Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
Instantly that felt completely insane to me, my bullshit detector went off the chart, so since they provided a source, I followed up on the source to see the evidence for myself.
What do you know, the source is from a "my perfect resume" website that apparently conducted a study on the issue, but they aren't providing the details of the study, aren't providing a paper , aren't providing the methodology or questions asked, aren't providing any details whatsoever, the only thing they provide is the "conclusions" of their study.
So, apparently because this random website supposedly conducted a study, and they say the result was "81% posted fake jobs", that makes it true.
Hey, I also conducted a study, and 14% posted fake jobs. There, my claim has just as much backing as theirs does.
Instantly lost interest in the "study" and the article based on it.
I love San Francisco to death, but there's no reliable local newspaper. It drives me nuts.
I've also been hired after similar "non-interviews". Sometimes it's hard to know if it's just disorganisation/incompetence or if there's outright fakery going on.
It's extremely common at most companies, including MFAANG, because it makes zero sense to layoff the incumbent and hire a brand new person.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/jy5rcw/lpt_bec...
Facebook got caught.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/03/facebook-...
He was a friend of a friend and one of the most unprincipled people I've ever gotten to actually know. But I assume there are many similar people higher in corporate hierarchies that I wouldn't ever know.
Edit: Or maybe not, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42012035
I have 5 Sr. Devs and if any of them split, how long would it take me to replace them? and at what rate? and what skillsets will they have and not have?
Although I understand, and to some extent share, your skepticism regarding the "study", I have no problem conceiving that a trend might currently be setting around the practice of posting fake ads, for whatever reason. It doesn't require much. In an unregulated playing field, simple peer pressure and survival is all you need to drive everyone to shady practices.
So, the study might be moot, but the number isn't so surprising.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/11/27/how-gho...
You probably need to pay to see their surveys, but even if you don't trust that: the bureau of labor has had to make huge adjustments all this year and last year. This isn't just some bad optics.
But this SF Gate piece is dumb. The article has one source for its data points and the author does nothing to investigate or challenge the quality of that data. This is not journalism. It looks like a PR piece for resume builder.
The Forbes article you linked is much more informative.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm [2] https://thedispatch.com/article/jobs-report-revisions-explai...
What about job postings that are not taken down until a new hire is given the offer, agrees verbally, signs the paperwork, relocates and actually shows up on the job?
Same thing happens with H1B/PERM, except now it's the law requiring it rather than company policy. The company already has someone doing the job today, but legally they have to post the job and interview a certain number of candidates to prove there is no US citizen that can do it.
Terrible situation for all involved.
No. If you publish it, you have to give an estimation of the salary, but that's the only limitation, at least in my country. Companies have internal guidelines, like in mine, you can't hire a relative to your own department, but the job i got wasn't on a public listing, it's my agent who gave my CV to my current team leader, he was interested, organized an itw, then 3 month later i hoped to my current job (and i am way better for it).
And yes, companies often go with the lowest common denominator across Europe to avoid any doubt when dealing with multinational people. In my personal case it could be reasonably claimed that laws of 5 different countries apply to me based on citizenship, registered residence, actual places of work... Of course my employer wants to be covered.
(Or buy the farmland themselves and resume paying migrants to do it.)
Land price would also balloon.
Or local farming would collapse and 99% of food would be imported. But massive import taxes are more likely since this is national security question.
The hippie aligned ones just want to get infinite degrees in something natural like forestry management. The rest are nurses or civil servants if they want a career, or real estate agents or artists or game streamers otherwise.
If anything I think younger Americans tend to go for the kind of vulgar Marxism where everything bad is caused by "corporations", and women in strongly prefer work that comes off as being good for society, which means they won't even consider it.
Same for me of course; I work in tech because I was on the computer too much, not because I was greedy and looked up good careers.
In this market? Throw me a hoe tell me where to dig. I just need to pay rent.
I know there are people who do part-time work in oil fields or fishing ships, so that's always possible if you want to move to North Dakota or Alaska temporarily.
*Okay, I can "literally" talk with family about selling the home. But I do just need some steady work during the downtimes. I'm not at a point where I feel I want to uproot my entire lifestyle, career, and livlihood just to do blue collar work.
There would be basically zero chance of anyone in my urban high school, or circle of friends, to turn around and say "I'm going to be a migrant farmworker when I graduate!" and it's unclear whether any non-Latino could even achieve such a career. GP indicated that urban/suburban living wouldn't be possible. You'd certainly need to move around, and you'd be an outcast if you didn't speak Spanish, if you weren't nominally Catholic, or celebrate holidays like a Hispanic. Your children would come to learn Spanish and cultural customs, but they'd still be outcast because of racism. You'd have a weird relationship with the overseers, because they'd be more like you, so neither side would really accept you.
(Sub)urban White kids are usually groomed to go to college and get a white-collar or office job, and the dropouts do some kind of tech vocational path, or end up doing clerking minimum-wage to get by. So you have a spectrum of white/blue collar, but there's no path to "migrant farmworker" or other sort of laborer, because my people Just Don't Do That. It's unthinkable.
