[HN Gopher] Show HN: Jobs by Referral: Find jobs in your LinkedI...
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Show HN: Jobs by Referral: Find jobs in your LinkedIn network
I have some friends who were laid off and are on the job hunt. We
were all quite surprised to learn that LinkedIn does not have a
"view jobs only at companies where I have connections", so I built
https://jobsbyreferral.com/ It's powered by
https://rapidapi.com/letscrape-6bRBa3QguO5/api/jsearch, which is a
little pricey, so I'm trying to decide whether to put more effort
into the project (I'd have to charge _something_ to offset the
costs).
Author : nicksergeant
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-07-01 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jobsbyreferral.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jobsbyreferral.com)
| gergely wrote:
| But it is there: If you search for jobs and expose "All filters"
| there is a filter called "In your network" which filters down
| exactly to this.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Really?! I still cannot find this in the mobile app or desktop
| :lolsob:
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Use the old search
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Whats the old search URL?
| 98codes wrote:
| It's there -- go to the jobs tab, answer the first time
| questions if they come up, and when you get the job list,
| click All Filters, and scroll the filter list down
| (admittedly, pretty far down); there's an "In your network"
| toggle.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Ah, wild! Yes I see it now! That is really quite buried.
|
| Edit: seems like this is only the "Classic Search", and
| presumably may disappear once "AI search" is no longer
| optional?
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I still can't find this. The job list is "infinite scroll"
| for me so there is no bottom. I don't see the word filter
| anywhere. Is there a URL?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| You need to switch back to classic search to see those
| filters (on mobile at least).
| alright2565 wrote:
| https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/collections/hiring-in-network
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Do you pay for LinkedIn Premium or something?
| zamadatix wrote:
| I do not and the filter is available in the job search page
| for me as well.
| dijit wrote:
| I really want the _inverse_ of this.
|
| I even wrote a version of it, but like many side projects; I lost
| motivation after leaving the original company I was working at
| (where I was integrating with things).
|
| I _really_ want a way of recommending people you 've worked with
| previously; should they happen to apply to your current
| workplace.
|
| I've worked with some absolute _stars_ and would gladly work with
| them again.
|
| My original design (that I even got working) had two ways of
| "recommending" people, essentially you had either: select people
| from your linkedin network _or_ add an email address /phone
| number and name you know them by.
|
| Then after selecting a person you're asked how closely you worked
| with them; becuase sometimes it's a nice person but you can't
| speak to competence: sometimes, it's someone you were really in
| the trenches with and they had your back.
|
| I also design the opposite of this, where you would
| "un"-recommend people, or essentially downflag their application.
|
| The thing is, my system wasn't fully integrated in the the HR
| management system, so it would add a comment if someone applied
| with the correct details but recruiters didn't have access to the
| database of recommended people- it also had an issue where
| someone could impersonate someone else by pasting the same
| linkedin link - though then they might need to know who might be
| recommended.
|
| Anyway, nothing foolproof, just making it easier for people with
| a good reputation to be integrated into the company easier.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| i totally agree on the problem, ex-colleages can be one of the
| best datasources for predicting the quality of a hire
|
| but how is your solution better/different to a referral, other
| than the un-recommendations? (which i like the idea of but am
| weary of ethically)
| dijit wrote:
| Mostly due to it's automated nature.
|
| I wouldn't go out of my way to tell our internal recruiters
| about every person I might enjoy working with again;
| additionally I don't necessarily think they'd care to chase
| someone down - especially so if there's not a currently open
| position.
|
| I'm also normally not directly plugged in to HR's candidate
| management system as an IC, unless someone is escalated; at
| which point then I might give a referral.
|
| The value of such a solution is that people can just quietly
| plug away recommendations when they first join and forget
| about them until that person happens to apply later on, at
| which point their notice is not just noise.. it becomes a
| signal on an emerging opportunity. One that might not have
| otherwise been there.
|
| Bonus; if recommendations are tagged with the user who made
| them, HR could reach out for additional context on the
| candidate.
| whall6 wrote:
| https://www.pedestal.work/
| hackernewds wrote:
| Perfect feature that LinkedIn should've developed themselves.
| Thank you for this!
| pmdr wrote:
| LinkedIn doesn't want you working, 'cause working people don't
| really have time to waste on LinkedIn (unless that's their
| job). LinkedIn wants you on their app with a racing heartbeat
| every time you get a notification that you hope will lead to
| job.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Caveat: I know people that don't use LinkedIn, but will "keep a
| profile" for reputational reasons.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| You mean you know.. most people?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Keeping a profile is how the majority of people use LinkedIn.
|
| All of the timeline discussion stuff is a small minority of
| their users. You can completely ignore it, as most do.
