Hard Numbers on Stackoverflow Careers

Posted by William Shields Labels: ,

This is a follow-up to Joel Inc., Stackoverflow Careers and Jumping Sharks, posted late last week.

Joel posted Stack Stats this week in which he demonstrates the correlation between Stackoverflow reputation and Careers take-up.

Now the exact meaning of this graph isn’t listed. Is that 30% of users with 50,000 reputation and above have submitted CVs? Let’s assume that it is.

Reputation Percentage Users in Range # of CVs
1,000 8% 3,257 261
2,000 10% 1,196 120
3,000 11% 640 70
4,000 12% 373 45
5,000 13% 244 32
6,000 13.5% 153 21
7,000 14% 112 16
8,000 15% 95 14
9,000 16% 48 8
10,000 17% 220 37
15,000 19.5% 79 15
20,000 22% 58 12
30,000 26% 28 7
50,000 30% 15 5
Total 10.2% 6,518 663

So we have 145 employers (as of 15 Dec 2009) and 663 job seekers of the 6,518 in the sample representing a percentage take-up of 10.2%.

I would guess that the vast majority of those would’ve paid $29 for 3 years so these ~700 uses account for $21,000 revenue over 3 years.

Is this kind of barrier—charging job seekers—really worth that kind of revenue stream?

Of course the hope is both that:

  1. The number of candidates will substantially grow; and
  2. Many (or most) of them will convert to paying $99/year in 3 years.

Three years from now I would consider it optimistic that the users matching the profile might number 40,000 instead of 10 to 25,000. That won’t accurately reflect the natural attrition rate either (there are some users who have already become basically inactive).

Considering that not all users will be looking for work at the same time (assuming Goldman Sachs’ next crackpot house of cards hasn’t come tumbling down yet), it’s hard to imagine the take-up rate being higher than 15-20% and that’s being optimistic.

So if everything goes well 10,000 people are paying $99/year. $1 million a year—basically money for nothing—is nothing to sneeze at. I can’t see it happening however.

Even if it does, it’s questionable whether this is the critical mass required to attract employers. I guess time will tell.