Even agrarian Native American communities have a huge problem with "brain drain" there, because the opportunities on the Reservation are zilch, unless you want to work at a casino? So young Natives dream of leaving at the first chance, going into the city, and assimilating, losing their culture, because it's a survival thing. Their agriculture isn't sustainable, no matter how you slice it--what are they going to do, hire from outside?
Since the 80s we've had White people who said that migrants come to steal our jobs. Or they say they're taking jobs no American wants. But realistically, even if American wanted those jobs at those wages, they couldn't have them, because of the ethnic hegemony in certain industries.
If you don't think Americans are willing to pick fruits and vegetables, go find a farmer, have him put a sign at the edge of his property that says "Free fruits and vegetables, you pick them yourself" and watch how quickly the field is emptied.
And while this may have been idle speculation a few years ago, we now have pretty solid empirical evidence: when food prices increased by 10-20%, even in the middle of the fastest-growing wages in decades, the country had a collective temper tantrum.
no one legal is taking this as a job to pay off a mortgage or a car loan.
Ever worked a blast furnace? Or a coal mine?
You absolutely can pay enough money to get Americans to do really shitty manual labor.
and mines have a lot, like a LOT, of labor laws behind them. you know, the whole sending 10 year olds down the shaft thing and then literally covering up what went wrong.
If you have any long-term H1B coworkers from less-favored nations, I guarantee you there's a heartbreaking story they have to tell you if you ask.
I work with a super high-performing guy with a Masters degree who has been at my company for 15 years and gets treated super poorly by the company. He still is probably 10 years away from getting a naturalization interview and has no hope of switching jobs in the meantime (and has children that are citizens...).
At least it that way about a decade ago, as I’m realizing things might have changed since then
Right now I suspect you're probably right. But 2 or 3 years ago?
If you're right then why would companies want to go through all of the extra paperwork and hoops to hire an H1B right now? Maybe the answer is "they can pay less"? But I'm not sure if it's actually all that much less than they could pay someone who's been looking for work for six months to a year or more.
It's endlessly frustrating that the US government wants to centrally plan my hiring decisions.
What's the alternative - the government outsources visa issuance to the companies employing foreign labor?
Yes, there's been mild movement away from this insanity, but we're still miles to the right of what actually supports the people who live here.
Posted obscurely in a corner of the cafeteria, but exposing my salary to anyone who cared to look. They were never going to hire someone else, and we all knew it, but the charade had to be played.
I feel confident there are software jobs where it's essentially as specialized.
Nowadays, in tech, it's all about who you know rather than what you know.
So, what option do teams have? Just hire the people that your good devs say are good is honestly the most effective practice that I've seen.
[1] To be fair, sometimes the headcount disappeared for various reasons, but that's not the same as "meh...just have a look around and jerk some peoples chains".
I've got my first job after moving countries in Europe, despite this (very similar but it was 6 weeks IIRC) limitation being in place by law, within a week. Consulting body shop through which I was billing per day, and the umbrella company took 20% cut.
It seems its trivial to circumvent this kind of rule across the globe, and TBH what kind of state employee team would go over every single foreign first hire in given region, all the evidence and check its validity, gather all the details. Heck police ignore smaller crimes below certain threshold, states have no real processing power to handle this well.
...except now the recruiting and HR can report these candidates and interviews on their metrics, candidates had a hope of finding a job, and Sam has a bulletproof explanation in case if anybody asks why his buddy was hired. Win-win-win.
The amount of spam and fake jobs on LI + other major sites is just disgusting and is ripe for government to come in and crack some heads.
Is this normal?
I would never fill that in, because I wouldn't want to bother my references. I know some of them don't really like doing it, but do it as a favour because we're on good terms. Probably not a rare scenario. I'm okay asking in a "if you provide me a reference, I will get a new job" as the final stage, but not as a "just checking in case I might land a job".
but that's not the only thing. in germany it is common to ask for written reference letters which are called "arbeitszeugnis" (work report card, like the report card you get from school). that term makes me feel like i was a kid. it clearly establishes a hierarchy. i am the lowly subordinate employee and you are the superior employer that i am to look up to. it gets really wierd when i consider that i have been on the other side as an employer myself. (and by law these letters must be honest and may not contain unfounded negative statements which makes employers avoid writing anything negative because they could get sued.)
and then there are places who ask for actual school report cards or at least grade averages or want to know how i did in math in school, as if that was in any way useful to understand how i would do as a programmer decades later.
But then later another group asked me for references at the beginning, I declined to provide them, and then they were okay with proceeding through the interview process.
Maybe it would work in the general case to always reply to such a request with "some previous group ghosted me, and so I've vowed to withhold the references until later in the process."?
The tech field is centered around skills. You're under pressures to keep them sharp and up to date. When you're looking for work and you're done polishing the resume, updating the blog posts, doing your leetcode drills, do you really want to add playing LinkedIn games to the mix?
