[HN Gopher] Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers
___________________________________________________________________
Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers
Author : Umofomia
Score : 158 points
Date : 2024-10-31 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| matt3210 wrote:
| I'm not shocked at all. Another issue is recruiters posting fake
| jobs and asking for references as step one. Soon as I say "I
| don't provide references until the last step, and only to the
| company hiring" they hang up on me
| NickC25 wrote:
| Not only fake job postings, it's also companies posting fake
| jobs when they already have an internal or external candidate
| all but signed.
|
| 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.
| nickff wrote:
| Governments are one of the worst offenders when it comes to
| posting jobs which have already been basically handed to
| internal candidates. They do it for the same reason as
| everyone else: compliance with external regulations or
| internal rules.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| Yea this is a weird one. Some job applications actually require
| me to fill in reference contact information. I can't submit the
| application without that detail. Of course, I try to skirt it.
|
| Is this normal?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I don't think I've ever encountered that in the U.S.
| arp242 wrote:
| By chance I saw it recently; I remember because it stood
| out. And the job application seemed genuine as the poster
| was engaging on the "who's hiring" thread here.
|
| 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".
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, I'll provide peers, but absolutely not seniors/management
| references. One of them very purposefully has no social media
| footprint and I'm not going to cross that line because of some
| recruiter call that almost never goes nowhere.
| lupire wrote:
| Employees look for new jobs they aren't seriously interested in.
| Why shouldn't employers do the same?
|
| Filtering through a 1000 unemployed people spamming every job
| listing isn't going to give them useful intel.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I mean the reason I can think of off the top of my head is that
| one is wasting the time of people who are looking for a job so
| they can continue to live, and the other is wasting the time of
| a person who's job is reviewing resumes?
| nickff wrote:
| I don't agree with the attitude of the grandparent poster
| either, but work at a small company where I've been on the
| receiving end of many extremely low-effort applications from
| ineligible individuals, so it definitely goes both ways.
| Companies are also bombarded with spam from recruiters, just
| as candidates are.
| evoke4908 wrote:
| There would be less application spam if there were fewer
| spam job postings.
|
| _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
| nickff wrote:
| > _" There would be less application spam if there were
| fewer spam job postings."_
|
| 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.
| volkk wrote:
| yeah, but at worst, you waste time on the dime of a company
| from the recruiter's/hiring manager's POV. on the other
| side, you're wasting precious capital (time & money) from
| someone who may instead be hanging out with their kids, or
| taking care of their sick mother--i understand these are
| contrived examples. from a pure utalitarian perspective,
| both are a complete waste of time. but from a moral/ethical
| perspective, i think there's a clear loser in terms of
| precious time wasted.
| nickff wrote:
| I am an individual who works at a small company, and
| going through ineligible applications takes away from
| time I could spend with children or family. I am not an
| HR professional, but we don't have a massive staff to
| delegate these matters to. The situations are morally
| equivalent.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Sure but what I'm saying is that the stakes for a company
| having to go through spam applications are significantly
| lower than the people trying to find a job who are getting
| spammed with dead ends while their savings drain lower and
| lower.
| nickff wrote:
| Maybe for a big company, with an HR department and lots
| of resources, but not for a small company when >>90% of
| applications are from ineligible individuals.
| hinkley wrote:
| I haven't had to resort to applying to jobs I couldn't or
| wouldn't do to fulfill unemployment insurance requirements, but
| who knows what will happen in December if this goes on.
| itqwertz wrote:
| Don't use LinkedIn or Monster or Indeed. You're better off
| searching on Google with " inurl:careers" and finding positions
| these companies are directly hiring for.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Or Dice. Dice is just a spam magnet for "I know you're a PM in
| Washington looking for remote roles, but we have this two month
| onsite Kubernetes contract in Indiana, can we talk?"
| malfist wrote:
| I got one the other day asking if I'd take a down leveling
| and move to Korea for a six month contract even though my
| profile says I only accept permanent remote roles
| stewx wrote:
| I've gotten 2 good jobs directly or indirectly from LinkedIn. I
| would argue LinkedIn is probably the one site that you
| absolutely need to be on.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The difference between LinkedIn and other options is that
| LinkedIn is also a social platform (in a weird, non-
| interactive way).
|
| 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.