| shados wrote:
| It really shows how AI is going to change the entire industry.
|
| Let's imagine tomorrow a Product Manager at LinkedIn wants to
| introduce this as an official functionality? They're going to
| have to run it by management or their pod (or find the PM in
| charge of that area if its not them), finish existing project,
| wait for resources to be ready, have legal/marketing/compliance
| involved, get it developed, go through all the other red tape,
| etc.
|
| I don't know exactly how LinkedIn works internally, but I'm sure
| some of this is accurate.
|
| So maybe, MAYBE they'll have it in a couple of months? But
| someone can build it in a few hours, even if they're not super
| good at this stuff.
|
| It changes everything about how we think about products and SaaS
| software.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| This is exactly where I think we're heading as well. This
| project took about 2 hours.
| 98codes wrote:
| Primarily because LinkedIn has to bother with complying with
| their privacy policies and other T&Cs, and your site has none
| of that.
|
| Why should I take all of my data and give it to you, a rando
| on the internet? Is it being stored? Will it be shared? Sold?
| Maybe, as there's nothing that says you won't.
|
| Looks neat, but strong pass because of the above.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Those are totally fair points but what I agreed with here
| was that people will create _personal_ software to solve a
| particular itch for themselves, which is what I did here
| for my friends. I just decided to throw it on HN as I have
| some API credits remaining :)
| shados wrote:
| Correct. But you can build this thing on your own, for
| yourself. LinkedIn didn't, and you don't trust this third
| party. So if you had the problem its trying to solve, you
| could just spend the 2-3 hours and build it for yourself,
| even if you don't have all the necessary skills to do so.
|
| That's the whole point.
| thih9 wrote:
| > But someone can build it in a few hours, even if they're not
| super good at this stuff.
|
| Note that the end result is not the same as what LinkedIn would
| have built. Perhaps in some ways better and in some ways worse.
|
| E.g. personally I am not comfortable bulk uploading personal
| data of myself and my network to a third party server.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Yep! I agree to the principle - I also would not trust a
| random third-party app with my personal details. Though as
| noted in my other comment, this app is mostly client-side
| (including the CSV and ZIP extraction), except of course for
| the JSearch calls to find jobs by company name, and the CSV
| export if you choose to use that.
| shados wrote:
| Yup. But my point is you can build this yourself, FOR
| yourself. So if you're not comfortable with using this one,
| you can build one on your own that you can trust (because you
| built it yourself).
|
| Thats the whole point. In an AI world, you're no longer bound
| by the limits of what 3rd parties do or don't do, plus or
| minus some datasets (like in this case, the job postings).
| deadbabe wrote:
| It changes nothing, what you describe has always been the case
| even before AI. There are things people can build in a weekend
| that take weeks or even months at a larger company. Large
| companies have a way of slowing everything down, for reasons
| that have nothing to do with coding.
| shados wrote:
| Correct, but the amount of people who can do it has
| drastically increased, and the amount of time it takes for
| most people to build these things has drastically decreased.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It has not _drastically_ increased. One could even argue it
| has _decreased_. Ultimately, the productivity gains will
| perish to bureaucracy.
| alexp2021 wrote:
| Not sure it changes EVERYTHING as the issue of sales and
| marketing still favours LinkedIn. Sales/Marketing is very
| expensive and sometimes even difficult to predict. Building is
| not everything.
| shados wrote:
| Right, the point Im trying to make is that if someone has a
| requirement, they can build it on their own, for themselves,
| at much lower cost (because they don't need sales and
| marketing for themselves).
|
| It was always possible (hire software devs to do it), but the
| bar and cost is much, MUCH lower.
| alexp2021 wrote:
| Sure, no doubt about it.
| Fuzzy1000 wrote:
| The next best thing would be to have an overlay that allows you
| to pinpoint where and how you made a connection
| thih9 wrote:
| What happens with the personal data that gets uploaded? Is the
| payload stored or used for any other purposes? Is there a privacy
| policy?
