Job boards are still rife with 'ghost jobs'. What's the point?
bbc.com
bbc.com
Project managers got requisitions from HR and so they posted a job opening. (So far so good)
However, the company instituted hiring freezes for 2-3 quarters of each year. No hiring, even for the open positions…
Later, there would be layoffs, so PMs would trade unfilled requisitions with HR instead of firing existing people.
It mattered little in the end because they axed the entire department (up to the director) and rebuilt it overseas.
None of this was ever visible publicly.
More broadly, managers like to hold onto headcount if they can unless someone is a real problem for their team. If they're just someone who isn't an ideal fit any longer they'll probably hold onto them.
I also hear they have a unique, high-impact approach to blackbox testing.
That's certainly one way to go bare metal.
In terms of cloud features they used; the one where it breaks up mid air and rains down to earth...
It wasn’t until I made it into the VPs inner circle that I found out how the game was played.
And ofc the concept of skilled labor needed year round needing to layoff people twice a year is a failure in and of itself. Why not just contract the job at that point? government nitty griity details, I'm guessing?
burying the lede
it's a shell game / chaos situation while they ultimately implement cost cutting.
If the US ever had it, it needs to bring back shaming unethical business decisions. Layoffs should tank a company's share and poison the exec class in current and future endeavors, not give a tiny bump of shares and a golden parachute at best. But that's an uphill battle from what I see.
But the USG will eventually sue you if you're making job ads that you don't want to actually be filled for the purpose of h1b / green cards.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-25...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-labor-departments-rea...
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62s-h1b-willful...
It's a stupid song and dance. If people really want to be isolationist, they should crack down on it. If we really want freedom, drop the requirement. Until then it's just insulting to see a job posting that I know is for the brother of the guy who already works here, who is already promised the job.
So we'd get positions like "Chef for Asian restaurant, must known how to cook food Sichuan style and must be fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, $10ph"
(At the time, minimum wage was $9ph)
You weren't getting a chef for $10 ph, you're not even getting a cook.
And definitely no-one who is fluent in your desired languages.
Ditto the golf coach required, some golf certification required, fluent in Japanese and Mandarin, $10 p/h.
Now, years past, I am thinking it would be fun to do this again for a youtube video like kitboga or Jim Brown.
Some are brazen enough to advertise their "AI Powered HR tools" as they waste applicants time. In some places it is a crime to collect personal information without a time constrained retention window, and honest disclosure of intended use-case.
The fact remains that unless a company has posted a recent position on their site it likely won't exist for general applicants.
Best of luck, =)
What follows below is a rant, and you can ignore it if you like.
Most of these sorts of contacts come from Linkedin, where I have an up-to-date profile showing the nearly 11 years of work in mechanical product and equipment design as a Mechanical Design Engineer, a few of those years being an Engineering Manager for a small automation group.
I keep getting hit up by recruiters for positions that, frankly, would be a career change. "Our client has an urgent need for a structural engineer." Well, that's great, of course, but I'm not one of those. That's really a branch of Civil or Architectural Engineering. Not Mechanical. "That's OK, you're still a great fit."
We end up going through the process of finding out the compensation, where I question: Are you sure they're going to be willing to pay someone who is new at this job the same salary as someone who's been working in their field for over a decade?
I'm talking to these people because I rarely pass on learning about an opportunity. There's a chance for me to go for my Professional Engineer license in these gigs, so it's worth exploring a little bit.
Invariably, we get to the point of receiving feedback from the hiring firm and the response is "Well... you aren't a structural / Professional / MEP / BIM engineer, which is what we require." Bonus points for that part of the feedback being received during an interview by the miserable fuck who didn't know when to ignore a recruiter: me.
To round all this out be to be back on topic: Thank you @joel_mckay for that "staffing agency lead generation firm" line. That helps me to realize what I've been coming to suspect is true: These aren't actually recruiters hired by firms. They're people scouring Linkedin for anyone who's a) breathing and b) has some overlapping words, for a job post the "recruiter" probably also found on Linkedin.
Note your PE ticket is regional, and will constrain where you can be employed in such roles. Fine if you drop anchor in a city works-yard or utility, but not really a lot of vertical movement in such roles.
Journeyman/Journey-person certification is usually quicker, and with a practical factory background will keep you busy.
Note in some regions the requirements for either cert path can vary a lot.
Best of luck =)
I think scammers rely on that too much, in other faster moving areas I think looking exactly like official communication will get higher quality marks, but for recruiting typos are the way
2. If you're a job applicant, wouldn't having obvious typos/grammar issues make you look less professional? Also, "bad spelling/grammar = scam" is a heuristic that people use as well, so you're effectively banking on the fact that the employer is desperate enough for a rockstar engineer that they'll interview anyone who applies.
the scammers use mispellings in their own job postings and communications, to attract people that would ignore the mispellings, because those people would ignore many other things too
CA and NY are also states that mandatory pay range disclosures for job adverts, too.
as a small rant, I am getting tired of the whiplash between "it's harder than ever to find a job" and "the economy has recovered and unemployement is record lows". This is normally easily explainable but these seem to both be bipartisan points from my browsing on the topic. So I am simply perplexed. -------
On topic: Ghost jobs are such a weird concept in this day and age. As we see here, it is extremely easy to get hundreds, thousands of resumes within days of a job posting, so why pretend to keep resumes on record to call people on later? The latest I've been contacted about such a role was some 5 months later, and that was due to a referral randomly pinging the company for a tangential job. Otherwise, anything that hasn't responded within a month may as well be cast to the void.
