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> Also, elaborate on why this one is a problem, and how much you're speculating

Seriously?

"Why is it a problem that companies here are wasting candidates time and efforts in having them go through a whole recruitment process with zero intention of hiring any of the candidates?"

> suggest a solution

Moderators have no issue censuring and decoupling people's comments on threads that question company hiring processes - maybe they can show a similar effort in censuring companies that appear to be insincere in their effort and posts.

> maybe they can show a similar effort in censuring companies that appear to be insincere in their effort and posts

this is a great idea actually! Based off this feedback I'm thinking I post this on tomorrow's "Who is hiring?".

Is this going to be useful?:

METAPOST: I hope this helps candidates.

Employers: If you get overwhelmed with applications, please post an update or a followup that you are, so that candidates know you're not processing applications any longer. People take time to read your post, do research, apply: if all that effort is never going to be reciprocated, be kind and inform upfront.

Candidates: HANG IN THERE. Also, please help out other candidates and let us know how the company has/is treating you.

dang (and HN Mods), a request: I understand making comments about company behavior is against the spirit of "Ask HN: Who is hiring?", so we want your help. Not only a lot more candidates are applying right now but a lot more are unemployed and have been for months. So they are desperate and companies are taking advantage of and abusing their desperation. Is there a way other candidates can comment on companies that misbehave? Two companies that have been prolific on "Ask HN: Who is hiring?", posting every month for the last year have been identified where they take every candidate through the whole interview process as an exercise to train their current staff on interviewing with no actual intention of hiring candidates - where do we share this feedback?

The problem is, this became a behavior that is encouraged. Whether posting job ad is free or payed, a lot of companies do this to gain additional exposure, advertising themselves actually via job ad.

As an HR professional, I have seen this happening more and more. To add insult to the wound, most of those companies never respond to applications.

The whole point around it is that is cheaper to use job posting ad to advertise yourself than to pay real advertisement in form of banner or sponsored text ad. Most of those come minimum retention date, and are a lot more expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions.

You're being very defensive.

GP said

> Also, an HNer shouldn't phrase a headline as a question, since it's a local meme that the answer is "no".

Suggesting he didn't know it's more than a local meme. I have made no comment about your post here.

> You're being very defensive.

My response was a quote from the link they posted

> Also, an HNer shouldn't phrase a headline as a question, since it's a local meme that the answer is "no".

Is that the case here?

> First, lead your post with the problem

This is a great suggestion, but writing, like good engineering is context sensitive - a "good pattern" can have an exception.

For this post, I wanted to empathize with candidates most of who are having a terrible time right now and some being outright exploited. Which is why it begins the way it does.

> Also, elaborate on why this following one is a problem [edit: clarified which quote I was talking about], and how much you're speculating

This post is in part, to check my hypothesis that atleast one company is using the weak market to expose their staff to the process of interviewing experienced candidates - something that would be hard to do in a "hot" market where experienced candidates are hard to come by to interview.

I like your Spidey Sense for possible wrongdoing, and I guess there's a good chance you're on to something this time.

But I was confused why you were leading with a call to action of starting a subreddit, before you said why. What I think was the lede -- that there might be bad actors using fake interviews for training or other purposes -- was buried.

I happened to read further, but I think many readers wouldn't. Then towards the end, you're asking for more information, and the short-attention-span readers have forgotten your original call to action.

> Then towards the end, you're asking for more information, and the short-attention-span readers have forgotten your original call to action

This makes a lot of sense. I also Thank You for suggesting how I could have done better so I upvoted you as well - I made this comment because it might feel like I was disagreeing with you, but I was really challenging you with an alternate POV and clarifying my own thought process