| zahllos wrote:
| Agree. Plus recruiters also sometimes reach out. There is
| quite a high signal to noise as always, but, it can be worth
| it. You don't need to engage in all the influencer crap at
| all, just ignore that and use it to be found by recruiters
| and to see some open positions.
| oh_fiddlesticks wrote:
| I've gotten 3 separate jobs from linkedin recruiters
| approaching me cold.
|
| 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.
| latentcall wrote:
| I have a good job now and got this one through LinkedIn. I
| think it is hit or miss. I wish there was a better alternative.
| I'll try your tip.
| Eumenes wrote:
| You can use the common applicant tracking system URLs as well -
| like Lever, Greenhouse, or Ashby - if you are targeting
| startups/tech companies.
| Sakos wrote:
| Got one good job over Indeed and another one over LinkedIn.
| Can't confirm.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| On this topic, do y'all think the HN Who's Hiring thread has
| ghost jobs? I know I've applied to one and never had back (a few
| years ago).
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Absolutely. And a lot of spam. A few months ago there was a
| little flame war between a few people. Company posted an ad and
| someone replied "this is spam, and you don't respond, just keep
| posting the same ad", and the company replied "no, I own the
| company and hand write this job ad every month to fit our
| future needs" which was patently a lie (exact same headcount,
| exact same three positions, every month for the last eight
| months, and usually a byte-accurate copy of each posting), and
| several similar.
|
| 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).
| dang wrote:
| It's against the rules to call out hiring companies in the
| thread, primarily because we don't want off-topic arguments
| and because it would be too easy to exploit it for
| shenanigans.
|
| 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."
| buffet_overflow wrote:
| I like this idea. Perhaps let them self select if they will
| respond or not, but they have to advertise in the posting
| which path they chose?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I think that's a great start. I mean for me, I'm realistic
| - if it's a pre-first round or first round exit so to
| speak, I don't expect anything substantive, a canned
| response is acceptable. I get that it's a pain when you
| have hundreds of applicants, but it should also be trivial.
|
| It is nice to expect something a bit more involved if it's
| a final round thing, but still. No-one likes the ghost.
| rafterydj wrote:
| Two questions: 1) How would the feedback loop work from
| users who do not receive a response? 2) Are you concerned
| about a possible "chilling effect" for startups that don't
| want to post for fear of being spammed?
|
| As an aside, been browsing HN for years and always wanted
| to say that you're doing the Lord's work.
| dang wrote:
| (1) I don't know, and (2) I am now. That would be bad!
|
| But presumably they have to deal with that problem
| already anyway.
| hinkley wrote:
| Presumably you guys don't want to create a report button
| for just this situation. I never know what to think when
| I see downvotes in the Who's Hiring thread. There's no
| way for me to tell if someone hates the CEO (eg, if
| Twitter posted job openings), or they've noticed the same
| position filed three months in a row. I've seen a few of
| those before you got around to detaching them.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I would suggest that there be a way to report bad-faith job
| postings in some way or there are consequences. anyone can
| claim they applied with no response. Someone who reports
| actual evidence like "this account has posted this exact
| listing for the last 4 months and the company size hasn't
| changed a bit" may justify e.g. removing listings.
| enjeyw wrote:
| I like it! Frankly, it should be something that hiring
| companies do anyways.
|
| 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.
| busterarm wrote:
| What about all of the YC companies posting comment-free ads
| for founding engineers offering 1/2 market wages and next-
| to-no equity in person in SF?
|
| 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.
| neilv wrote:
| Great idea. Do you also want to address some more root
| problems of job postings:
|
| * 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.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > It's against the rules to call out hiring companies in
| the thread, primarily because we don't want off-topic
| arguments
|
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| It's because of the reasons I already mentioned, which
| are considerable.