The most common lip service seems to be what you expect:
>Half the respondents reported they keep job listings open indefinitely because they "always open to new people". More than one in three respondents said they kept the listings active to build a pool of applicants in case of turnover – not because a role needs to be filled in a timely manner.
Exactly my point. But maybe it's just me. Has anyone ever had a >1 month response from a company that has experienced turnover?
> More than 40% of hiring managers said they list jobs they aren't actively trying to fill to give the impression that the company is growing. A similar share said the job listings are made to motivate employees, while 34% said the jobs are posted to placate overworked staff who may be hoping for additional help to be brought on.
Well, these seem to be the more brutally honest answers. Fraud is probably too strong a word, but this does feel like exploitive behavior that should be reigned in.
And, anecdotally, I see mostly pretty senior people leaving--maybe retiring a bit early. Was just having a conversation about this with a friend of mine.
Most of the jobs I've been applying to have hundreds of applicants. It's been rough to say the least. Since January, I've had a couple times where I'm in the final few and an offer at a startup that didn't get the funding they needed.
I'm getting relatively anxious and far more open to most things at this point. A 1/3 pay cut is rough, but I need a job.
Sounds like securities fraud
its up to the person involved in a securities transaction to bring the lawsuit, or snitch
nice bounties for this by the way, doesn't rely on the presence of shares, or being publicly traded. bonds, options, warrants, just as good
employees and contractors and outside personnel can snitch too, just make sure the amounts are worthwhile. if you use a lawyer the US government allows anonymity for this programme
I’m curious. How can these be true at once?
* "The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the U.S. economy added 275,000 jobs in February." However, "unemployment rose to 3.9% in February, the highest rate since January 2022." In January 2024, the overall employment rate was 3.7%.
* "A spike in construction, retail and food services jobs contributed to the surprising gain in employment in February."
* "Payroll gains in February were distributed across many areas of the economy. Health care, leisure and hospitality and government led the way, contributing to almost three quarters of the job gains."
This matches with the anecdotes that I've been hearing from day-to-day conversation: certain sectors such as health care and the service industry are short on people, whereas openings are far fewer in other sectors such as technology. However, I couldn't find employment data specific to the tech sector in this brief report.
[1] https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/outlook/economic-outlook/j...
If you're in tech (as most of us are here) it can be pretty tough to find a job right now unless you have mad AI skillz. But in other sectors it's generally pretty easy to find a job right now. So both can be true depending on what sector you're in.
This is in Los Angeles by the way. I hear California in particular has higher unemployment than average, so maybe it's a local issue.
I hope I'm very wrong, but I have my doubts...
I worked in one where there was a layoff and hiring freeze. Yet the website contains hundreds of open positions.
Had it happen for me once as well. A new team was being formed that I was part of. I was given a certain job post ID to apply for that was meant for me. Some people got upset, because they were told to apply for a level 2 position, when they saw a level 3 or 4 position was also out there that they wanted to go for… but the decisions had already been made.
If you wanted to start a recruiting operation you'd start with no job reqs and no customer firms most likely. You're going to need some of those. One way to get them would be to source a pool of resumes, talk to some candidates, sell them on your fake portfolio of reqs etc. NOW you got a pool of quality resumes and some candidates you can pump and you start making calls and sending emails to companies requesting they sign your payment agreement for access to all the awesome candidates in your pool.
Alternatively, if you work a W2 job in HR/corporate recruiting, you have metrics and a schedule of work like anyone else. The metaphorical left arm of corporate and the equivalent right arm are not aware of each others existence and operation in this setting. You get job reqs in a system and you post them. Are they approved for hire? Are they Hopes and Dreams from department managers? Are they vetted internally to be real at all? Who knows. All the person positing knows is that they're getting paid to be at work, be a recruiter, and source people. They post these reqs and keep cashing paychecks. This is normal.
Still yet, there are advertised govt. positions for state agencies. Recruiters often just take these reqs unaltered from the state entity and post them as if they're repping them. They're not most likely but they may have some broader agreement with a state organization for payment so they post them anyhow. This is free inventory for recruiters and any add they place, anyone they talk to, any resume they get .. thats a fish in the boat for free. Of course this happens.
In my own pursuits I have a set of rules I rate reqs by. Being able to get someone on the phone is important. If you're real, you can hop on a call and you in fact want to. When I do talk to someone they shouldn't be asking me for SSN or other IDs either, because they want to "submit" you right away, thus binding the company they submit your info to for payment in the event of your hire. This is a game in itself because you are forever burned to come into this company again either on your own or via a higher quality recruiter. DO NOT EVER FALL FOR THIS. Another one is you'd better speak English as well as I do (I'm in the US) and if you don't you're an offshore resume mill and I want none of what you're doing. All sorts of dirty recruiting tricks once you really get into this.