[HN Gopher] When did the job market get so rude?
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When did the job market get so rude?
Author : nlawalker
Score : 26 points
Date : 2025-12-12 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| nlawalker wrote:
| Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/12/job-
| ghosting-man...
| billy99k wrote:
| "Ghosting behavior by applicants, then, might have a simple
| explanation: "fair play"
|
| What they are saying is that when you get abused (being ghosted
| by lots of companies), it's fair play to then become the abuser
| (ghosting an employer after they didn't ghost you and tried to
| play fair).
|
| I'm in a hiring position, and I would blacklist any candidate
| that wasted my time like this.
|
| It's childish and just adds to the current state of Gen Z making
| it impossible to hire them (and then complaining they can never
| find a job).
| stalfosknight wrote:
| So you don't ghost anyone you have no intention of hiring?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| That's something you could brag about in a job posting. "We
| will always send you a rejection email if you get to the
| first phone screen"
| ok_dad wrote:
| If they ghosted you they already blacklisted you. Your comment
| has the energy of, "you can't quit, you're fired!"
| hinkley wrote:
| Advertisements and recruiter emails are pretty much the only
| thing in my inbox for the last, I'd say almost ten years.
|
| You'll forgive me if I miss one.
|
| Recruiting is turning into the business that still needs a
| paper check from you. Nobody else uses those grandpa.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I 'm in a hiring position, and I would blacklist any candidate
| that wasted my time like this._
|
| If you offered a position and, as described in TFA, they didn't
| show up then it seems obvious to me that this hypothetical
| candidate is not terribly bothered by your threats.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The whole "blaming Gen Z" thing is getting old. You get what
| you pay for.
|
| You're likely offering "market rate" roles. You're getting
| "market rate" candidates and behavior. It's like walking into a
| Fiat dealership and being mad you're not getting Ferrari
| treatment.
|
| If you want better you are welcome to pay more and then maybe
| people will have less incentives to ghost you. The Ferrari
| treatment still exists, you just need to pay for it.
|
| The job market didn't get rude, it just regressed to the mean.
| "Rude" is the default; when one side shows respect it's likely
| for the other side to reciprocate. When one side doesn't, there
| is little reason for the other side to put in the effort.
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| Gotta love how "market rate" is about 60% of what you need to
| qualify to rent an apartment these days.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| And of course the roles are hybrid specifically to prevent
| you from living in a location where you can actually afford
| rent.
| urda wrote:
| > I'm in a hiring position, and I would blacklist any candidate
| that wasted my time like this.
|
| > It's childish and just adds to the current state of Gen Z
| making it impossible to hire them (and then complaining they
| can never find a job).
|
| This is an unacceptable interviewing posture. As a Bar Raiser
| (or whatever your equivalent is) with authority over interview
| standards and interviewer eligibility, I'd pull you from loops
| for retraining. Repeat it, and you're removed from
| interviewing.
| zardo wrote:
| I'm the context of hiring, "blacklisting" is collusion between
| employers sharing a "do not hire" list.
|
| Is that what you the mean?
| fallingfrog wrote:
| One would imagine such a practice to be illegal. But yeah
| this was my question as well.
| Ethee wrote:
| I can understand why you're saying this and my response here
| will be more of a general reply to your direct reply's as it
| seems like a lot of them are missing the key element of WHY you
| can act this way in the current market. The big 'L' word,
| Leverage. In the current market you have all the leverage in
| the world as the employer to find a perfect fit employee due to
| the overall supply of workers and declining job market. When
| the market swings back the other way eventually however, the
| shoe will be on the other foot so to speak, and you wont have
| such privilege.
|
| It's amazing how short our memories are for all the companies
| 10 years ago bending over backwards to give those employees
| anything and everything they wanted.
|
| A lot of my statement here is very generalizing but at the end
| of the day market forces really do dictate a lot of this. I
| keep seeing article after article from hiring managers about
| how they're FLOODED with applications. You can't be 'polite' to
| all those people, as most people don't have the attention span
| for all that. There are definitely 2 sides to this coin it just
| seems that from the side of the people wanting to be hired they
| just have no empathy for those doing the hiring.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I have multiple open roles right now and am finding that I
| can't afford to hire the top applicants. I honestly did not
| expect to have so little leverage.
