Summary
A website that lists jobs in innovation, startups and tech companies, that are suitable for generalists, i.e. people whose careers don’t fit into neat career categories (such as engineering, product, design, sales, marketing, and talent).
https://generalist.carrd.co/
Why I built it
At the start of 2022 I lost my job. I’d been working with startups for 3.5 years so I knew the ecosystem well, and knew where startup jobs were advertised. But the startup job listings were listed by specialisation: designer, product manager, engineer, marketing, sales, talent. If you don’t fit these categories you have to scroll the entire site searching for non-specialist job titles in the cracks.
I was also trawling LinkedIn and other careers sites looking for jobs, searching for keywords like startup, innovation, entrepreneurship, program management, operations, chief of staff. But there was a lot of noise here, with a search for “innovation” turning up a hundred Business Analyst positions for every relevant “innovation manager” role.
I realised: I’m an insider, and I’m struggling to find the jobs relevant to me. How must it feel to be an outsider looking for your first startup job?
This site is my way of opening the door.
Inspiration
Others have built similar gateways into startups or specific areas of tech.
- Emily Casey, What the Health?! job board (https://what-the-health.pallet.com/jobs) “Connecting Australia's Best Healthtech Innovators with Talent & Operators”
- Screw the Noise: for most of 2021 Mike Meloni published a handpicked daily list of “cool Australian digital jobs”
- NatureTech Jobs: “The climate jobs platform tackling the biodiversity crisis”
- Jessy Wu from AfterWork Ventures does a regular roundup of jobs in Australian venture capital, e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jessyzwu_jobs-hiring-venturecapital-activity-6899619414216466432-wSEw
- Josh Wardle’s philosophy while building Wordle.
- “I used to work in Silicon Valley, and I’m aware of the things that, especially with games, you’re meant to do with people’s attention. You’re trying to capture as much of people’s attention as you can. So that involves things like endless play, or sending them push notifications, or asking them for sign-up information. And philosophically, I enjoy doing the opposite of all those things, doing all the things that you are not meant to do, which I think has bizarrely had this effect where the game feels really human and just enjoyable.”
- With GIST Jobs, my focus is on what I’d like as a user. So, for example, in the email digest I include links directly to each job ad — rather than making a user “click for more” and come back to the GIST Jobs website to get that info. Why add that layer of effort just so I can record an extra website visit?
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