We posted on HN in November and it was very effective (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653752). The volume of candidates that came from the HN post was much smaller than other channels, but the quality of candidates was much higher than all the other channels.
Here are the numbers we saw:
HN - 12 candidates total, 7 made it to the initial phone interview and 3 made it to a full interview....we made one offer and he accepted (and he's awesome).
Stackoverflow - 28 candidates, 9 initial phone interviews, 2 full interviews, no offers.
Indeed - 40 candidates, 6 phone interviews, none of them made it to a full interview.
Craigslist - 6 candidates, 2 phone interviews, neither of them made it to a full interview.
Two other thoughts...
I think the reason that HN worked so well for us is that we we took a very targeted approach...before posting, we spent a lot of time thinking through exactly what we were looking for and what we thought made working at BuzzStream a unique opportunity for the right person. We wrote a positioning statement for the job that we used as the starting point for our post. Getting the message right was critical.
The fact that we don't mind bringing on remote people makes things a lot easier.
Here are the numbers we saw:
HN - 12 candidates total, 7 made it to the initial phone interview and 3 made it to a full interview....we made one offer and he accepted (and he's awesome).
Stackoverflow - 28 candidates, 9 initial phone interviews, 2 full interviews, no offers.
Indeed - 40 candidates, 6 phone interviews, none of them made it to a full interview.
Craigslist - 6 candidates, 2 phone interviews, neither of them made it to a full interview.
Two other thoughts...
I think the reason that HN worked so well for us is that we we took a very targeted approach...before posting, we spent a lot of time thinking through exactly what we were looking for and what we thought made working at BuzzStream a unique opportunity for the right person. We wrote a positioning statement for the job that we used as the starting point for our post. Getting the message right was critical.
The fact that we don't mind bringing on remote people makes things a lot easier.