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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

cnbc.com

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Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#101

Post by LargeWu »

hyperpape wrote: post #81
DebtDeflation wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

80% of what? There are 85,000 H1B visas per year, and vastly more job postings (and hirings of citizens) each year.

85,000 new H1B's. But there are multiples of that already in the US who already hold visas. So, the actual number is in the hundreds of thousands, enough to make a serious impact on supply of labor in the tech sector.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#102

Post by maxk42 »

treyd wrote: post #36
carefulfungi wrote: post #15

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…

How is this actually restricting speech? It's not restricting advertisements for labor, it's restricting intentional lies made to misdirect. That's called fraud.

Sorry, but how would you ever prove a job ad is fake?

"Were you going to hire someone for this role?" "Yes." "Case dismissed."

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#103

Post by tptacek »

neonrider wrote: post #90
tptacek wrote: 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…

I'm not familiar with the process of passing a law. Is it one of those situations where the ask is open to negotiation? Like, if I want to be given a finger I first need to ask for the whole arm kinda deal? If it's the case, then as you said, perhaps the real ask is what's in the summary.

There's no real process with respect to what the statute would end up saying; it would be intensely negotiated (and unlikely in this political climate). The simplest thing to go on is what the actual proposal says.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#104

Post by maxk42 »

diego_moita wrote: post #24

In the end this is like banning fake news, you just can't. I suggest people just take a credibility approach. As an example, I no longer bother with HN's "Who's hiring", everything there is bullshit. Besides, job sites are just social media, their purpose is not to inform, it is to create eyeballs to advertisers. You should discard them, like you should also cancel Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

Hey - not everything is bullshit on "Who's hiring" threads. I once got eight rounds of interviews with a company before being ghosted by someone off of an HN thread.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#105

Post by sokoloff »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #22
snapetom wrote: post #2

This is going to be very hard to enforce on a Federal level, let alone pass. Companies are going to play shell games with the titles, responsibilities, and org structure just enough. There might also be 1st Amendment issues, too. The required reporting numbers will be hollow. The end result will be that it will be on the books, but the government won't have any enforceable actions for years. And when you do see actio…

The easy way to enforce this would be to leave it individuals. Applied to a job and heard nothing back? Sue. You'd have to pretty tightly define the law, such that it could be simply applied, but I could imagine all sorts of concrete rules which would significantly improve the status quo. Something like "Public job postings may be up for no more than 60 days for a given position, interview process must last no more t…

No, the easiest solution is to avoid doing anything that would qualify as a “public job posting” until you’re absolutely out of other options, which is probably worse than the status quo.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#107

Post by azemetre »

befictious wrote: post #86
IshKebab wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think realistically the only way you could enforce this is to legally required registration of job adverts with the government (you register the advert, you receive an ID; anyone advertising jobs without a valid ID is heavily fined), and then also require companies to register the outcome of the advert (internal hire, external hire, withdrawn, etc.). Then it would be possible to actually identify suspicious behavio…

then it would just be like real estate with off market listings where companies have a black market hiring pool and then just do the legal loophole steps of registering before "officially" posting and immediately hiring their desired candidate... which would probably have the shady side effect of making the policy "look efficient" without actually solving the job search problem.

For this analogy to hold, wouldn't there have to be some way to withhold all people from applying to a job? Why would a company want to do this if it just increases the cost of hiring? What is the benefit to paying more for a workforce when you can just hire people normally.

The alternative could be like a $2000 fine per listing violation. To make it worthwhile to enforce, offer half the fine as a tax credit that can be claimed anonymously after an investigation.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#108

Post by xboxnolifes »

IshKebab wrote: post #82
azemetre wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make it more enforceable?

I think realistically the only way you could enforce this is to legally required registration of job adverts with the government (you register the advert, you receive an ID; anyone advertising jobs without a valid ID is heavily fined), and then also require companies to register the outcome of the advert (internal hire, external hire, withdrawn, etc.). Then it would be possible to actually identify suspicious behavio…

They wouldn't have to register it with the government, just track it internally in the chance that they get challenged on it so they have receipts.

1) Person believes company is posting fake job listings and notes a few as evidence.

2) Person submits this to some government form similar to an FCC complaint form.

3) Government contacts the company to investigate or whatever.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#109

Post by neonrider »

The hallmarks of ghost job posting are so obvious that detecting them could probably be automated now.

- Recurrent and yearlong ad for the same position, with numerous applicants (sometimes in the hundreds, if not thousands). This is probably the poster child of the ghost job ad.

- Unrealistic compensation for required skills, guaranteed to weed out the junior (skill issue) and the senior (comp issue). This could also signal that the company is looking to hire from offshore markets.

- Plain unrealistic skill requirements. Even companies that hire "full-stack" know that there's a practical limit, beyond which it's probably better to spread out responsibilities, if we want any kind of productivity gain. Being unreasonably greedy about skills might be a sign that the poster wants a cop out when candidates actually turn up. "Yeah, he was capable of writing his own OS kernel as we asked, but his CSS was shit".

If endeavors like the present proposal prove inept, there are enough tools to supplement posted job ads with metrics meant to easily signal to job seekers and investors something useful about the companies posting them, with a nice and accessible UI.

The other day there was an article about streaming services driving viewers back to piracy due to their shenanigans and the resulting subpar user experience. If LinkedIn and friends continue to pretend that it's technologically beyond them to solve ghost job posting on their own network, eventually it will be addressed somewhere else.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#110

Post by sib »

em-bee wrote: post #37
carefulfungi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you advertise a job and fail to find a qualified candidate, and then don't fill that role, is that fraud? If you advertise for talent constantly, interview regularly, and hire rarely (but hire), is that fraud? If you have a single role to fill and advertise it multiple times in multiple states as multiple listings because that's how job posting forums work, is that fraud?

if you fail to find a candidate then you will easily be able to demonstrate that the candidate suing you for violating the law was not qualified and therefore has no reason to sue. if you hire rarely, same thing, if you can demonstrate that it takes a long time to find the right candidate. or, you could be requested to pause posts. to handle a possible confusion about multiple listings, each job could have some kind…

>> if you fail to find a candidate then you will easily be able to demonstrate that the candidate suing you for violating the law was not qualified and therefore has no reason to sue.

Umm, no? There are plenty of times when I've had roles posted that we interviewed candidates who met the written requirements (e.g., degrees, years of experience, etc) but did not pass our interview loops. It's very hard to prove a negative.

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