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| > we don't want off-topic arguments and because it would
| be too easy to exploit it for shenanigans.
|
| 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.
| airstrike wrote:
| I think it's going to be hard to enforce that, unless you
| go through ycombinator.com/jobs
|
| 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?
| dang wrote:
| There's little enforcement happening in those threads
| anyway--they're too free-form, and manual intervention is
| too expensive. But adding a rule should hopefully still
| make a difference.
| airstrike wrote:
| Good luck! I still wonder if you can't you sidestep the
| free-form and manual intervention stuff by giving those
| threads some shape via a monthly posting feature on
| ycombinator.com/jobs?
|
| 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!
| dang wrote:
| ycombinator/jobs would presumably not be the right venue
| for an open job board but yes we could build software to
| better support Who Is Hiring threads. I've always
| resisted doing so but maybe we eventually will. I'm not
| sure how that would help with the ghosting problem
| though...
| FreezerburnV wrote:
| Would you be open to having people email if they send an
| application and get ghosted so that you can potentially
| take action on future hiring threads? (or stuff like the
| mentioned copy-pasted job posting that got caught in an
| argument) Since I know that emailing you is already the
| best way to ask for moderation help.
| dang wrote:
| In principle yes, but I just can't handle many more
| emails. Also, it's not clear how we would respond. More
| at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42011354.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Maybe add the flag|vouch to the comments for those
| threads? Not entirely sure how it works (or if its
| possible), but it seems to work pretty well. I am
| guessing there is a filter for bad actors, even if not,
| the few that would be affected would maybe end up with
| positive comments from long aged accounts.
|
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I had a little side project I was working on a while ago
| that would ingest "Who's Hiring" posts every month
| through the HN API and analyze month to month when each
| one came and went, in order to call out the companies
| posting the (according to some heuristic) same ad for
| months and months, never actually hiring anyone. I was
| going to snarkily call the tool "Who's Not Hiring?"
|
| 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"
| singlepaynews wrote:
| I like your suggesting actual features/systems, and the
| idea that we can make hn/jobs the better job board, but I
| think this targets the wrong problem:
|
| 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.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| "Dear [applicant name], thank you for sending us your
| application.
|
| 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.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Haha, at least they told you no. rejection letters are
| rarely more informative even if they are more verbose
| pharrington wrote:
| The problem isn't that the rules arent well specified
| enough. The problem is that too many agents with the most
| power in this exchange (ie employers) just violate people's
| trust. Dishonest agents need to be visibly held to account,
| and right now the only way that happens is by calling them
| out. But since that's forbidden, there's a conundrum.
| gedy wrote:
| I'm not defending companies here, but what I've seen
| happen sometimes is a well-meaning engineering manager
| will post openings on this or other forums, and then the
| resumes end up in black holes like Greenhouse where the
| HR/non-technical types filter out applications without
| even looking at or responding to many of them.
|
| I wouldn't always blame the poster, and appreciate them
| letting us know.
| jotux wrote:
| Tangentially-related: I see postings for jobs specifically
| in states that require pay transparency (posting the pay
| range in job announcements), but they do not include a pay
| range in their announcements. While this is primarily an
| issue for companies that are illegally posting
| announcements without the required pay range, it might be
| helpful to include a statement in the rules at the top of
| the page. This statement could remind posters that if they
| are in a state with a pay transparency law, they need to
| include the pay range in their job postings.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Could also make it a site rule that _all_ jobs postings
| should include a pay range. Shouldn't have to waste your
| time applying to a job that has a pay range you would
| never accept.
| mmarian wrote:
| How about mentioning in the who's hiring post that people
| can email HN if they think someone posted in bad faith. The
| slight inconvenience should turn off people who complain
| just for the sake of it, and other readers won't be
| discouraged by seeing the complaints. The downside is extra
| admin for you, of course.
| dang wrote:
| I don't think I can handle many more emails*. But beyond
| that--what would we do? We don't have the cycles to
| arbitrate these things; nor the skill; nor the interest.
|
| * was going to make a Mr. Creosote reference but thought
| better of it
| singlepaynews wrote:
| Hn/jobs may not have the interest, sure. Job posters in
| general may not have an interest. I think monetization
| here comes from candidates. As a job seeker I would be
| willing to pay for access to a job board where
| listings/posters are somehow vetted to protect me from
| filling out ghost applications.
| mmarian wrote:
| Fair enough. I feel you'd face the same issues with the
| original idea as well. But I can't think of a better
| solution.
| paul7986 wrote:
| If companies receive comments saying i never heard back (at
| least they need to generate an email saying application was
| received and later your not a good fit, if not) and they
| keep posting this same or similar job. Well then they
| should warned about losing their HN job listing
| priviligies. Put them on a list that a bot notifies you and
| or downvotes them a lot.