It seems to me that tech workers would benefit from having really tech-focused job networks. Not these hybrid platforms. LinkedIn, Indeed, and friends. They don't particularly care about you as a tech worker. They don't even understand you or your skillset. You're a backend dev with many years of OOP, FP, Agile, Kanban, Python, Go, SQL, JavaScript, and a slew of other relevant skills for the job, but they'll gladly inform you that you're missing a few skills to better match the list in the ad: go-getter, team-player, positive-attitude. Ok, sure, whatever...
Another thing, seeing an ad that asks for Python, Go, Node.js, SQL, React, Terraform, Kubernetes as an "Intermediate position" just tells me that no one in charge cares.
When I interview, I often ask the recruiter to share the cv, portfolio, and GitHub/other. As they often just share a LinkedIn URL but that’s up to the interviewer and team to decide if enough to compromise theirs and the candidates time.
Not to mention it's "discouraged" to call employers out on poor behavior. I know of at least three companies who post pretty steadily who ghosted at final rounds or in one case, "We intend to present a written offer" (though in "fairness", they did eventually inform me that they'd decided to freeze hiring, well, nearly three months later).
But since people have been increasingly saying that this is a problem, let's do something about it. My current thought is to add a new instruction at the top asking companies to please only post in the thread if they're committed to responding to every applicant. Other suggestions for addressing this issue are welcome!
Edit: since the next Who Is Hiring day is tomorrow, let's get precise. I'm including this text at the top of the thread:
NEW RULE: Please only post a job in this thread if you are committed to responding to everyone who applies.
Thoughts?
Edit per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42011360: "Please only post a job if you intend to fill a position and are committed to responding to everyone who applies."
It is nice to expect something a bit more involved if it's a final round thing, but still. No-one likes the ghost.
As an aside, been browsing HN for years and always wanted to say that you're doing the Lord's work.
But presumably they have to deal with that problem already anyway.
Perhaps extend it to something like everyone who applies, or responds to your comment”
Practically speaking, enforcement will be difficult/impossible for actions off HN - if someone claims a company isn’t responding, or using a templated email, how would you verify that?
By enforcing the same rule for a job thread, there’s a very clear location where the behavior of the company can be observed.
Honestly it's practically a joke to look at and it starting to make YC itself look bad. Seriously there is no value prop to these postings unless you are jobless, desperate and living in your car.
* done for optics, to look like growth or doing well, or just to have their name out there.
* to fill the pipeline for future needs
* to assess the hiring market, for planning
* (for reasons mentioned in article) to light fire under current employees, or see how replaceable they are
* only for a serendipitous unicorn hire, not commodity developer
* for training in their hiring process
I know all these are things that happen in general with startup job posts, though not necessarily on HN.
None of those reasons preclude "responding", but responding doesn't solve the real problem, it's only a PR sugar coating on it.
An example of disclosure on the unicorn hire one would be to simply state the truth about it. That's fine, so long as you're not pretending to grow. It could even be good optics, about hiring standards.
Disclosure of some of the other intent would preclude it (e.g., probably nobody is going to state the goal of threatening or replacing current employees). Maybe those posts shouldn't be done at all, or maybe they can at least say that this is a speculative post, not for a currently open position.
I'd say job posts have to be truthful, and it's by default implied that they actually good faith intend to fill the position as described, in a timely manner, and that interviews will only be conducted in good faith. If the default isn't true, they should disclose that.
Very few people would disagree with that premise.
The thing is that bad faith actors doing bad faith things are not going to abide by the rules on their own accord, on account of being bad faith actors. So you need enforcement, and I don't really see how HN can enforce any of the things you posted. They're not really in a position to vet anything more than you or I can.
Maybe the initial "who is hiring" post should be more explicit about the lack of moderation and vetting instead.
There's a lot of questionable things that decent people do, in good faith, because they consider it normal and OK. If you tell people "actually, the convention here on that is something different", then I think most will respect that.
One way this doesn't work is if there's a lack of trust. For example, if an employer claims it values X, but actually behaves like Y, employees are less likely to do X, and also less likely to trust or respect the company on anything else.
Another way the HN example doesn't work as well is if the person has strong motivation otherwise. For example, if their boss told them to post a fake job on HN, and they really don't want to come back and say they can't because they just saw a new rule. But a lot of other times, the person doing the posting has more autonomy, or a more decent work environment.
A lot of guessing here, but I think stating a convention would help significantly.
Definitely some people who will disregard rules they know are rules, but I think there's also a lot of people who just thought fake job posts were the convention, and now they'll change behavior.
All due respect: if an employer posts here offering for people to apply, that the employer in question is bad in some way, I don't see why that's considered "off topic." If a company sucks, we owe it to our fellow engineers to get the word out until they improve. A perfect example being the sorts that don't have any intention of filling the jobs they post.
In my mind the only sort of company that would avoid posting here due to the potential of being criticized by the HN userbase are exactly the sorts you don't want posting, so that seems like a win/win.
Just my 0.02.
Are there any other reasons you mentioned? I only found this one.
