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'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

bbc.com

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Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#41

Post by intothemild »

cammikebrown wrote: post #8
cpa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don’t have a legal obligation to publicly disclose revenue in many countries, so if you’re selling business insights you’re always on the lookout for indicators that can be used as a proxy to revenue.

So, they’re just lying to make more money. Got it.

Yes, but also to fake how well they are doing to potential, or current investors.

IMHO, these aren't smart investors.. because this should be something that comes up in due diligence, the amount of money left, the current burn rate, and what the company is doing about the latter. If the company was on paper fully staffed, but also actively hiring. That would be for me an indicator that either the hiring is fake, so what else are they faking. Or that the hiring is real, and they are fiscally irresponsible.

There's another angle to all of this, and that's obviously the company isn't fully staffed, there's still some space in the runway for another hire. It's just that right now its a buyers market from the perspective of the company.. So, well, beggars can be choosers.. They're just holding out until that golden candidate comes along. This obviously sucks, and there SHOULD be a maximum length a company can have a job ad out before they have to explain why it's taking so long.

It's not uncommon for countries to require citizens to disclose Who and How many jobs they applied for this week to collect social security.. There should be something similar for companies who have job ads out.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#42

Post by ZuoCen_Liu »

Ghost jobs are essentially the 'vaporware' of the HR world. In any other department, misrepresenting your intent to engage in a transaction would be seen as a breach of professional ethics. The fact that it has become a standard KPI for HR departments to 'keep the pipeline warm' at the expense of thousands of hours of unpaid candidate labor is a massive market failure.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#43

Post by avidiax »

Xylakant wrote: post #32
avidiax wrote: post #20

We could at least require that all applications have a standardized format for resumé and a list of legally allowable questions. No more requiring the candidate to do 30 minutes of data entry to encode their resumé into your HR system. Then a ghost job wouldn't really waste much time, since uploading a JSON should take 30 seconds.

When we post a job ad on LinkedIn, I already get 30 spam answers in the first few minutes, people that have obviously spent not a single second reading the requirements. And you want to further automate this? I’ll just ask my people person to automate the response. We really try to spend the time to answer every application, but since AI generated applications have become a thing, we have decided to not answer those.…

The spammers spend almost no time filling any application, no matter how much work is intended. They have scripts for that. Granted, making it standardized means less skilled spammers can spam too.

Making it difficult to apply reduces the number of legitimate applications, however.

Either way, you need an automated first screen.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#44

Post by VerifiedReports »

wickedsight wrote: post #18

I was applying for a while last year. Spending hours to write a cover letter and then either hearing nothing or getting a canned rejection letter is super frustrating. I've come to the conclusion that putting effort into an application is time wasted, so from now on AI is writing pretty much every single one of my cover letters. Doing that allows me to send out 5 applications in the time it normally takes me to do 1.…

A place that physically operates near me posts job openings all the time, for which I'm well-qualified. After applying to several of them (with a very specific and targeted cover letter) and getting no response, my final attempt was to print out a letter and resume and physically take them over to their office.

I was thinking this would make a positive impression and say hey, I'm really interested and I'm willing to go the extra mile. The person who answered the door and to whom I gave the envelope seemed baffled that anyone would do this... saying, you know you can do this online...

I can only conclude that this is a ghost-job situation, where they didn't envision being called out in person and on site. Otherwise, what kind of dicks don't at least raise a respectful eyebrow at (or at least acknowledge) the guy who drives over to their office to hand-deliver a letter and resume?

After that I knew for sure that I wouldn't want to work for these jagoffs anyway... even if the job were real.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#45

Post by RobotToaster »

Xylakant wrote: post #32
avidiax wrote: post #20

We could at least require that all applications have a standardized format for resumé and a list of legally allowable questions. No more requiring the candidate to do 30 minutes of data entry to encode their resumé into your HR system. Then a ghost job wouldn't really waste much time, since uploading a JSON should take 30 seconds.

When we post a job ad on LinkedIn, I already get 30 spam answers in the first few minutes, people that have obviously spent not a single second reading the requirements. And you want to further automate this? I’ll just ask my people person to automate the response. We really try to spend the time to answer every application, but since AI generated applications have become a thing, we have decided to not answer those.…

I've always thought the easiest way to stop spam applications would be to require paper application.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#46

Post by d--b »

A lot of head hunters will dangle job offers that don’t exist just so they can get info on the company you’re working at - basically they’re trying to keep tab on who’s in charge of hiring, so they can contact them.

There are also those who are paid by your boss just to see if any of their team members is looking to take off.

I don’t think there is anything new here though. These practice have existed for a while, and there’s not much you can do about it.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#47

Post by [deleted] »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #17
andrewstuart wrote: post #6

I worked in recruiting for a long time and I can tell you I never saw much in the way of any deliberate strategy to create fake job posts. The thing is that whether or not a job exists at a point in time is far less black and white than you might naively think. There are many reasons for it to be somewhat grey and banning the practice doesn’t really mean anything because you would have to quantify precisely under wha…

> There is absolutely not a one to one relationship between a job and a job ad. Sounds like you've figured out exactly the problem then. If you're advertising for a job and there isn't a job then you've got a problem.

[deleted]

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#48

Post by PeterStuer »

bsder wrote: post #13

Can we please get back to using job fairs already? Why are companies so irritatingly resistant to getting back to doing things in-person and real-time?

Job fairs? You meen those gigs for meeting the junior HR promo girls that hands you a flyer with the company's carreers url, some branded post-it's and a mini pouch of gummi bears?

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#49

Post by RobotToaster »

andrewstuart wrote: post #6

I worked in recruiting for a long time and I can tell you I never saw much in the way of any deliberate strategy to create fake job posts. The thing is that whether or not a job exists at a point in time is far less black and white than you might naively think. There are many reasons for it to be somewhat grey and banning the practice doesn’t really mean anything because you would have to quantify precisely under wha…

Can you explain why this is? Or give some examples?

Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

#50

Post by avidiax »

pastel8739 wrote: post #36
avidiax wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employers want applications so badly they are willing to post job ads that don't exist. The need for a referral to get human eyes on your resume is a different problem that isn't made better by making every application expensive for the applicant. Poor quality applicants have more time, you might say.

I disagree and think that increasing the cost of applying would indeed help this problem. If the number of applications is too high for humans to possibly review, what other possible solution could there be?

The problem posed by this article is that companies are wasting candidates' time by making applying take time while offering no actual position.

What if we imagined that companies charged a fee to apply instead of charging candidate time? Then these ghost positions would be obviously considered fraud. We don't normally pay applicants for their time, but isn't a ghost position requiring substantial time to apply also a fraud on the applicant?

All I'm saying is, by removing the payment in time, you remove the fraud.

Applicant spam is an orthogonal problem that has other solutions. Linked-in could limit applicants to one application every 30 minutes, max 16 per day. Employers can use keyword filtering as they already do.

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