|
| Those who comment and are to be taken seriously will have a
| certain amount of karma and or history on HN.
| la64710 wrote:
| What I would really like to see is for employers to give
| actual feedback to the rejected candidates at any stage of
| the interview process. I am sure that employers can find a
| way to share constructive feedback without the fear of any
| legal implications. And I am sure most candidates will
| really appreciate a meaningful feedback instead of an
| automated rejection email. This would also have the side
| effect of having only serious candidates and employers
| engage in the process and should go a long way of getting
| rid of these ghost jobs. I would love to see a job board
| which only post jobs where the employers promises to share
| a feedback with any candidate they interview. I am sure it
| will be a hit.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I think the rule should be something kind of like, do not
| post a job ad unless you actually intend to fill the
| position.
|
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we can make it like this:
|
| _NEW RULE: Please only post a job if you intend to fill
| a position and are committed to responding to everyone
| who applies._
| colechristensen wrote:
| That's a good rule, the followup question is what does
| feedback for and enforcement of this rule look like?
| maples37 wrote:
| What if the new rule required a company to link to their
| last "who's hiring" posting if it was within, say, the last
| 3 months?
|
| 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)
| ryandrake wrote:
| I had a plan[1] to use the HN API to try to suss out
| companies spamming month after month without hiring, but
| it never went anywhere. This article is motivating me to
| pick up the 1/4-finished code and have another look at
| it.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42012028
| matt_heimer wrote:
| Everyone? Applicants are using AI to mass apply for jobs.
| Not everyone deserves a response.
|
| 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."
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Since we're on HN, I think using LLMS instead of humans
| to talk is a bigger issue than whether an applicant is
| mass applying outside the site with LLMS. We should
| address that first and that will fix the issue anyway.
|
| >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).
| tdrz wrote:
| I like the idea! Possibly add an additional rule that they
| should stop advertising the same position if they didn't
| fill it within, say, 4 months.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| This is a bigger, longer term thought, but...
|
| 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?
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| Wouldn't any company unscrupulous enough to advertise a job
| opening without a genuine intention to hire simply
| disregard such a rule?
|
| 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
|
| ... this way you can attempt to disregard the feedback if
| the profile posting it seems bogus. Posters wouldn't want
| to hurt their own reputation by lying about the quality of
| a job posting.
|
| Anyway, maybe something like that would be out of scope for
| HN, but just thinking out loud here :-).
| anotherevan wrote:
| Another potential way to at least surface dodgy behaviour
| perhaps: Automatically append to a poster's comment links
| to all their previous comments in Who's Hiring threads in
| the past twelve months.
|
| 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).
| ericmcer wrote:
| Could this be a case where companies have a "people-ops"
| person who needs to justify their position even though the
| company hasn't hired anyone in months? So they create some
| new OKRs like: "Get 20 qualified candidates vetted and ranked
| in case we do decide to hire someone.", "Create 40 job ads"
| or something?
| evilfred wrote:
| lol and all those endless "we're hiring" Flexport ads, even
| after they did layoffs
| dang wrote:
| It wasn't just them, but another dozen or so YC startups
| who've been around for many years and always keep a job ad in
| the queue. It's not their fault for doing that--it's my fault
| for neglecting the HN job ad system for too long. I get that
| the community doesn't like seeing the same ads over and over
| for the same few, long-established companies.
|
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >it's my fault for neglecting the HN job ad system for too
| long.
|
| 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.
| la64710 wrote:
| Also along with ghost jobs do we have ghost candidates? Every
| job posting on LinkedIn have hundred plus applicants within the
| first two hours. Maybe many of the applicants are not eligible
| but this phenomenon points to a massive increase in labor
| supply for tech jobs. Automation and opening up competition
| globally is gutting out most of the tech jobs it seems.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The candidates are real. But The qualifications often aren't.
| Even if you post a job being full time on-site, you'll get
| applicants who are not even in the same country looking for
| remote work.
|
| 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
| doctor_radium wrote:
| Of the obvious fake job postings I've seen, I always assumed they
| were attempts at Russian or Chinese espionage. Example: for a
| very brief time I was a US DoD contractor.
| SN76477 wrote:
| Why do they need my home address for an application? I never
| understand that. Several have asked me for my DL number
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Probably background checks.