Thinking about it, people replying to the post stake their reputation too in whatever they post. If we see a throwaway or newish account causing shenanigans, people interested in the job post can form their own opinion of the nature of the comment? (isn't that what downvoting is for too?).
Since threads have this nice toggle feature you can always click [-] to ignore whatever people is saying about a job posting.
I suppose exploit is not the right word, because a lot of it is people posting their grudges or bad feelings that they probably have perfectly legit reasons for, and yet are not the full story. We're not going to get the full story, or even a fair assessment, from a distracting back-and-forth in the middle of a job ads thread; and that's ignoring the point that most people posting to Who Is Hiring aren't in a position to respond to such complaints in the first place.
It seems to me easy to see that if we allowed it, there would be no limit to it, and the end result would be a bad scene indeed.
But I agree that's fair to expect from companies. Yes, they have potentially hundreds of applicants, but writing "We're sorry to inform that you have not been selected to interview" probably takes less than a minute, so spending less than an hour rejecting every applicant seems in line with the time I'd expect each candidate to spend preparing and submitting their application. Plus you can always automate a list of emails to send rejection messages to...
It's also a nice way to differentiate the Who's hiring? from all other job boards out there
Maybe make the "flag" feature work for users to "report" non-responsive employers. On repeat offenses, reach out to them saying they've been repeatedly reported? Just brainstorming
Perhaps the monthly postings should be handled via ycombinator.com/jobs and the thread here is just a dump of this month's new openings with links to applications there but not direct posts by companies?
At the end of the day the challenges likely stem from "Who's hiring?" being just a thread with comments on a very spartan message board. I would have said you can solve these issues with an app or website, but you already have one, so it would be easier to just leverage that and then the sky is the limit–add any features you want!
Thats a lot of maybes, but my impression of the flag|vouch feature is as a first step community moderation and guessing it works well? The job thread being jobs targeting the community, I would think it would as well, or at a minimum help.
Obviously a company -actually- hiring the same kind of person month after month would be a false positive, but I thought it might help to catch some of these companies abusing "Who's Hiring"
I don’t care if a company ghosts me b/c they hired someone else—I care that/if I spent the time applying to a role for which there was no intent to hire.
How can we mandate that only roles that are actually open get posted? Does hn/jobs require confirmation that a hire was made within a certain timeframe? (say, 3-6 months?). It may be non-solvable as you obviously can’t mandate that a company hires, but if we can mandate that a company not advertise unless they’re going to hire it is certainly non-solved.
We have decided not to progress your application further.
While making our decision we've noted your extensive experience at [previous company] and feel that your skillsets are highly valuable in the industry and hope you find success in your job search soon."
I actually received that from a major tech company, unfilled mail merge aliases included.
I wouldn’t always blame the poster, and appreciate them letting us know.
* was going to make a Mr. Creosote reference but thought better of it
Those who comment and are to be taken seriously will have a certain amount of karma and or history on HN.
And then if a company posts the exact same ad for an excessive number of months and their headcount hasn't changed, they're clearly breaking the rule.
NEW RULE: Please only post a job if you intend to fill a position and are committed to responding to everyone who applies.
That makes it easy, within HN, to see if a company is just doing copy/paste spam, or if they're posting new/updated info each month. It also has the advantage of being easily verifiable (and enforceable? not sure what the enforcement actions would be...) here on HN versus random anecdotes of "I applied but never heard back", which I doubt would have enough weight for anyone to do anything about.
Users here could help police/moderate by simply replying with a link to last month's posting if there is one and the posting omitted it. That would somewhat-gently "call out" the company for not reading/following the rules, without users leaving negative comments on the thread.
(Just thoughts from a user skimming by, I'm not in the market for a new job at the moment so I have little skin in the game)
Why not: Please only post jobs if you are committed to interviewing and filling the position in the next 3 months. Accounts posting the same job opening for 6 months may be banned.
In this market if it takes 6+ months to find someone there is a fundamental problem with the opening.
At the very least it should be: "Please only post a job in this thread if you are committed to responding to all qualified applicants."
>At the very least it should be: "Please only post a job in this thread if you are committed to responding to all qualified applicants."
Too easy a loophole. I think we should just stick to the spirit of the rule and see if they make an honest gesture not make it literally 100% of applicants (ofc of they want a principal and a student in school applies they shouldn't expect a response).
Every applicant is going to classify themselves as "qualified"; and every applicant that a company doesn't respond to, they will classify as "unqualified"; so if we modify the rule in this way, we may as well have no rule at all.
(Edit: I just noticed johnnyanmac already made this point in an earlier reply)
I'm not saying there aren't abuses taking place but in my experience people are far too quick to jump to such conclusions on the internet, and the jumping-to-conclusions is actually the much bigger problem. Just speaking generally here–not about the Who Is Hiring threads.
perhaps upvotes and downvotes can be subtly weighed by karma? This would give proven contributors more trust. In the case of job posts, it would enlist them in zapping the spam they recognise month after month?
