A Disconnect
I've always felt misunderstood.
My career path doesn't help. Game development, accounting, logistics, legal, real estate and even (shoe) sales, management, and warehousing on the non-technical side all add up. You try cramming 20+ years of coding and all of that disparate experience into a 2 page resume.
The "resume" has always just felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole for me. Like the format of the document was made for the industrial revolution and not post-industrialization. As if the jobs have out grown the resume, but things haven't caught up yet.
Having to compress the breadth and depth of my experience, my value, to a few bullet points. So much get's lost with that.
Add to this whole mess my disability around driving and things really compound. 5 years ago I survived brain cancer and 2 surgeries that left me unable to drive. Now there's this weird trend of hiring managers and recruiters, who love me as a candidate, suddenly making flimsy excuses when they learn I can't make it in for their hybrid/onsite roles.
Absolutely disgusting behavior.
A Question
Over the years I've learned to "weaponize" my AuDHD and polymathic traits.
So, when I had another moment of absolute desperate-frustration around my situation, I aimed my "sight" at my situation.
Something clicked.
Not a solution or a fix. Not in any traditional sense.
A question.
The current job market works like "hirer posts job -> candidate applies", but what if we flip that to "candidate posts capabilities -> hirer applies"?
Well, that's quite a question...
An Idea
As I sat there with this idea, this question, I could feel the dots connecting. Every question around the idea brought a little more light to my situation. As a seasoned SWE, I'm positioned really well to actually execute on something like this.
"What should I call each side - even just to more easily reason about things?"
Candidates are job seekers, like me. Finders are those with a job or role to fill.
"What would that look like on the candidate side?"
I concluded that something like a more general concept would be good to have for someone's "ability" and some number of things as "proof" towards that ability. Something like a "capability" and several "receipts" under each.
As an example I have a capability of "Make legacy systems more reliable". Then one of my receipts is "Improved production reliability in logistics systems supporting tens of millions of dollars in daily business activity, helping maintain approximately 99% uptime."
This is a working system and one I'm looking for real-world feedback to help refine.
"What's the value for the finders?"
I'm still working through this, the initial cost of acquisition of the initial candidate short-list. No more sorting, sifting, and filtering through thousands of resumes (most of which are AI slop now). Saving the time and money of whatever their pipeline looks like here.
How would I build this to work against scammers or spammers?"
Finders can only reach out to a candidate using a "Show Interest" button. This button requires some sort of description (JD), contact method (phone/email), and pay range (min/max). Nothing changes on their side at this point.
The candidate gets the message and can choose to either accept or decline it. Declining it just archives the message and let's the finder know as much. Accepting, on the other hand reveals the candidate's name and opens up a 2-way text-only chat system between the two.
"How can this help eliminate discrimination?"
No profile pictures, age, race, religion (does anyone include this these days?), etc. - none of it is there. There's just zero need. Even names are hidden by default. Names only show up once a candidate accepts the interest message from a finder.
"How can I keep a handle on the quality of the candidate pool?"
The pilot, at least, is invite only. I can send an invite link that allows either side to sign up and get started.
"How can a finder find a candidate match?"
A search box and set of simple filters, to start.
"AI integration?"
I don't know about you, but I'm burned the fck out on AI. I've been disillusioned from the start and tired of all of the fandom and pageantry around it.
Hard-pass.
"Is there room for either side to leverage AI to spew AI slop at scale?"
Not really. To do what, exactly? Candidates only fill out capabilities and receipts. Finders are the only users that could use it. But, again, why? All it could do is search, send interest, and maybe chat. There's no real value added there.
An Experiment
I move fast. No, like "stupid fast". I had this idea one Friday, had a LinkedIn post around it explode, by the following Friday I had a prototype ready for users to start a pilot.
That's where I am now. Looking for users on both sides of the job market to give this a shot with me.
To give this it's best shot possible, what should my target or criteria be?
- I'm thinking of a super niche group of SWE's to start. People similar to me, career-wise. Senior, Lead, and Staff software engineers.
- The initial pool should be relatively small, so 10ish.
- People who also feel like this system wasn't built for them to be seen.
- Smaller group of finders, maybe 3.
I've never been good at marketing, so I've been posting every day looking for interest in the pilot. In those posts I'm also looking for feedback from those who don't want to join.
An invitation
You have my criteria on both sides.
Candidates - I'm looking for 10 senior, lead, and staff software engineers for the pilot.
Finders - I'm looking for anyone looking to fill one of these roles.
I have a discord server up to facilitate better communication and feedback.
This platform doesn't have a chat/DM mechanism yet, so just let me know in the comments if you'd like to sign up for either side of the pilot!
