Santa Clara County small claims court for fraud.)

  • platevoltage36 minutes ago
    I'll do you one better. This would be the ONLY job board I use.
  • 11235813217 hours ago
    Probably not, as you’d essentially be performing the function of a recruiter, but not providing the ability for applicants to skip the initial steps of the hiring process by talking to you. Recruiters already list their open jobs in board-like software.
    • jmye2 hours ago
      Yeah, my first thought was, "Isn't this what recruiters are supposed to be providing?"

      And like, sure, there are some terrible ones. But I've worked some incredible groups, too.

  • ra0x033 hours ago
    Not only would I use it, but I would gladly help you build it :) @ra0x3 on Github
  • joeyguerra6 hours ago
    the job-to-be-done is connecting the job to the right person. Not job verification.

    I built a mobile app dev team in fintech years ago. I remember one person was literally selling their house and moving and was looking for a job. Call it luck, serendipitous, what you will, but the "connection" was made at the right time, right place.

    How do we solve that problem more effectively? Cuz right now it's a roll of the dice, constant linkedin messages, etc.

    • BelVisgarraan hour ago
      Matching seems to be a big part of the problem. A lot of hiring still feels like timing and luck, like in the situation you described. Improving the signal around listings could still help that process though. If candidates know a role is real, active, and owned by a responsive team, it becomes easier for the right people to engage with it.
  • didip3 hours ago
    How do you verify? A legit company CAN post ghost jobs.
    • BelVisgarraan hour ago
      That’s true — a legitimate company can still post ghost jobs. Verification probably can’t eliminate that entirely, but it might still help if it focuses on the listing itself (for example confirming the role is active, recently updated, or tied to a real hiring process).
  • dzonga7 hours ago
    what's the value add ?

    what are you offering to candidates - a better interview experience (been tried before etc, those companies closed)

    you want to solve a problem, however you are trying solve the problem at a wrong abstraction level -

    the problem with the tech market hiring is a coordination problem

    • BelVisgarra6 hours ago
      I see what you mean about it being a coordination problem. Do you think the main issue is that job boards create too much noise — hundreds of applications — instead of helping companies and candidates find better matches? If that's the case, what kind of system do you think would improve that coordination?
  • brudgers7 hours ago
    To a large degree, the problem with job boards is job boards are a two sided market for lemons

    On the one hand, applicants are applicant who cannot find a job through people they know and the companies are companies who cannot find candidates through people they know Good jobs and good employees come through relationships and you cannot automate relationships.

    Relationships are hard. Good luck.

    • BelVisgarra2 hours ago
      There’s definitely some truth to that. Many of the best opportunities do move through relationships. At the same time, job boards still handle a huge portion of the market — especially for people outside strong networks, early-career candidates, or remote roles. I’m curious whether better verification or signal on the job side could at least reduce the “lemons” effect a bit, even if it can’t replace relationships.
  • smnscu5 hours ago
    Otta in the UK (now eaten by the inexplicably-named Welcome to the Jungle) used to have a very involved vetting process during company onboarding, and I could verify that it was a great service as both a candidate and a hiring manager. To replicate what you want ("every listing is verified") there's no silver bullet but a good vetting process like that goes a long way.

    Another site I like is cord.com, which seems to prioritise companies where recruiters are active on that website, I've had a good experience with that one as well, as you get to chat with an actual recruiter in a matter of hours or days.

    • BelVisgarraan hour ago
      A strong vetting process during company onboarding probably does a lot to improve trust on both sides. The point about recruiters being active on the platform also seems important — being able to reach a real person quickly likely makes listings feel much more credible.
  • bootsmann6 hours ago
    Imo it might be worthwhile creating a job board that solves the “company-side” issue with the current recruitment process where 200 people will spam AI generated slop CV to every post that opens up. Some kind of account coupled with a ratelimit and you should already deliver some value to people recruiting.
    • BelVisgarra3 hours ago
      The volume of applications — especially AI-generated ones — does seem to be becoming a real issue for companies. Things like verified accounts or some form of rate limiting could potentially reduce that noise. Do you think companies would actually prefer fewer applications if they were more relevant, instead of maximizing the total number?
  • ulfw2 hours ago
    What jobs? There's barely any jobs
    • BelVisgarraan hour ago
      The market definitely feels tighter than it did a few years ago. That’s actually part of why the quality of listings matters — when there are fewer real opportunities, ghost jobs or low-signal postings become even more frustrating for candidates.
  • hwhshs7 hours ago
    It exists. Linkedin seems to have such jobs.
    • BelVisgarra7 hours ago
      That’s true, platforms like LinkedIn try to verify companies. What I’m more curious about is whether people would value deeper verification of the actual job posting itself, not just the company.
      • hwhshs6 hours ago
        Hmm. That is a hard one. Not sure how you verify it is a genuine job or the JD is accurate. Id like it but not sure it is possible.
        • BelVisgarra3 hours ago
          That's the tricky part. Verifying that a company exists is relatively easy, but verifying that a role is genuinely open and accurately described is much harder. I wonder if it would require a combination of signals — for example confirming the recruiter identity, requiring periodic confirmation that the role is still open, or feedback from applicants about whether the process actually happened. I'm not sure how far that could go in practice, though.
  • diego_moita4 hours ago
    No. Ghost jobs are "verified", too.
    • BelVisgarra2 hours ago
      That’s true — verification alone wouldn’t necessarily solve ghost jobs. A company can be real and still leave outdated or speculative postings up. The harder problem might be verifying that the position itself is actually active and being hired for.
  • bitfilped6 hours ago
    No, I don't use job boards.
    • BelVisgarra2 hours ago
      That makes sense if jobs already reach you through your network or other hiring channels.
  • fogzen7 hours ago
    I want a job board that can filter companies like ATS filters candidates. I want to know salary, benefits, equity comp, tech stack, and workflow practices like CI, test suite time, test coverage, meetings per week, etc.
    • BelVisgarra7 hours ago
      That’s an interesting point. Transparency about things like salary, tech stack, and engineering practices would probably make job boards much more useful. It sounds like verification alone might not be enough without better information about the role.
  • moralestapia6 hours ago
    The answer is yes, and I speak for everybody. People use job boards anyway, why not use another one with the +1 that, at least, you won't get scammed.

    Everyone likes to pretend this and that, "I wouldn't do it", "what problem do you solve", etc. I've published many jobs and they all come like hyenas fighting over scraps.

    Don't listen to them, just build the thing; they'll use it, they need the bread, lmao.

    • BelVisgarra3 hours ago
      That's useful to hear from someone who has actually posted jobs. From your experience, do candidates ever worry about scams or fake listings, or is the main challenge on your side just the sheer number of applications? It sounds like there might be different problems on the candidate side vs the employer side.
    • platevoltage32 minutes ago
      Why was this downvoted into oblivion?