| briandear wrote:
| This should be prosecuted. Section 5 of the Federal Trade
| Commission Act prohibits "unfair or deceptive acts or practices
| in or affecting commerce."
|
| Posting ghost jobs is a deceptive act.
| SN76477 wrote:
| I was told earlier this week by an organization
|
| > 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.
| switch007 wrote:
| 99% of HR staff will swear till they're blue in the face
| that's there's nothing wrong with that lol
|
| HR is just PR with a different audience.
| neilv wrote:
| > _[...] the majority of them appeared on LinkedIn and the
| companies' websites. [...]_
|
| > _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?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.sec.gov/submit-tip-or-complaint/tips-complaints-...
| rightbyte wrote:
| Hireing and being hired seem to have devolved into a bilateral
| spamfest. The more applicants per position, the more applications
| you need to fill.
|
| "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.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Well I think the person quoted is suggesting you work on your
| network now, presumably before you are looking for a job. But I
| could see an argument that even going to meetups and just
| talking to people while you're actively looking is more likely
| to be successful than emailing resumes. That is to say, even
| the act of building a network from the ground up could be
| highly effective.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sure, ye I guess you are right.
|
| "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.
| la64710 wrote:
| Not sure why this was downvoted. Obviously it is by people
| like who will keep bending over until they become a circle.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| So, this is the problem. We are doing a Kabuki dance where
| there is an illusion of good faith and meritocracy, when
| really, it's just a brutalist labor order book between
| employers and employees, unless you have a network (which takes
| years to build and might still prove useless if you can't refer
| someone into your org because blah blah hiring pipeline that is
| really just garbage anyway). For example, someone at the VP
| level at Slack recently posted on LinkedIn for a job req that
| all candidates have to go through the formal process to avoid
| unfairness (no informal resume reviews or interviews would be
| had).
|
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| There is a cost to the employer.
|
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Talent acquisition is the cost of being in business. Hiring
| is hard, I admit. Being efficient while remaining within
| legal and regulatory frameworks is fine and expected, fraud
| and misrepresentation through job postings with no intent
| to hire is not.
| FredPret wrote:
| I know; I'm saying it bites these companies in the ass
| when their hiring is broken.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I guess there is some cost for the job ad too.
|
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Embarrassing admission: I don't really understand how
| "networking" works when it comes to getting a job. It's always
| just stated: "Go network, bro!" but without any explanation of
| how it is supposed to work. I wish someone could pretend I was
| a dummy, and explain the process to me using simple words. From
| start (you don't know anyone working at company X) to finish
| (you accept a job at company X).
|
| 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.
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| > 62% companies posted them specifically to make their employees
| feel replaceable
|
| 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.
| fluorinerocket wrote:
| What kind of political action can we take to stop this
| infuriating practice?
| Uncouple4063 wrote:
| One approach: https://code-cwa.org/
| evilfred wrote:
| union
| Uncouple4063 wrote:
| Or this
| iamsanteri wrote:
| I agree with others that this can be seen as market abuse since
| it disrupts the essential functioning of our labor markets. After
| completing my Master's, I've since struggled to find a job, only
| signing a contract yesterday thanks to my past connections and
| proven work from before I returned to academia. The current job
| market in my country has been absolutely brutal. I've applied to
| hundreds of roles. For many interviews, I traveled to other
| cities only to learn later that the positions I was being
| interviewed for were canceled entirely, with no one hired.
|
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Just my own experience but I have never gotten a job with a cold
| application on a job board. Always been via a recruiter or even
| better an inside contact.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| In contrast, I have only once in my career gotten a job via an
| inside contact. Of the four jobs I've had since school, three
| of them were with a cold application.
|
| I think my secret is working in a specific niche, but I could
| be wrong.
| ghaff wrote:
| Your mileage may vary of course. The jobs I've had since an
| on-campus interview in grad school were all people I had
| worked with in some capacity. Basically never sent a resume
| except pro-forma.
|
| I became curious long after the fact if a job description for
| my last job that was written for me was ever posted.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Many companies have policies requiring that all jobs have to be
| posted both internally and externally before being filled. The
| intent is to prevent Sam the VP from just slotting his buddy into
| the job. At the end of the day, Sam the VP is just going to slot
| his buddy into the job but now you made a whole bunch of people
| apply for a job that was never available to them.
|
| 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.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Not only posted, but often they require that several folks are
| actually interviewed.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| In Europe jobs have to be published. Even if there is no
| intention of filling it from the public. And companies also
| publish bullshit jobs which are used to manipulate regulatory
| requirements if needed (eg. if you want to hire a foreigner,
| you must prove you couldn't fill the position locally - by
| publishing it for 3 months).
| orwin wrote:
| > In Europe jobs have to be published
|
| 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).
