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

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

#71

Post by michaelt »

RobotToaster wrote: post #49
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?

A company has a graduate scheme, they might be hiring 4 graduates this year, they might be hiring 40. Only one job advert.

External recruiters might then re-advertise the job with the company name removed, planning to funnel people to the company and collect their 20% commission.

External recruiters with several jobs might merge them into one. $250k job for a senior java developer with 5 years finance experience + $75k job for a junior java developer = advertise $250k job for a java developer.

A company might have a slow, centralised hiring pipeline for some roles. Google has a recruiter check the candidate's resume before putting you into a lengthy 6+ interview gauntlet, but only at the end of it do hiring managers actually check if the resume matches an open job. And if course if it takes 2 months to get through the full pipeline, the jobs open at the end aren't the same as the jobs open at the start.

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

#72

Post by 3D30497420 »

whatsupdog wrote: post #70
ZuoCen_Liu wrote: post #42

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.

[flagged]

I'm not sure I'm following. How would does the gender balance of HR have a role to play here?

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

#73

Post by mckn1ght »

zwnow wrote: post #66
dandare wrote: post #58

I am not sure if more regulation is a solution, but the lack of respect for job seekers is a real problem. And not just with ghost jobs. My recent experience as a job seeker was harrowing - even with large, proud companies. I would pass multiple rounds of interviews with senior/director-level interviewers only to never hear back from the company - even after a direct request for an update or feedback. Just total igno…

I wonder why people still apply to FAANG companies, there is nothing to be won by working for them. Your work has zero impact, you're actively paid to enshittify stuff over making it better, you have horrible bureaucracy within the company, they lay off thousands of people per year so your job never really is secure, all of FAANG is ethically corrupt beyond means. I'd never hire a FAANG employee to be honest, while w…

Aside from the fact that you have no real job security anywhere, people take FAANG jobs for money. Both the high pay at the company itself, and the idea that once FAANG is on your resume, it will command the best jobs afterwards too.

I think they have to pay that high because the work sucks so much in reality. That's the equilibrium point between the demand for people to work there, and the supply of people willing to put up with it.

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

#74

Post by wickedsight »

Xylakant wrote: post #35
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.…

I can tell you that our HR takes the time to write proper responses to every application, but we straight up delete AI written applications. I honor the effort put into any application, but if people haven’t spent the time, then why should we?

Your HR is the exception though, not the rule. I'm willing to risk this, since it allows me to keep my sanity. And if a company really seems awesome I will still put in the effort.

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

#75

Post by moralestapia »

terminalshort wrote: post #38
rdtsc wrote: post #4

> Dr Escalera adds that she has also heard examples of companies posting jobs to obtain and sell data. How is that not illegal? Pretending to offer jobs just to suck in resumes to some database just seems like it should be illegal. Or just like running scams is illegal but they are in another country "so tough luck, you'll never get us"?

It's technically fraud, but there aren't any damages.

Your time might be worthless but mine isn't.

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

#77

Post by fragmede »

wisty wrote: post #27
rdtsc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how does that work as a growth indicator, are there any known organizations that track your growth based on how many job postings you do, and then use that data to indicate your growth? As a wild guess this may be part of the story a company tells itself. Every individual and company needs to tell themselves a nice "story" to feel good about themselves. In case of a company "damn, look how many jobs we're posting,…

It must fill some purpose though. I doubt it's entirely just marketing in most legitimate companies. Effectively a/b testing job adds? Or trying to get a range of candidates so they can find a good fit? Let's say you have, like, 10 jobs to do but you're only going to hire two people (either loading them up with more work, or internally reshuffling responsibilities, probably a bit of both). So you advertise for every…

I've heard in the sales world, the way to hire two sales people is to hire three, then fire the bottom performer after a month or a quarter.

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

#78

Post by hhh »

whatsupdog wrote: post #70
ZuoCen_Liu wrote: post #42

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.

[flagged]

what kind of redpill schizophrenia is this? no business is going to care about unpaid peoples time, and if they have to list a job publicly even if they have internal hires it only makes it worse.

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

#79

Post by Delphiza »

zwnow wrote: post #66
dandare wrote: post #58

I am not sure if more regulation is a solution, but the lack of respect for job seekers is a real problem. And not just with ghost jobs. My recent experience as a job seeker was harrowing - even with large, proud companies. I would pass multiple rounds of interviews with senior/director-level interviewers only to never hear back from the company - even after a direct request for an update or feedback. Just total igno…

I wonder why people still apply to FAANG companies, there is nothing to be won by working for them. Your work has zero impact, you're actively paid to enshittify stuff over making it better, you have horrible bureaucracy within the company, they lay off thousands of people per year so your job never really is secure, all of FAANG is ethically corrupt beyond means. I'd never hire a FAANG employee to be honest, while w…

Money, mostly

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

#80

Post by DavidPiper »

pydry wrote: post #68
dandare wrote: post #58

I am not sure if more regulation is a solution, but the lack of respect for job seekers is a real problem. And not just with ghost jobs. My recent experience as a job seeker was harrowing - even with large, proud companies. I would pass multiple rounds of interviews with senior/director-level interviewers only to never hear back from the company - even after a direct request for an update or feedback. Just total igno…

>I am not sure if more regulation is a solution Nothing else is going to fix this.

I happen to agree with you, but it's also worth mentioning that solving whatever problem is creating the need to post ghost jobs in the first place would also make posting them unnecessary (presumably insecurity about the company's ability to assess, hire and retain high quality talent.)

But those are very hard, company-specific problems to solve, hence my agreement :-)

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