And beyond that, beyond applicability to job posts, perhaps voting can be a collaborative filtering bubble instead of absolutes? This makes spammers and voting rings end up in an echo chamber? And perhaps for normal posts instead of there being an early top level comment that gets to the top and stays there and monopolises the conversation, you get more variety and people more easily find the conversation they come for?
So perhaps recruit some small group of math minded HNers and see what insights and ideas they wring from access to the fully voting history?
Thinking out loud:
* What if there were a bit more restrictions to posting on Who's hiring? Perhaps a counter of how many times a profile has posted, with a max of N posts allowed per M months, or something.
* Would also be nice to have some feedback from HN profiles on outcome of the job posting. Add a link to the job posting to your about page:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=##### NOREPLY|HIRED|OK
Anyway, maybe something like that would be out of scope for HN, but just thinking out loud here :-).
I can foresee posters then creating throwaway accounts to avoid this, but the green username would be a give-away (or restrict new accounts from posting on these threads).
Someone else suggested a good idea - make companies link to their previous request. Or even better - don't allow companies to post the exact same listing for months in a row. The actual behavior you're trying to root out is a company listing a position that isn't real - so just don't allow them to list the same not-real position over and over.
I don't know if that can be enforced, though it should be easy to script up something that checks this. But you're not going to enforce anything anyway, and I think this gets closer to actually what we want to achieve.
(1) I applied for a job from $Company and never got a response.
(2) I don't believe $Company is really hiring.
I'm hearing both of these concerns from users. They overlap but aren't the same. Linking a job ad to the previous job ad addresses #2 but not #1.
1. It's not anything new, unlike this "ghost jobs" thing which is a supposed new phenomenon. This makes it less likely that the status quo can be improved.
2. I believe the reason the status quo is as it is is because most companies are inundated with job applicants, many of them not even passing a basic qualifying test (e.g. people with no FE experiecnce applying to FE positions with min. required experience of 5 years).
I don't know if this is true for the HN thread, having never posted to it. It's possible it's much higher signal here so this issue becomes less relevant.
Anyway, just my 2 cents, mostly as an outsider to these threads.
What is this confusing sentence suppose to communicate? That you adore the idea? Or like it? Or hate it? Or are neutral? Or are indifferent? Or any other thousands of options? Nobody knows.
Why being so incredibly vague and off-putting?
The way I parse a sentence like "I don't love this idea", and the way I meant it, is that I think the idea has some merit, it's not terrible, but I'm not fully on board, it has more work to do. It's not all the way to "I don't like it" but it's not great yet.
In any case I elaborated in the rest of the post a bit more on this so I think you can see from the context what I meant.
We recently changed the HN /jobs page to gradually reduce the frequency of those. Newer startups, who by definition haven't been around long enough to have had many posts, should be significantly better represented. The system has been designed to favor them for a long time, but it's favoring them more now.
If it helps, the system works great on an honor system. Have a community of passionate hackers, a site encouraging those hackers (some of which may be part of the community) to start up their own business and realize their ides, and the ad system would have good actors on both sides the pipeline. Interesting jobs for a community of passionate people.
I feel like that "honor" comes and goes with the economy though. Anything for an applicant to survive, anything for a job poster to make the company look good for investors.
I feel that was the natural conclusion of a system where "requirements" are as realistic as a unicorn. But we're all suffering from that
So LinkedIn approximates (lots of people), not just (people hoping to get hired). If you're hiring, the former is a more talented pool to hire from.
I dont engage with the platform, I don't post, I won't connect with recruiters, and yet still... they find you, and inmail you. It's usually local jobs with humane commutes and decent pay.
By contrast, I've never gotten a single interview for an application submitted via linkedin, and I've put out hundreds.
Honestly, the ideal approach if you're going for traditional W-2 steady paycheck employment job is:
- recruiters/people already approach you. This works when you build your network and reputation. - use your network of trusted/worked-with-previously recruiters for leads. - fend for yourself in the murky depths of the scummy internet full of low-life tactics reference farming, resume scraping, and G*d knows else happens when you participate in a public forum.
Real question: did you really want that job or was this just a +1 for your gamified job search? I think quality searches yield quality results.
17500. It is unlawful for any person, firm, corporation or association, or any employee thereof with intent directly or indirectly to dispose of real or personal property or to perform services, professional or otherwise, or anything of any nature whatsoever or to induce the public to enter into any obligation relating thereto, to make or disseminate or cause to be made or disseminated before the public in this state, or to make or disseminate or cause to be made or disseminated from this state before the public in any state, in any newspaper or other publication, or any advertising device, or by public outcry or proclamation, or in any other manner or means whatever, including over the Internet, any statement, concerning that real or personal property or those services, professional or otherwise, or concerning any circumstance or matter of fact connected with the proposed performance or disposition thereof, which is untrue or misleading, and which is known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading, or for any person, firm, or corporation to so make or disseminate or cause to be so made or disseminated any such statement as part of a plan or scheme with the intent not to sell that personal property or those services, professional or otherwise, so advertised at the price stated therein, or as so advertised. Any violation of the provisions of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by both that imprisonment and fine.