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Yes, just not everywhere.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| H1B has evolved into a bizarre collaborative scam between the
| government and tech corporations; there is, in fact, a US
| citizen who can fill any software engineering role a US company
| has.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Not really. You can't get an expert in most recent European
| or Asian technology (for example 5G mobile network backbone)
| in the US.
| Eumenes wrote:
| H1b isn't about "experts", there are other visas for that
| (eb1 or o1). H1b's purpose it to find talent after search
| has been "exhausted" locally. That is rarely done in good
| faith.
| vunderba wrote:
| Agreed, you're really reaching if your company implies
| that it needs to search abroad to find a dev who's
| proficient with react...
| lurking15 wrote:
| It's an outrage once you work at these companies and behold
| the sheer dysfunction and they're all getting paid wages
| native American citizens would take.
| astrange wrote:
| The model that Americans would take any job if the wages
| were high enough is simple but obviously false. For manual
| labor there's no amount of money you could pay Americans to
| be farmworkers. For desk jobs there's no amount that'll
| overcome Americans' cultural belief that you can't do math
| unless you were born as a special sort of person who is
| "good at math".
| lurking15 wrote:
| I'm not sure how this applies to what I said.
| mantas wrote:
| 1 million/year? There's definitely an amount that'd allow
| to find enough workers locally. The other question is how
| much would the produce cost and how many people would be
| willing to pay.
| astrange wrote:
| Once it gets that high, they don't need to work because
| they can retire.
|
| (Or buy the farmland themselves and resume paying
| migrants to do it.)
| kristjansson wrote:
| You wildly underestimate American avarice.
| astrange wrote:
| I know a fair number of Silicon Valley "townies" and they
| are not trying and failing to get into tech companies.
| Only the Asian ones with tiger parents are even
| considering it.
|
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >For manual labor there's no amount of money you could
| pay Americans to be farmworkers.
|
| In this market? Throw me a hoe tell me where to dig. I
| just need to pay rent.
| astrange wrote:
| Well that's probably part of the problem. You have to
| live within commute range of the work to do it, and
| people don't want to live in small towns or Central
| Valley CA unless they're in the respected local landowner
| class.
|
| 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.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Please don't troll.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > For manual labor there's no amount of money you could
| pay Americans to be farmworkers.
|
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| > For manual labor there's no amount of money you could
| pay Americans to be farmworkers.
|
| Ever worked a blast furnace? Or a coal mine?
|
| You absolutely can pay enough money to get Americans to
| do really shitty manual labor.
| iwontberude wrote:
| 100% on your last sentence. There is a massive
| misplacement of ego in our fellow countrymen that loves
| to posture as an arbiter of morality and rationality, but
| has no pomp left over for their individual upward
| mobility. Very very bizarre and self defeating.
| busterarm wrote:
| It's also an outrage how much leverage companies have over
| their H1B employees (especially from India, etc).
|
| 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...).
| lovich wrote:
| If they have direct family members that are citizens they
| should skip the wait apply through the family path,
| although they would need to be on good terms with said
| family member as they have to vouch for their welfare
| payments for 10 years
|
| At least it that way about a decade ago, as I'm realizing
| things might have changed since then
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > there is, in fact, a US citizen who can fill any software
| engineering role a US company has.
|
| 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.
| ouddv wrote:
| At large tech companies, the pay is entirely driven by
| level and rating; so there's no savings in salary; just
| added costs to comply with the directive.
|
| It's endlessly frustrating that the US government wants to
| centrally plan my hiring decisions.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Ok, so why are you hiring H1B's at this point then if
| there's "just added costs to comply with the directive"?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > 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?
