pre-screen.dev
Top-of-funnel automated developer screening tool
After waiting about two and a half months, pre-screen.dev was finally featured on betalist in the free plan!
I didn't have to pay for the feature, just had to wait a long time.
If you could go a give it a heart, I will follow you on twitter 🙏
So, the $100 ads spent in linkedin brought in some traffic.
My thought process behind this was:
- Linkedin ads
- ???
- people magically sign up
Wasn't quite how it worked.
Most users just read the first page, maybe the FAQ, and maybe looked at the demo page.
A handful of users, however, actually signed into the demo account.
Using hotjar I could see their sessions and what they were doing. Their sessions were short under 1 minute.
And they were NOT doing any of the cool stuff the product does.
So I did two things:
Made the demo more prominent:
Made an interactive product tour
To really get users to do what I want them to do on the product, I decided to make an interactive product tour, you can see that here: product tour
There are now multiple sessions of users in the demo page that are 10+ minutes, and have gotten some form submissions expressing interest, which tells me there is enough here to be worth pursuing.
No sales or signups yet, can be due to how organizations are structured and the people checking the demo out not having power to make purchase decisions.
Will keep figuring it out 🙏
The ad spend on linkedin ads brought some traffic to my demo account.
Using hotjar I noticed that users weren't really digging deep into the product, and not seeing the cool features I want to showcase.
So I decided to help them out by building a little product tour that highlights elements and explains what happens when you click them, and where to see certain data.
After pushing this to github I get a deployment error saying my disk is full! I think my log files are getting very large and there is no rotation setup.
So I had to go and add a bigger SSD (will investigate the logfile size in the meantime!)
I recorded it with loom, feel free to check it out:
https://www.loom.com/share/84ce7137a8af4e03a54ff04d8f762ae2
Next step is $100 on reddit ads and testing if these changes help convert, or at least see if people use the tour.
... And got 0 sign-ups out of 3000+ impressions and a CTR of 1.5%. A handful of people tried my open demo (doesn't ask for email or any data) but didn't actually use any of the unique features I offer. This calls for an interactive product guide of sorts.
And also tells me I needed to adjust my messaging.
I have direct competition in the value proposition side of things, so I checked out their site and took inspiration from what's seemingly working for them.
Next step is to spend some more money on ads, but I will first exhaust my network and see if this new messaging makes things clearer.
Homepage before simplifying my message:
Homepage after realising I needed to simplify my message:
Still a work in progress! :)
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I am actually in the market for this and have two pieces of feedback:
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I actually think the messaging got weaker instead of simplified. The first version tells me exactly what this does, why the second version doesn't tell me anything.
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Your pricing is way too cheap. I would charge at least $49 per month for this. This is B2B, hiring a software developer can cost anything from $60,000 to multiple six figures. If this truly helps with what it promises it should be priced a lot higher. Otherwise you are signaling me that this is not reliable.
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Totally agree with @jaschaio. The 1st version is better because it is very specific without being too wordy, but not enough to make someone curious enough to reach out. You also made the font very large which is also good.
I like that you shortened the tagline: "don't rely on CVs to screen technical people". However, you dont say what they should rely on? EG" rely on software to screen for the top 20% technical candidates" Or something to that affect.
Lastly, not sure what signup does, but you may consider changing the CTA to "See How"
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Maybe keep the first version of the headline but highlight parts of it like you did with the 2nd one?
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Hey! Great feedback. We should talk.
This is a very special launch price basically limited to BetaList (waiting for launch date) and people who sign up now.
I may have a cheaper plan for early stage startups later on, but prices will 10x in Q42022.
I have case studies coming up that showcase the value in the real world.
What's your job title/role? Seems like different people need different levels of detail when it comes to messaging.
Check out the demo (preferably on a computer). And do the challenge yourself, there is juicy data that gives A LOT of insight into someone's level of detail and how they think.
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For the copy, how about "We pre-screen developers, so you can hire faster and cheaper
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The revised messaging is simpler, which is good. I think there is still room for improvement, though. Higher quality is too generic a term to be meaningful. Higher quality in what way? What is the measurement of that?
It's better to use specific terms that are easy to picture and are relevant to your audience's pain or aspirations. Think about the specific aspects of the problem you're solving; the ones that are the most frustrating and/or important to users, and speak to that.
I would also explore alternatives for your button copy. Signing up for something is a commitment, which adds friction. You want to make it inviting and easy. You could try something like Get Started, or even better, speak to the benefit of it.
Best of luck.
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I'm interested in trying out LinkedIn Ads myself, was wondering if $33 CPM is normal. That seems high for programmatic paid ads.
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It's pretty high. I rounded up/down some digits here, but actual CPM is $28.8. It's hardcore expensive.
I got these $100 from a voucher, I'm sure you can find one too! They send them out quite often.
