I made $5 for creating a tool to help recruiters better understand me

I built a tool over the weekend to help recruiters better understand me, so that they'll stop pitching me, a JavaScript developer with a Java job. And I got my first sale the same day I released it. Another $5 added to my indie hacking treasure chest. 🎉 Here's the full story, I also included the project source code at the bottom.

I'm a full-stack developer by day and indie-hacker-wannabe by night, as a developer these days, I got reached by recruiters quite often. One thing I noticed was that, about 2/5 recruiters pitch me a job that completely out of my skillset, I found it pretty annoying at first, can't you just spend like a minute to take a quick look at my profile or my Github, before reaching out? Later, I understood, they're just throwing it against the wall and see what sticks.

Hmm, wouldn't it be dreamy if I could somehow help them to better understand developers they're trying to recruit, which could lead to a better success rate, more 💰 for them.

"Building a product that helps others to succeed", that's what I heard over and over again from my role models, the real indie hackers out there.

So, I did it. 🎉

ghProfiler, a browser extension that helps anyone to find & profile Github developer. It extracts Github developer profile link on any given page, and builds a comprehensive strength radar chart base on the projects developer has on Github.

I also wrote a "marketing message" to go with it, I named this meme: WHEN RECRUITERS REACH OUT 😂

it goes something like this:

Hi __,

How's going with your talent searching journey? I'm doing okay, still with the current company, will most likely stay at least till the end of this year.

Instead of you helping me, how about we turn the table around this time. :) I'd like to show you a small tool I made. It may not only help you to find developers more easily but also to understand their strength and weakness better, so that the right job can be pitched, which lead to better success rate, sounds interesting?

If so, I present you, ghProfiler, a browser extension to find and profile Github developers on any given web page!

After you installed it on your favorite web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, you name it, I'll leave the links below), all you need to do, is clicking the TRY FIND button in it, it will try to find any Github developer profile links in the active browser tab, once found, it pulls data from Github, and builds you a comprehensive skill chart of that developer, base on the projects he or she has on Github. The LinkedIn profile may not be that reliable, but code never lies. :)

Try it out with my LinkedIn page, I attached a screenshot of what you'll be getting if you do TRY FIND while visiting my LinkedIn page. Neat! right?

One more thing, if you see a 💰 icon next to the developer avatar, that means this developer is set his or her status to hireable! (this is hidden on the Github page)

Happy scouting! Don't hesitate to reach out if there's any other problem I can solve for you with code, that's actually my true passion outside of working 9to5! Have you ever heard the saying, "coding is the closest thing we have to a superpower"? Well, "great power comes with great responsibility", lol!

I'll stop there, and have a great week ahead!

It's available at here for Chrome (chromium) browser, and here for Firefox.

THE END

I don't think this gonna get "big", still, it's another small step on my indie hacking journey.

Lastly, here's the project source code on Github. https://github.com/genkio/gh-profiler

Happy hacking. XD