| Ethee wrote:
| And that should be expected. Leverage in this situation
| doesn't mean you get the cream of the crop for nothing. In
| this sense it means that you get applications that fit your
| role. When the market was flipped you were hard pressed to
| find people that actually matched at least half of your
| role requirements. Now even your statement gives away how
| much that has changed that you're only looking at the 'top
| applicants'. Now, you have so many people that fit you're
| struggling because you want the perfect ones.
| moregrist wrote:
| > I keep seeing article after article from hiring managers
| about how they're FLOODED with applications. You can't be
| 'polite' to all those people, as most people don't have the
| attention span for all that.
|
| I dunno. Being polite in the context of a job application is
| pretty basic: if the applicant didn't make it to a phone
| screen, send them a polite form letter telling them that.
|
| It doesn't require much attention, just a little automation
| and caring enough to actually respond.
|
| For those that made it to a phone screen but not past it, a
| polite rejection email is also sufficient.
|
| This doesn't seem like a lot to me.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > a polite rejection email is also sufficient
|
| The reason for the lack of those is that employers want to
| hedge their bets - emailing a rejection will make the
| candidate move on and potentially take another offer which
| would make them unavailable.
|
| Letting them stew means the candidate may remain available
| if you suddenly change your mind or your top pick flakes
| out and you need a replacement on short notice.
|
| It's understandable - what's less understandable is being
| butthurt about it when candidates start playing the exact
| same game and flake out because they too hedged their bets,
| picked another option and need to let you down.
| Ethee wrote:
| Well sure then let's break it down. Assume I have an open
| role for a small business and I get 500 applications to
| sort through. The first step is most businesses will use at
| least some sort of filtering for the basic requirements to
| determine good fit. So those are pretty easy to sort
| through. Let's assume I cut those applications down to 50
| that actually fit my requirements.
|
| Now am I supposed to bundle up all those 450 initial
| applications that got filtered out just to send them a nice
| polite email that their resumes didn't even fit the
| position they applied for? From a pure business perspective
| this is a straight waste of time. Especially as most
| businesses aren't going to have an automatic way to do this
| easily, and building that automation doesn't make my
| company money. But if I already happened to have some
| automation setup for it, then maybe sure. This part is the
| majority 'ghosted' applications. For the rest of the 50 I'd
| probably be more likely to actually send them a
| personalized email about the role because at least they
| actually fit what they applied for.
| Pryde wrote:
| > Especially as most businesses aren't going to have an
| automatic way to do this easily...
|
| I find myself surprised by the idea that, in most cases,
| any business is not used some form of automated solution
| for resume filtering. In that case, it seems like
| automated rejection responses should be a capability
| provided by that solution. I can't recall the last time I
| went through an application process that wasn't clearly
| provided to the company I was applying for by a third-
| party company, though I'll grant that the companies to
| which I might apply are likely not those to which you are
| referring.
| mlsu wrote:
| From a straight business perspective it's not a waste of
| time, since the candidates you reject may be candidates
| you want in the future.
|
| It's always good to be polite. It would be an advantage
| to send a form letter nowadays, since job seekers will
| remember it.
|
| And come on. You have a list of emails. Do you really
| think it's insurmountable for a business to send an email
| to a list of emails? My "promotions" inbox begs to
| differ.
| nlawalker wrote:
| _> Now am I supposed to bundle up all those 450 initial
| applications that got filtered out just to send them a
| nice polite email that their resumes didn't even fit the
| position they applied for?_
|
| Yes.
|
| _> Especially as most businesses aren't going to have an
| automatic way to do this easily, and building that
| automation doesn't make my company money._
|
| If you have the automation in place to receive and
| process 500 applications in the first place, and
| filtering that automatically cuts them down, I think it's
| reasonable to expect that you'd have automation that can
| email the people who were cut to tell them that they
| weren't selected and not to expect any further
| communication.
| ericmcer wrote:
| What does that mean, I have been on hiring committees before
| but don't even know what it would mean to "blacklist" someone.
| If you just mean not hire them at your company in the future I
| think the candidate will be fine with that. If you mean across
| many orgs then... Do recruiters and HR people have some secret
| club I don't know about?
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| There's no equivalence, as outlined in the article. Discourtesy
| in a wildly unbalanced power relationship is significantly
| different depending on which side is displaying it. Further,
| wasting your time that you are being remunerated for is vastly
| different to wasting somebody's time when you are not
| remunerating them, but merely dangling the carrot of possible
| future remuneration. Your use of the word "abuser" is patently
| absurd.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| "Blacklist" in what sense? Is there a master list somewhere of
| people not to hire?
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(page generated 2025-12-12 23:01 UTC)