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General Discussion

Posted by Kyle Chadha
Kyle Chadha
2,257 Points

Building a site that connects with the LinkedIn API -- way over my head?

Hey guys,

I wanted to see if I could get some feedback (potentially from some instructors cough Nick Pettit or Guil Hernandez =)) on how capable I'll be once I complete the courses here. I felt like the android development stuff was more of a cursory intro, whereas the HTML / CSS courses are fairly detailed, so I'm curious how my experience level after completing all the web design & development courses will compare to someone who's been trained more formally.

Basically I'm a startup guy and I want to get better at building my own v1.0's so I can get out MVPs (minimum viable products) economically. Having to trade equity with a developer or dropping a few grand on an idea before I have any proof of concept doesn't make much sense.

What I'm working on currently will involve:

  1. Users connecting with the LinkedIn API
  2. Users submitting criteria on the types of people they're interested in
  3. An "algorithm" (which can even be a fake / manual process for the v1.0) which matches customers based on the criteria specified and other users who fit those criteria
  4. Sending notifications to customers when a match is made

None of this sounds terribly complex to me, and I love working through code and figuring out how to make things work, so I'm hoping it's not impossibly difficult... but I honestly have no idea.

It's also probably worth nothing that I'm hoping to build this all on a WordPress theme (something like this:http://themeluxe.com/themes/quickstep/).

Any thoughts would be much appreciated. I'm very excited about the idea and hope I can build the above in about a month of tinkering.

Thanks!

Kyle

2 Answers

Nick Pettit
STAFF
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher
Nick Pettit
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher

I'm curious how my experience level after completing all the web design & development courses will compare to someone who's been trained more formally.

Treehouse is the real deal. :) Even at the university level, there's very little "formal" training that exists for web/mobile software development.

Users submitting criteria on the types of people they're interested in

HTML and CSS just forms the structural and presentational layers of the web. You'll probably need to learn JavaScript, databases, and some sort of back-end language. Ruby on Rails might be a good place to start.

I see two possible hurdles here. First, writing a search algorithm can be difficult if you don't have much programming experience. Second, I'm not sure how open the LinkedIn API really is for this kind of thing. They charge quite a premium for their talent finding solutions. See here: http://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/products/recruiter.html (click the Buy now button to see pricing)

Kyle Chadha
Kyle Chadha
2,257 Points
Kyle Chadha
Kyle Chadha
2,257 Points

Thanks for the prompt reply Nick! I plan to take all the Treehouse web design and development courses, including the ones on JavaScript and Ruby. Would you estimate that these courses would be sufficient to take a stab at trying to complete the above (sans the algorithm -- I think we can leave that for a v2.0)?

I guess a better way to pose the question would be -- how long would it take you to create something like what I've described? If it's a few days ... I'm hoping that I can learn what I need to along the way to get it done in a month. But if it's a month yourself it's probably not worth the trouble!

As far as the LinkedIn API goes, I know another (unfunded) company that has done this, and it doesn't seem like they've had any issues. The purpose would not be for recruiting, but to use the profile data of registered users to make matches. Pulling the profile information does not seem too difficult (http://developer.linkedin.com/documents/overview) -- any thoughts on the process outlined in that document?

Thanks again for the feedback -- it certainly means a lot and I appreciate it.

Cheers, Kyle

Nick Pettit
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher
Nick Pettit
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher

It's really hard to say how long something like that would take without tons more detail. Software is notoriously difficult to estimate.

If you're a very talented programmer, you could probably put together an MVP in a few weeks. If you're still learning through Treehouse, something that advanced could take you at least a few months to make.

Kyle Chadha
Kyle Chadha
2,257 Points

Got it -- makes sense. Think I'll create the design / structure myself and then call in some special forces for the advanced elements.

Will keep you posted on how it goes! Thanks again for the feedback Nick.