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In fact, advertising in LinkedIn is more expensive. The minimum budget for testing is at least $300.
I wish you luck!-
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Yikes! 😭
Thanks :)
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My feedback would be
What does "High Quality" even mean?
I can go to Upwork and get a dev with 98% job success rating
You need to communicate concisely WHY your product is the no-brainer option
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Thank you for the feedback!
I guess it has some way to go. What if I had "more effective" instead of higher quality?
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It still doesn't answer the question of WHY it is better.
What makes your developers more effective?
Using something like "Developers with Silicon Valley experience" is more precise and answers the question of why your option is better.
You could use something touting job satisfaction. Something like "Only Developers with 95% client satisfaction are allowed on the platform"
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That would go over the character limit for titles of most advertising platforms though!
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That's what I was thinking as well. The original was way too wordy, but then the new version was too short and didn't provide a unique selling proposition. It was just a vague "do more with less" that immediately makes you go, "yeah, right".
The other thing that might be a challenge here is that hiring departments may have processes already in place and may be metrics-based. That makes me think that 1) even if you have "higher quality" applicants, your overall numbers might go down, which might look bad for an individual recruiter and 2) if you introduce another step in the hiring process, it might actually be more work for the recruiter, or at least it adds more "thinking" in their existing process.
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Definitely. This was never aimed at recruiters, but I've considered it. Higher quality = more placements, which = more money for the same effort.
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This was never aimed at recruiters, but I've considered it.
Got it! I wonder if adjusting the copy to be more directed at non-recruiters would help. Assuming you're targeting startups or small businesses that don't have recruiters, maybe the focus should be on making your team better, something like "Find the right devs to join your team with less effort." Basically, make it feel more personal to the people actually hiring.
The focus right now on time spent hiring really does make me think of recruiters. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe when I think of small startups, I'm thinking they don't spend any time on hiring at all, or at least not as much as they would like. Posting this on LinkedIn might also be what's making me think "Oh, you're looking for recruiters."
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This is great!
And I mean, as CTO at a startup, recruiting is 20% of what I do. Perhaps the messaging is too related to my role?
I REALLY like "Find the right devs to join your team with less effort."!
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Yeah, second copy is definitely better. Please post the followup - this is very useful!!!
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You can’t spend that little on any ads and expect anything. The only time to go near ads is once you got a couple of thousand $ to blow, that you are willing to lose, test and optimize else failure is likely because it takes a lot of data to optimize and they mean a lot of spend, unless you get extremely lucky or have an amazing offer, there are swine rare exceptions to this
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LinkedIn ads is a waste of money
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I've checked your landing page and have no idea how your service is working ...
Are you doing this manually?
What type of developers you can check? any developer? web app devs? data scientists? dev ops? mobile devs? what programming languages/frameworks?
After checking the landing web page I have no idea.
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Great feedback!
- Not manually.
- Web developers is the focus
- Language/framework agnostic, simply looks for speed, understanding instructions, and detail orientedness. There has been language specific requests, so might look into this, have some ideas to test.
I will review the text to add more info. But I can't be too detailed or the applicants will find it! (had to remove it already)
I used to have a comprehensive description of the test, but people applying would find it
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let them find it, devs like to learn, test themself ...
I focus on web developers, and would you like to be language/framework agnostic? So what are you trying to test? If they understand what the server is? what is the web browser? do you have some puzzles for them? how are you different from leetcode?
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Try applying: https://app.pre-screen.dev/job/1ed0d3ba-0197-6936-97a2-8f7add1af7cc
Basic tasks that take out on average 80% of people compared to a form. There are a few hidden things that only the most detail oriented will find.
I have ideas for different difficulties, some involving docker (more devopsy), some involving pushing code to a repo that gets a test suit run, etc.
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For me, you are too secret about your way of screening candidates. That might be useful for your clients.
But it is just my opinion.
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No, this is great feedback! I will definitely incorporate it into the landing page :) or add a "how it works" page!
The platform did register your attempts though ;)
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Thanks for sharing the learnings :)
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The first one is better.
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Advertising is a skill, many platforms have different criteria.
You need to improve on your hooks, page conversions.-
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Oh for sure, seems like I need to put 10+ years into this to be good. Gotta increase my marketing learning budget 😂
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Simplifying your message is definitely crucial! I didn't even want to spend a second reading your first copy because of how many words are in there!
However, for the 2nd copy, my mind naturally gravitated toward that and start reading high-quality developers with less effort.
Good job!
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I like the first headline better even though it's a bit lengthy. Because it's specific about the value and the offer.
What about - "Pre-screen developers before spending time on recruitment"
High quality and Low effort are too generic. I'd love to see how this works out for you.
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Thanks for sharing!
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This comment was deleted a year ago
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Definitely starting to notice that it was just too little info. Ads are obscenely expensive, gonna wait for some sales before doing this.