The language is broad, but they didn't cover the case of ads where no transaction was even contemplated. This is a bug.
Posting ghost jobs is a deceptive act.
> We leave this role posted because it's so critical to our operation and onboard as demand requires, however at this time we don't have enough demand to justify another full time hire.
HR is just PR with a different audience.
> While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it’s also used [...]
For securities fraud?
I wonder how demoralizing this must be on HR workers, having to post a job, screen CV's, trying to stay professional while knowing that the hiring manager actually doesn't care, having to constantly put people with hopes off, and ultimately let people feel they are not good enough just because some C-hole wants to bring in his buddy who's most likely not half as competent as the people who were rejected.
But the real issue are these "ghost" job postings where there's no intention to hire anyone at all in the first place. Some companies use them to, I guess, just gather some data and CVs + salary expectations, while others want to appear active and growing to investors, but don’t engage whatsoever when people spend time and apply. This distorts the job market and creates a lot of frustration in applicants. 90% of people I know here and more broadly in Europe have gotten their jobs via connections and people they know. I wouldn’t be surprised if some regulation comes soon, as I doubt I'm the only one impacted by this situation.
wow, HR and management really have a lot of contempt for their staff.
i deleted my ln in 2022. i have a deep mistrust of all web platforms. i know what i do on the UI and what happens in the code are not the same.
“Always, always, always put networking as one of the top components of your job search strategy,”
This is such a strange advice. It is too late when searching for a job.
A 'network' takes year to build.
"Knowing people" seem to have become even more important. But I feel that is a really long term thing. It is really hard to get into a position where you get valuable contacts or do interesting stuff. And your contacts more or less need some power.
It is just that, I feel it is like telling some lonely child "so get friends". For most programmers trying to get a job, I think "just keep the grind up, champ! I'll buy you some ice cream if you give it your best" is more helpful.
These "ghost jobs" the article writes about is poisoning the well. Applicants need to spam even more. Employers get more half hearted applications.
I've noticed these probably fake job ads for years, but it seem to have escalated.
It wouldn't surprise me that we will end up in the straw man "first man or woman through the door with a firm handshake that looks the boss in the eyes gets the job" hiring process as the current formal one gets totally dysfunctional.
If you offer up a job req, there should be punitive consequences if it is not legitimate. You are incurring cost and harm on job seekers spending time engaging with said post, at no cost to the employer. This is to be solved for, just as pay transparency is slowly being solved for with regulation and statute. If you have policy suggestions, I'm interested, as someone who engages with policymakers.
Any smallish 1-2 hour meeting with a couple of people on it can easily cost thousands if you work out people’s hourly wage.
Add on the context-switching costs impacting the rest of their workdays.
Then add the reputational damage among jobseekers - when word gets out that a company is a timewaster, qualified people will be less likely to apply.
We've seen for a long time now that companies will put up with a lot of inefficiencies for various other bottom lines.
But how do you punish this without making it even worse in some other way?
Much of the current situation stems from fairness-minded regulations forcing companies to post jobs they already have a candidate for, wasting everybody’s time.
>Much of the current situation stems from fairness-minded regulations forcing companies to post jobs they already have a candidate for, wasting everybody’s time.
Yes, I do believe we should repeal those regulations. Someone who wants to hire a friend of family member will figure out how to do it.
H1bs are a more complex matter. They should ironically enough strengthen those so an H1b isn't held hostage by an employer who can lay them off on thr drop of a hat. They should have more protections as they are a sponsored guest and not yet an American citizen.
It is quite common with some sort of time consuming application process before interviews, where only the applicant waste time. Like, the employers seem to use "willing to waste time" as some sort of filter.
E.g. my brother applied for a job this summer and was pre-screened by some sort of chat bot, which I guess will become way more common.
Companies expect employees to work late, for free, to get their duties done, so time spent on time-wasting hiring meetings only affect the employees, not the company's finances.
I remember long ago the career development people at my university would tell us to all go out and "network" company representatives when they come during career week. The way it was explained to me was to go up to them and pretend to be their friend, talk about sportsball, drink alcohol with them, gain some rapport or something... It was never really clear what the right magical incantation was. All I know was some people were really good at it and got invited to interview at dozens of companies, and other had no luck at all.
But, just for argument's sake, let's say I go out and successfully manage to "network" you. You now know me and think I would be a good employee. What now? I guess I say "Hey, rightbyte, I'm looking for a job at your company. Do you know of any roles that are hiring?" You say "Sure, here's job position XYZ, and the link to go apply. Good luck!" And now I'm back where I started. Or if I'm lucky, you will refer me in your company's HR system, giving your digital "thumbs up" in that system, and that referral will send me... an E-mail with the link where I should go apply. I'm still not that much better off. Is that thumbs up going to let me skip rounds of interviews or give me extra points when the yes/no decision happens? How does it help me break through the hundreds of other candidates that are cold-applying?
I've had people reach out to me and ask me to refer them for a job with my employer, and in most companies, all I can do is point them to a job link. I'm lowly worker-bee number 52231, I don't have some kind of hiring boost I can hand out to people.
