Live data from Hacker News

Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

cnbc.com

91–100 of 264 posts

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#91
The problem is most "ghost jobs" aren't: They're real jobs with a real intention to hire, but the hiring team can't come to a decision. I've seen it time and time again: A role gets reposted 2, 3, 4 times until the one curmudgeon on the team finally relents and somebody gets hired. It's a tremendous waste of time but it isn't a "ghost job". I predict this legislation will have approximately zero impact on people posting roles that don't actually get filled.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making people able to sue for anyone feeling bad about not having gotten the job is a path you should not take. We have something similar in Germany and its horrible for companies. Leeches bleeding you dry.

i'm so glad that companies don't have feelings tho. Would you mind sharing with everyone else what you are talking about, its very vague with the descriptor of "something similar" doubly questionable with you use of calling humans leeches, when the only leeches i've seen in the business world were the companies that require labor to make money and then pay back a less than equitable amount to the people doing work.

not every company is some large mega corp

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#93

Only 17%?? Last time I was job hunting I found that 80%+ of postings were either dupes or bogus. Very vague description of the job? I'm going to keep seeing it for a long time, clearly they are not actually filling the role. Very specific, odd set of requirements, they're going through the motions but they've already picked the person and the ad is designed to match only that person. I think they're going about this…

It is absolutely 80%+. The majority of the time, it is a company looking to sponsor an H1B for a role or they have an H1B in the role who they want to sponsor for PERM status (Green Card) and the law requires them to post the job to prove there are no Americans available. The next most common reason is they have identified an internal candidate for the role but corporate policy requires all jobs to be posted external…

The other kind that are insidious are the MLM people. They post a 'job' and it turns out you are about to be sold an MLM. But you can 'be your own boss!!!'

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#94
post #76
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it would be simpler to just impose a nominal tax on the total number of job openings a company creates throughout the year. Maybe as a % of the role's salary. You could even rebate it against employer payroll taxes so they get the money back when they actually hire someone.

You should never tax things you want people to do, like posting legitimate job openings

We tax things we want people to do all the time.

We want people to buy things, yet we have sales taxes.

We want people to work productive jobs and earn money, yet we have income taxes.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#95
post #91

The problem is most "ghost jobs" aren't: They're real jobs with a real intention to hire, but the hiring team can't come to a decision. I've seen it time and time again: A role gets reposted 2, 3, 4 times until the one curmudgeon on the team finally relents and somebody gets hired. It's a tremendous waste of time but it isn't a "ghost job". I predict this legislation will have approximately zero impact on people post…

That's a very generous interpretation of what's actually going on out there. Companies post jobs out of vanity. They think they look better when they're hiring. Good data is essential for a good economy. Fake jobs are pollution.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#96

If the number is only 17%, I'm not sure we need to ban them. From my experience the big issue is hiring managers who either 1) are very casual about hiring (i.e. they're willing to wait 6 months and waste everyone's time), or 2) people who like the idea of hiring but keep changing what they want to hire for (like this month we're having issues with testing, so we want a test engineer, but next month we're having issu…

This "a senior engineer with direct experience for <140k" is a fake job.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#97
post #53

The controls summarized in the CNBC piece seem reasonable, or, if not that, then at least not all that onerous. The controls in the actual proposal are less reasonable: they create finable infractions for any claim in a job ad deemed "misleading" or "inaccurate" (findings of fact that requires a an expensive trial to solve) and prohibit "perpetual postings" or postings made 90 days in advance of hiring dates. The con…

[dead]

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#98

If the number is only 17%, I'm not sure we need to ban them. From my experience the big issue is hiring managers who either 1) are very casual about hiring (i.e. they're willing to wait 6 months and waste everyone's time), or 2) people who like the idea of hiring but keep changing what they want to hire for (like this month we're having issues with testing, so we want a test engineer, but next month we're having issu…

> If the number is only 17%, I'm not sure we need to ban them. Job hunting is a market and the government should tryu to make every market as efficient as possible. Imagine if you went to any other store and 17% of the items you bought were just junk and didn't work.

So imagine job hunting is Amazon where you can’t return bad products.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#99
post #33

If I wanted to game my stock price and mislead my competition, a bunch of highly specific (and fraudulent) job postings on my website (in combination with other investor-adjacent reporting) would be a great low cost start.

How, exactly, would that convince an investor such as myself that your company is suddenly worth more?

Generally when I'm looking at a company's financials more employees means less profitable.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#100

This is explictly restricting speech (restricting the right to advertise for labor) and would have to meet a high first amendment bar in the US. Pay transparency law supporters have argued successfully that there is a compelling interest in closing gender and racial wage gaps and that salary range information can be mandated in job listings for that purpose. What's the compelling interest in this case that allows the…

Deceptive commercial speech is illegal in many contexts.
Post reply on HN