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I came up with an alternate name that made more sense, and I wasn't sure whether to change all my copy or leave it as-is.
Previous name: API-Apply
Current name: pre-screen.dev
Which to choose? 🤨
So I asked around. Very technical people had no trouble figuring out what API-Apply did. But this software will be used by less technical people.
And the new name was just much better at explaining what the tool does. My mom understood pre-screen.dev immediately, whereas API-Apply gave me more of a "that's nice, honey" response.
So I changed all the copy, server, emails, logos, and setup redirects 🤦♂️
Now it lives at https://pre-screen.dev 😇
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Good decision!
I think you should rephrase this: "pre-screen.dev eliminates up to 80% of applicants for software development positions using our secret 👀 fully automated method."And also make this text stand out. It's a meaningful sentence, and the grey text made me skip it
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Hey! Cheers for the feedback 🙏
How would you rephrase it? Would you focus on time saved instead?
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The MVP had some problems since I did it in a low-code way. I've been a software engineer for ages and wanted to try new tools, but the flexibility and speed of development with the right framework is hard to beat.
So I decided to re-write everything.
This is roughly my "stack":
Design
- Figma
Landing page
- Hugo
- Netlify
Web app:
- PHP
- Symfony
- PostgreSQL
- Docker
- Digitalocean
- Caddy server
- DNS: Netlify
Emails
- Transactional:
- Mailgun
- Marketing:
- Sendinblue
- Receiving:
- Zoho
Payments
- Stripe checkout
Admin
- Google docs
Screening freelancers
- pre-screen.dev (hehe)
Paying freelancers
- Deel
Project management
- Trello
It all runs in docker inside digitalocean.
Things are overall looking much prettier!
I want to use this as a boilerplate/starter for future projects and may even open source it.
Needed an MVP to use for my own use-case, and for some friends that have similar needs.
I decided to film myself building this MVP from scratch, and you can see it here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NU4F3ZzuNU
Things I cover:
- (0:00) Explaining the idea
- (2:27 )Basic functionality with Zapier
- (21:27) Buy Domain
- (27:30) Make bilingual public website (Hugo + Netlify)
- (58:01) Make logo (Figma)
- (1:09:55) Write sales copy, walkthrough of features
I’ve screened hundreds of engineers over the years, and the thing they all had in common was that outwardly they had nothing in common.
- Some had essentially no CV, but aced technical interviews.
- Some had no degree
- Some had great CVs with all sorts of certifications but simply didn’t perform
- Some had degrees but couldn’t pass a basic technical screening
- Some were great with algorithms but couldn’t do more day-to-day real work stuff
However, I had to decide whether to move them to next stage by looking at their CV, and all the claims they made. This meant I was spending time looking at CVs of people who couldn’t perform. This uses up time. I wanted to not have to think about whether someone is capable of doing the work, and simply screening for culture-fit.
Out of all these candidates, how do I screen for people capable to doing the work, regardless of their CV or claimed experience, with the least amount work for the candidate? Nobody likes long interview cycles and long take-home challenges, I want to reduce friction here and respect people’s time.
So I decided to create a test, but it had some requirements:
- Must be easy and for someone capable to do, but hard someone uncapable
- Mustn’t be solely based on algorithms, because general engineers are expected to know more than just algorithms with the rise of DevOps culture
This eventually lead to the creation of API Apply.
Let’s assume 3 types of people:
#1 Experienced, capable
#2 Inexperienced, capable
#3 Inexperienced, not capable
#1 are expensive, hard to find
#2 is hard to detect, they can look like #3 and get filtered out on first look
#3 you don’t want. They often have beautiful CVs and tonnes of certificates ( with dubious validity: https://www.api-apply.com/blog/world-of-fake-coursera-certificates/)
#3 can be 50% (or more!) of people applying.
API Apply does a very good job at filtering them out because the application process is slightly more complicated than just pressing “submit” on an application form, while at the same time allowing #2 and #3 to get into your pipelines more easily.
The #3 you hire have #1 potential. Grow them well.
3 Comments
Congrats!
Hey Amando, that sounds like a cool concept!
I am wondering if you have plans to scale. At this point, I can see you are only pre-screening on the matter if someone is familiar with making a POST request, but have you thought about how to make it modular and more suitable for specific use cases for companies?
e.g. let's say a company works with a specific type of financial API - you could create this so they can implement their own concepts that will eventually lead them to the last request that would be the one you are having now
p.s. sorry if I missed if something like that is already implemented
Hey! Cheers for the feedback :)
As of now I test a bit more than just the POST request.
Yes, I have thought about it, and have some plans in a roadmap on trello.
I don't necessarily want to test things that can be looked up on some API docs page, however! Will gladly jump on a call and expand a little more :)