The whole 'networking' enterprise seems like a bizarre, opaque process where nobody can explain how it works, but everyone's advice is that we should all somehow "go do it" as it's an important component of a job search.
There's two methodologies.
1. you work with peers (can be in school, work, or even a hobby if you're lucky), be a good person and provide good work. Years later you reach out and see how they are doing (ideally you keep good tabs on them, but let's be real. Men can just kinda disappear for years and resume a conversation with no tension nor animosity. So just reach out). They may or may not have something to refer you for. And ideally it's vice versa if they reach out to you. This method is organic but takes months, years of contact.
2. You're extremely specialized and you're your own business. Networking for future leads is part of your job. This will yield faster effects but mostly because you're already offering something of value.
of course, most people are stuck in the first bucket, especially early in your career.
>The way it was explained to me was to go up to them and pretend to be their friend, talk about sportsball, drink alcohol with them, gain some rapport or something... It was never really clear what the right magical incantation was.
Yeah, that's schmoozing networking. If a person likes you, it opens doors. This is just a universal sensation. it's the "dirty networking", but also the "classic networking". How you meet mates, how you make a good impression among socialites, etc.
This method relies less on your skills as a prospective. employee and more on your ability to quickly hit it off with a new person to the point where you're memorable. It's a way, but definitely not one everyone can do (nor wants to do). It's an entirely different skillset so you really have to train that muscle (and given your participation here, you may need to adjust your "likes" to more mainstream stuff. Or at least "tolerances". Sportsball discussion can open new doors if you really want to go that route).
>But, just for argument's sake, let's say I go out and successfully manage to "network" you. You now know me and think I would be a good employee. What now? I guess I say "Hey, rightbyte, I'm looking for a job at your company. Do you know of any roles that are hiring?" You say "Sure, here's job position XYZ, and the link to go apply. Good luck!" And now I'm back where I started
not all networks are created equal. Your goal with a job network is to get a referral, if not an outright fast track to an offer. If you got nothing more than a recruiter response, that person either can't do much more or doesn't want to do much more. Don't underestimate the power of a referral though. Those applications go through an entirely different pipeline. Basically the fast line for Disneyland.
That's also why "natural networking " is a long game. Juniors networking with themselves don't yield much. 20 years later, those juniors turned managers/founders/leads might just bring you into a company with the wave of their hand.
>The whole 'networking' enterprise seems like a bizarre, opaque process where nobody can explain how it works, but everyone's advice is that we should all somehow "go do it" as it's an important component of a job search.
That's because relationships are a bizarre opaque process where nobody can explain how it works. Sometimes you just trip into the right person and you're friends for life. Sometimes you are off on the wrong track with someone forever because you remind them of an unrelated person in their life. people on a macro level are a lottery of some sorts.
Maybe some of these networking people are the same that force others to come to the office to entertain them?
The problem to be solved, imo, is ghost listings. - I don’t care if a company ghosts me because they hired someone else - I care if I spend time filling out applications for jobs that don’t exist
I’m not sure how to make participation by the employer tractable. They can’t exactly be mandated to hire, can they? Unless I’m trapped in a prison of the mind that seems like too risky of a proposition for them.
That said, as a candidate I would happily pay $USD/month for access to a job board where I know that the job as posted is definitely for real and definitely getting filled in a certain timeframe. I don’t care if my particular resume gets read, or replied to. I only care that the phenomena of “ghost job” is nonexistent in the walled-garden that I’m paying for access to.
It sounds interesting though, good luck!
You don't need to solve the problem 100%. An employer can still drag their feet and not fill a listing. But by aligning all incentives you can drastically reduce the problem.
Sounds like awful monetization. Dating site issue is right. Your best candidates (so ideally, all the ones you vet) won't be long term subscribers. And sadly, there's way too many grifts in the job system where a candidate paying is a red flag. You'd need to offer the candidates something of value to justify that. Not just "a promise of no ghost jobs").
Is there an issue with the usual recruiter pipeline where you can charge the company some percent of the hire once they get hired? Candidates get hired, company pays a little extra on a successful hire, and your profit incentives come from quality to offer for the companies (hopefully).
The main issue is that it assumes that companies genuinely care about an efficient hiring pipeline. And I've been very cynical in recent times...
(Also, seconding the part about grifts where a candidate is charged upfront. Charging upfront for access to training materials, equipment, or some kind of licensing agreement is often a sign that you're about to get roped into a multi-level marketing scam.)
> My understanding is that employers already do pay to post on LI, indeed, etc. It simply works out that paying for ghost jobs is worth it, so the enforcement mechanism needs to be a ban/other thing that doesn't rely on pricing
I didn’t realize the LI, indeed, etc. Sites were charging per-head. Could this website be as simple as “an Indeed that charges employers per-month, to disincentivize ghost postings”?
I think the chicken-and-egg problem is a bigger deal than the dating-app problem; while it’s true the best candidates find jobs quickly, they don’t necessarily stop looking. That said if there’s no postings by employers then you’re dead in the water. How could the first 10 employers be recruited?