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Hi! I answered this in a few comments but:
|
| The app performs its functions entirely client-side except for
| the job search to JSearch, which only requires the company
| name.
|
| > What you choose to upload to JobsByReferral.com is entirely
| up to you - you don't need to upload the entire ZIP. You can
| upload the Connections.csv-formatted file after you review it.
| You could also obfuscate person names if you'd like, before
| uploading.
|
| > We also do nothing with your data. You can verify the app
| does not send your data to any backend endpoints _except_ for
| company name (so that we can find jobs at that company).
|
| Edit: we've added some privacy details here:
| https://jobsbyreferral.com/privacy
| toyg wrote:
| The feature is interesting and I'm sure you're in good faith, but
| you're effectively doing LinkedIn-scraping, just outsourced to
| your users. Why not use the official API?
|
| (The GDPR implications of this service are also significant.
| Being in the US does not exempt you from observing that if any of
| your records are from European users.)
| nicksergeant wrote:
| LinkedIn's API is pretty locked down to partners, which you
| must apply for. There's also no documented API to retrieve
| connections.
|
| The approach we've taken here is that you upload data that
| you're comfortable uploading. You don't have to upload your
| entire LinkedIn ZIP archive -- you can just upload the
| Connections.csv file (which you can review before you upload).
| shados wrote:
| Assuming they don't have an EU presence of some sort, EU law
| doesn't apply to them.
|
| Now if they want to open up shop in the EU, or use a payment
| processor to charge money that has EU presence, things change.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Assuming they don 't have an EU presence of some sort, EU
| law doesn't apply to them._
|
| That's not correct. If they handle EU people's data, they are
| responsible for it and can still be fined. Obviously this
| cannot be enforced if they never visit and have no assets in
| the EU.
| shados wrote:
| Its correct purely because of jurisdiction. EU laws don't
| apply for people with no presence in the EU, unless there
| was some kind of treaty where one country agrees to enforce
| another's.
|
| That's just how laws, any law, works. The EU can "fine" all
| they want but it would be entirely symbolic.
|
| That's like if US restaurants had to enforce EU food safety
| laws when on US soil because a EU citizen is eating there.
|
| Fortunatelly, unlike US laws, GDPR, by virtue of being EU
| law, is actually readable by normal human beings, so its
| fairly straightforward:
|
| https://gdpr.eu/article-3-requirements-of-handling-
| personal-...
| toyg wrote:
| Yes, and "the monitoring of their behaviour as far as
| their behaviour takes place within the Union" absolutely
| applies to examining activity of LinkedIn users from the
| EU.
|
| As for jurisdiction in general: the US routinely _jails_
| people for activities that took place outside the US, as
| soon as they set foot on US soil - occasionally even when
| they don 't even do that (Kim Dotcom). European
| convictions for civil matters will not result in an
| arrest warrant, but can result in financial penalties and
| confiscations applied to anything that has to go through
| Europe in one way or the other.
|
| The limits of enforcement, in the internet era, are
| becoming mostly practical rather than theoretical. Which
| is interesting and poses a number of new, unanswered
| questions. Simply speaking, one cannot just wave away any
| law simply because they don't live in this or that place
| anymore.
| shados wrote:
| Yup, but Article 3 point 2.a has a fairly strict
| definition, where for an entity outside of the US to be
| considered as "offering service" to EU members requires
| some kind of strict ties. The de facto examples is
| offering a product by specifically mentioning payment in
| Euro, or having presence on an domain with a top level
| TLD of a member state. If there's no ties that shows the
| offering is made to EU members, it doesn't apply.
|
| Very very little tie is required (eg: just having one
| employee in the EU in a 50,000 people org would do it
| right there), but the law has been fairly consistently
| interpreted as such.
|
| I get where you're coming from, but this isn't a if or
| but or theoretical. Its just how GDPR gets applied. I
| probably confused things by trying to introduce poor
| analogies, when the law itself is fairly clearly
| interpreted a specific way.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Answering your GDPR question: we use cookie-less analytics with
| https://usefathom.com/ and we do not pass user data to the
| backend endpoints, which you can verify by viewing the network
| calls. When you upload the ZIP or CSV the extraction/parsing
| happens entirely client-side, and then we use auto-generated
| IDs to map connection data from the JSearch API response to the
| client-side stored connection data.
| toyg wrote:
| That's good, you might want to write that somewhere - even
| just to assuage people's worries in general.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| Yep, done at https://jobsbyreferral.com/privacy.
| bsoles wrote:
| I've read the instructions steps as:
|
| 1. Download your entire LinkedIn data.
|
| 2. Give us your entire LinkedIn data.
|
| The "larger" data they are asking for includes "... connections,
| verifications, contacts, account history, and information we
| infer about you based on your profile and activity ..."
| nicksergeant wrote:
| We've added some privacy details here:
| https://jobsbyreferral.com/privacy.
|
| You absolutely do not need to upload all of your data. Just a
| CSV in the format we need (which is now updated on the homepage
| as well).
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Remember Blind? This is like Blind+++
| b8 wrote:
| There's sites where you can pay for referrals or ask for them for
| free on Blind though. Most people accept randos on LinkedIn, so
| unsure how many refer you. The only people who've referred me on
| Linkedin are my previous co-workers.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| More people have done this over the years that some companies
| have started ignoring them. Because they're just as much noise
| as regular applicants
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