Show HN: Jobs by Referral: Find jobs in your LinkedIn network
43 nicksergeant 15 7/1/2025, 12:47:06 PM jobsbyreferral.com ↗
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).
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.