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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

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Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#161

Post by crazygringo »

conscion wrote: post #32
guywithahat wrote: post #5

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.

> Imagine if you went to any other store and 17% of the items you bought were just junk and didn't work.

I dunno, that sounds like real life? The percentage of purchases that I return or ultimately don't use is probably around there, for non-repeat purchases.

A kitchen gadget that doesn't really work, a T-shirt I order that turns out to have a weird fit or weird material, a Bluetooth whatever that randomly disconnects after 5 minutes...

If 80% of my new purchases turn out to work as expected and do their job, I consider myself to be doing pretty well.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#162

Post by gruez »

apercu wrote: 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.

That would be a mistake, because "securities fraud" is one of the few ways you can get smacked for lying to the public. Lying to the public about climate change? Meh, it's hard to prove damages from the lie so you'll probably get away with it. However if you lie to shareholders about global warming, and that factors into your outlook of the company, you'll get smacked with securities fraud suits.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#163

Post by OldfieldFund »

t-writescode wrote: post #156
bill_joy_fanboy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all want to be, though. All business want to be big-time like Amazon, but not all of them are so lucky. I don't understand the making of excuses for small businesses as though they are somehow morally better than large businesses. Every business owner, regardless of the size of the business, wants free labor.

> Every business owner, regardless of the size of the business, wants free labor. Yeah, no. I’m no longer an entrepreneur - ran out of runway - but it was always my goal to have aggressive profit sharing as part of my company. Acceptable salaries - years of those salaries saved “in the bank” and profit-share the rest. I never wanted free labor. In fact, the reason I didn’t have employees is because I couldn’t afford…

If you want these things, you're playing the wrong game

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#164

Post by duskwuff »

maxk42 wrote: post #104
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.

... was it Canonical? :)

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#166

Post by edoceo »

TrousersHoisted wrote: post #147
philipallstar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing regulations around H1B requirements (and fixing that by just reducing H1Bs) and internal hiring would be the way to solve it.

H1Bs aren't the only problem, though.

They (H1B) seem to the "low hanging fruit" many (not just in this thread) are pointing to. I spend time in hiring circles and I hear this sentiment frequently. And the Ghost Post issue too. I think Ghost is bigger issue than H1B. Don't have a good solution.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#167

Post by t-writescode »

OldfieldFund wrote: post #163
t-writescode wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every business owner, regardless of the size of the business, wants free labor. Yeah, no. I’m no longer an entrepreneur - ran out of runway - but it was always my goal to have aggressive profit sharing as part of my company. Acceptable salaries - years of those salaries saved “in the bank” and profit-share the rest. I never wanted free labor. In fact, the reason I didn’t have employees is because I couldn’t afford…

If you want these things, you're playing the wrong game

What game are we talking about?

I want to play the “game” of creating things I want created and making enough money to comfortably sustain myself and help those I care about.

If I’m hiring people, I want people that want the same things as me and are paid well, or people that are willing to exchange their labor for both a respectable base earning and also extra earning based on how we, collectively, are doing.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#168

Post by neilv »

> The first time Thompson, 53, [...] Could it be all the roles he was submitting to weren’t actually real?

Probably. But there's also another obvious explanation for why he wasn't hearing back. (Widespread ageism, which is already illegal in the US, but many, many companies don't care.)

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#169

Post by behnamoh »

snapetom wrote: post #140
behnamoh wrote: post #35

unfortunately this happens in academia too. last year was brutal for most PhDs in business schools because the number of positions dropped significantly compared to the year before, and the ones that were "on the market" weren't all legit. there were several top tier schools that did the first-round interviews or even flyout seminars only to test the waters, with no intention of hiring. the fact that universities and…

The disconnect between academia and private is real and often bizarre. I have a good friend that's a recruiter for a top 20 flagship research university in the US. Her line is always, "We're education. We don't do things like ghost jobs and ghostings." She'll then often tell stories where she and her colleagues do the exact same thing you hear in the private sector. Recently she asked me if I thought it was ok to go…

honestly these people should be called out so maybe shame stops them from doing such shenanigans.

some universities just fly candidates to show to the dean as proof that they're working towards the school's AI initiatives. last year a school that flew me made a huge deal about how serious they were about AI and all the infrastructure they were willing to purchase for the 60 new faculty they were hiring across the entire school who do AI work.

they ended up hiring a psychology major who does nothing AI related.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#170

Post by rossdavidh »

djoldman wrote: post #62

> What counts as a “ghost job”? A job listing is considered a ghost job if: > · There is no intent to fill the role > · It’s not currently funded > · It’s posted to collect résumés, test the market, or boost visibility > · It’s recycled indefinitely without an actual opening https://www.truthinjobads.org/faq Even if this gets passed, it's probably unenforceable.

I really, really dislike ghost jobs, and I think they are way more than 17%. I have to agree, though, that finding a legal way to define and enforce them, that doesn't amount to a solution worse than the problem, will be quite difficult.
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