| jajko wrote:
| You would be surprised how hard can some managers negotiate
| 10% salary change during hiring, despite the fact its not
| their own money, or anyhow useful for their work. I talk
| multinational mega corporations here. People just want to
| be good employees(TM) or at least seen as such.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Control. Like always. An H1B can't just job hop to the next
| company without more hoops and strings attached.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Bizarre? Supporting business's whims is mostly what the
| government has existed to do for the last forty years. What's
| bizarre is that people expect our country to function
| normally when this is so blatant.
|
| 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.
| vosper wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Written with incredibly specific requirements that might as
| well have the name of the person they're retaining as one of
| them.
| hn72774 wrote:
| The ones at Amazon were super generic. SDE skills were
| supposedly "fungible."
| djmips wrote:
| That's such a laugh IRL for a lot of job types. Are
| surgeons fungible? Need brain surgery?, oh don't worry
| we'll get the orthopedic surgeon in here.
|
| I feel confident there are software jobs where it's
| essentially as specialized.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| When I was doing PERM, I was also WFH. HR told me to put 2
| postings up in my apartment.
| gaws wrote:
| > At the end of the day, Sam the VP is just going to slot his
| buddy into the job but now you made a whole bunch of people
| apply for a job that was never available to them.
|
| Nowadays, in tech, it's all about _who_ you know rather than
| _what_ you know.
| drawnwren wrote:
| This is all a function of interviews sucking right? Leet code
| is essentially completely independent from dev skill.
| Projects take too much commitment and time from the team and
| devs.
|
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Honestly, even referrals are sucking for me in 2023/4.
| Referral would almost always mean I at least talk to
| someone on the hiring team . Now it's been maybe a 40%
| chance I even get a recruiter call?
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Also back in the day, we would say we need X new staff,
| corporate would encourage us to advertise and interview, but
| when it came to extending and offer they would tell us we can't
| increase head count. Happened over and over till I left.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I have never started the interview process before there was a
| headcount approved[1]. I have never had anyone push back when
| I said "I'll worry about that when the headcount is approved,
| because I got things to do"; but then I can't recall more
| than a handful of times anyone wanted me to front-run the
| recruiting process with a fishing expedition. Have things
| really become that shitty?
|
| [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".
| jajko wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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.
| djmips wrote:
| For H1B/PERM, I remember they had to post it on the wall in a
| public place. Our company posted the jobs on the wall in the
| lunch room at our office. It has every information including
| the salary. I guess things have changed a bit since the early
| 2000s?
| raincom wrote:
| That's what Apple was doing. After their settlement with DOJ,
| Apple posts jobs on their job board as well.
| erulabs wrote:
| What we need is, is Job-postings-as-code so that we can automate
| the deployment of Linkedin postings such that when a recruiter is
| let go, we can automatically identify their postings and clean
| them up.
|
| We'll call it DevHiringOps
|
| Seriously tho, always use the companies website instead of
| believing whatever is on some job posting website.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > They also made ads to "trick overworked employees" into
| believing that more people would be brought on to alleviate their
| overwhelming workload.
|
| 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.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| Related discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41714672
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I wish we could do more to disincentivize this kind of blatantly
| unethical behavior from companies.
| Animats wrote:
| This wasn't thought of when false advertising laws were drafted.
| California:
|
| _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.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Noticed this trend a few years ago from startups keen to look
| like they were growing much faster than they really were.
| Personally I wouldn't begin the process unless an insider had
| confirmed that a position was a) Real, and b) I would not be
| disfavoured somehow, meaning that I would be applying on a level
| playing field.
| hannob wrote:
| The article doesn't really discuss the legality of this, which
| I'd be curious to hear the opinion of a lawyer.
|
| 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.
| kaibee wrote:
| ah the ol "Everything is securities fraud". I could see it.
| Company posts jobs for department that is being divested/going
| out of business/etc, this misleads investors, ergo: securities
| fraud.
| de6u99er wrote:
| What a colossal waste of everybody's time.
|
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'll bite my tongue on my HR thoughts, but AFAIK HR incentives
| are saving a company money, or making the company a lot of
| money. You don't necessarily need to hire people if you're
| focused on cost saving measures.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Well I opened the article, near the beginning I saw the text:
| "81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that
| were fake or already filled."
|
| 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.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Well I opened the article, near the beginning I saw the text:
| "81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that
| were fake or already filled."