Error 1: "In the US, non-profits are heavily regulated in their operations..."
Correction: There are no more or less regulations than other sectors, but there is almost ZERO enforcement, so if anything, the nonprofit sector is more accurately described as very lightly regulated.
Error 2: ", and exempt from income tax."
Correction: Nonprofits are NOT exempt from income tax on revenue from earned activity that is not mission related, known as Unrelated Business Income.
Error 3: "Across the many different structures, though, non-profits have one thing in common: They don't have owners."
Correction: Oversimplification - nonprofits are run and functionally owned by a board of directors, people who hire and fire the CEO, decide how revenue is allocated, and approve any merger or dissolution. Nonprofits can also own for-profit subsidiaries (see OpenAI) so there are a lot of gray areas here.
In sum, nonprofit status is far more complex that OP thinks and there are a ton of opportunities for skulduggery - just because Ghost is a nonprofit does NOT mean it is free of conflicts or other bad things than companies do.
If Ghost really wants to demonstrate its transparency, it should publish its tax returns (IRS form 990) and also an itemized P&L -- then they can stake a claim to being holier than the typical business.
People often think that "non-profit" means that the company can't make a profit. It actually means that the company doesn't have any owners who can personally take the profits. Any revenue earned can only be reinvested.
We'll call it DevHiringOps
Seriously tho, always use the companies website instead of believing whatever is on some job posting website.
Ah... recruiters at it again.
I think my secret is working in a specific niche, but I could be wrong.
I became curious long after the fact if a job description for my last job that was written for me was ever posted.
I've tried working with 3rd-party recruiters, and always found them to be a waste of time, because the companies they worked with weren't good and didn't pay very well.
The part of the picture I'm more interested about is how the managers see it.
There must be a lowly manager actually trying to do something about their overworked team, and I assume they have access to HR and know which positions are real which aren't. And they know the company not only doesn't intend to hire, but is also gaslighting them, and they're made part of it.
It feels so gloom and just depressing beyond words.
In other cases, it's considered criminal if a company deliberately puts out false information about itself. E.g., if you lie about your companies products (like Theranos), it's pretty clear that this is not legal.
I don't see why it should be legal to lie about your job opportunities.
It’s a trivial abuse of monopsony pricing power, it’s illegal in the sense that the laws as written prohibit it on a common-sense, “intended by the legislature” sense, a lawyer can tell you if it’s maybe legal via stare decis via activist judges bench legislating.
But more importantly it has destroyed what loose social contract there was: they cannot in fact run these businesses at 60-70% of peak headcount sustainably: they can merely coast on previous investments long enough to crush salaries and then clean up the mess because there isn’t any real competition. They can distort hiring to where McCarthyist vibe checks and loyalty tests hit a precision/recall that is Pareto optimized for the minimum amount of competence that admits an endorsement of their nepo baby “nice trumps kind” mythology.
And they’re going to get away with it at the level that matters: the individual incentives of executives are nothing to do with the long term interests of shareholders or the commons on this: progress is stalling out in a way that will never show up on a quarterly report in time to matter to the executives.
And you can see it in real time: we haven’t had such an embarrassing crop of people who were someone’s roommate at Harvard running the show in at least 30 years, the outcomes are awful, the software sucks, the products suck, and the game is soft communist friction around leaving the platform.
Filtering through a 1000 unemployed people spamming every job listing isn't going to give them useful intel.
Because only one in a hundred postings is real, we have to send out hundreds of applications before even getting a rejection. There's no way to tell if a posting is real or if anyone will ever read your application, so the only option available is to apply to everything.
A lot of people pose this as a prisoner's dilemma, but it really is not. This problem is not mutual, it's entirely one sided. If companies would only post jobs they intended to hire for, there would be exponentially fewer spam applications. They've fucked around by posting spam and now they're finding out by receiving even more spam.
When the average applicant has to send literally hundreds of applications to get any response at all, absolutely nobody is going to handcraft a thought out application to any one posting. There's literally not enough hours in the day. Because we don't even get rejection letters back, the only way forward is to firehose as many applications as possible and just hope you win the lottery by getting your resume in front of a human.
It's absolutely terrible for everyone involved and the only ones who can stop it want to act victimized by the problem they created
I disagree with this; in fact, I think there would be more application spam with fewer postings. Most of the application spam is from people who are either completely unqualified and just pressing the 'apply' button (which is made easy by websites which get paid per application), or people looking to move to a wealthier country (without any pre-qualification). I think both of these groups would actually be more aggressive about applying if they were more likely to be reviewed by a hiring manager.
So you'd win out that way. But I also don't sympathize too much as the "unqualifies just pressing apply" was a natural endstate of years of bad job requirement postings.
proportions. 1 uninterested candidate wastes maybe 5 hours at best of a million dollar company's time. All the while those doing the interviewing were paid anyway.
1 bad post wastes dozens, hundreds of applicant's time. Especially the damn Workday apps. That time is not compensated and only gets worse the farter in you go.