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Inspired from this question.

The career post:

  • Has lots of shouting and caps.
  • Asks me to email some random guy at gmail. Apparently they're not up to having a Google Apps domain even.
  • Wants me to work in Union Square, New York, which it describes as the "ground zero" of tech. I found this questionably offensive/distasteful as someone who has been working in New York. (Their office is only a couple miles away from what everyone actually thinks when they hear "Ground Zero.")
  • I spent 10 minutes on the site. I still don't know what the company does, although it seems to be in the real estate industry.

Which left me thinking, not that I want to report this or whatever. Just that I want to downvote it, and possibly leave a constructive comment explaining how the OP can, you know, post something more useful.

Then I realized that actually sounds like a pretty good idea.

  • People in our community looking for jobs can find desirable ones more easily
  • Career postings get feedback precisely from the people looking to find jobs and learn how to make their ads relevant

All in all, it is the same approach as to our Q&A - good information gets upvoted, bad information gets downvoted, usually with feedback on how it may become good information.

I can see kinks of this turning into a "popularity contest." But if ever-so-popular Google has its listings upvoted highly, what's the harm in that? Yes, reputation counts. Perhaps Microsoft or Oracle would get the hate laid on them, but again, who cares - the companies that have strong reputation, the prospective applicant probably isn't relying on SO community opinion to evaluate, they probably have some sense somewhere else anyway. My gut is the signal-to-noise ratio will be strong enough here.

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  • The job posting in question has disappeared
    – user216620
    Apr 5, 2013 at 17:02
  • @davblayn yeah, told you it was terrible.
    – djechlin
    Apr 5, 2013 at 17:02

4 Answers 4

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16

We're toying with a feature that gets to part of this. Not voting exactly, but a feedback mechanism to employers that isn't an application. Our current thinking is there are three types of feedback to encourage/support:

  1. I would apply but need clarification on something before I go through the effort.
  2. I would apply if you removed some requirements or amended your requirements to fit my needs.
  3. I'm uninterested in applying but have something to say about your listing, good or bad.

This is not something that will be immediately available, and it will probably be an opt-in feature for the employer. If they don't opt in, you can always flag it as @anna mentioned and we'll look into it.

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  • I support this, but with a caveat. I would want the comment/feedback visible to users. I recently applied to a job listing and had a pretty bad experience with their developers test (essentially ended up being work for free). I would want other users to know about this before putting in an application. It wasted a lot of my time and energy, and I would rather they not suffer the same without foreknowledge. I posted to Glassdoor (did not know of it until afterward) but mine is so far the only post for this company.
    – CodeWarrior
    Jun 21, 2014 at 3:15
10

I don't work with Careers, so I'm just saying this as a user, but...

Upvoting/downvoting job postings from folks who paid us money to put them up sounds like a pretty bad experience for them. Well, I'm sure they'd love upvotes, but what about a competitor's job posting being more highly voted? This would be a problem waiting to happen.

I believe right now you can flag inappropriate job postings and our Careers folks take care of them. I think that's a saner long-term approach.

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  • 4
    It's in their interest to improve signal-to-noise. If they can achieve better signal on SO than elsewhere then they absolutely will pay to use our service. It's in our interest to do whatever we can to enable them to achieve that. Perhaps simply transplanting votes is a bit raw but we should have a feature that moves in this direction.
    – djechlin
    Apr 5, 2013 at 18:21
3

Votes work well for individuals answering questions, but I'm not sure they are going to be helpful on Careers. Suppose Microsoft posted a job on Careers; what would stop M$ haters from downvoting the job simply because they didn't like that company from Redmond? Companies are much more visible than individuals; the fanboy / hater effect could be non-trivial on Careers.

That said, I like the idea of a private and optionally anonymous feedback loop to the companies about their job postings. That could be quite helpful.

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2

I've had several job offers/positions with firms found via Careers.SE. I wish I could provide some feedback about the environments, my experience and the companies in a safe manner (without resorting to Glassdoor).

Could be interesting...

Maybe even a Red Flag!! warning :)

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