|
| I love San Francisco to death, but there's no reliable local
| newspaper. It drives me nuts.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I've done tech interviewing for years. Job listing that are to
| various degree fake are quite common. Of course, fakeness comes
| in many flavor, from listings posted just to "see if there's
| anyone out there" (I had a boss who did this regularly) to jobs
| a supervisor really does want to fill but which they know they
| won't because the bureaucracy has forced impossible
| requirements on them. An example: "Junior programmer, 10 years
| experience in language X" (that's existed for five years).
| zero-sharp wrote:
| This is another personal anecdote, but I had an interview
| earlier this year for a database related role. The job ad had
| a huge salary range and the interview had nothing to do with
| the role. I wasn't asked any behavioral or technical
| questions. The two people on the call just wanted to get to
| know me. We probably spent several minutes talking about
| sports. A few days later I got rejected. What the hell?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the interviewers are being paid to do interviews
| arp242 wrote:
| You're supporting the wrong team?
|
| 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.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Was your boss aware of the toll it takes to interview (well)
| on his own teams?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Oh, he never interviewed, just posted on craigslist and
| collected resumes. But the impact on us was important. One
| of the purposes of the exercise for him was being able to
| show me a list of people could supposedly do my job better,
| faster and cheaper.
|
| 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.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| The really common reason in my experience is there is a job
| that is made to fit a specific internal applicant but it has to
| advertised "because of process". Often the manager is not even
| telling recruiting that they have already picked the candidate.
| neonrider wrote:
| Just to note. 80% of recruiters doesn't mean 80% of ads. A
| recruiter that has posted thousands of legitimate ads in their
| career, _technically_ only needs to have posted 1 fake one to
| be eligible for inclusion in the 80%.
|
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| This isn't new. Forbes also interviewed someone who made such a
| study.
|
| 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.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Seems perfectly plausible that the phenomenon of ghost jobs
| is real and it may be getting worse.
|
| 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.
| benreesman wrote:
| This is just one example. While tech jobs are diverse, the well-
| heeled players substantially set the tone and they have gone
| berserk: over the last few years they have neutron bombed entire
| zip codes claiming hard times, then posted record-shattering EPS
| beats, then hired back a bunch of people at substantially lower
| compensation in a phenomenon so pervasive to have a catchy name:
| "boomerang". It's not even the first time recently got popped for
| wage fixing, Don't Poach Gate was like 15 years ago. They're
| giving us all the finger in the Crimson, and we will do nothing
| because we can do nothing.
|
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| Unions
| sdenton4 wrote:
| burn it all down, start worker coops.
| SeattleAltruist wrote:
| Post makes errors around what nonprofits are and can do. (IANAL,
| but I do set up and run nonprofits for a living.)
|
| 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.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| This is not only a problem for tech workers, but for all
| industries. The stories I hear from non-tech friends are pretty
| crazy.
| ugh123 wrote:
| >81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that
| were fake or already filled
|
| Ah... recruiters at it again.
| b3ing wrote:
| If it's a publically traded, report them to the SEC for trying to
| manipulate the market with the illusion of them hiring a lot as
| in growing
| singlepaynews wrote:
| I think there's a legitimate market opportunity here. I am
| seeking a cofounder to build the job board that vets employers,
| and makes money by charging candidates to access it.
|
| 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.
| hiatus wrote:
| This sounds similar to a problem dating sites face--solving the
| user's problem leads them away from the service. But you have
| the added difficulty that people looking for employment may not
| have the resources to spend on another monthly subscription.
|
| It sounds interesting though, good luck!
| tmn wrote:
| Incentivize the employer to only provide real listings by
| having them pay to advertise a listing. Let them be reimbursed
| if it's filled via the platform.
|
| 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.
| singlepaynews wrote:
| 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
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >. I am seeking a cofounder to build the job board that vets
| employers, and makes money by charging candidates to access it.
|
| 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...
| neonrider wrote:
| I'd love to go back to times where it was fine for a candidate
| not to have a LinkedIn. Currently, regardless of your blog, or
| your multiple StackOverflow answers, or your GitHub, or your
| posts on any of the other tech-focused communities, if HR doesn't
| see your LinkedIn, it's as if you're off-planet.
|
| 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.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| A tech focused network who have zero HR people so it wouldn't
| help
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