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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

#141

Post by harvey9 »

DavidPiper wrote: post #80
pydry wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 :-)

Sometimes it's sending false market signals: a company that's hiring must be doing well, right?

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

#142

Post by pharrington »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #91
p-e-w wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In any other department, misrepresenting your intent to engage in a transaction would be seen as a breach of professional ethics. In most other situations related to money or contracts, it would be a criminal offense punishable by prison time.

> In most other situations related to money or contracts, it would be a criminal offense punishable by prison time What are you thinking of? In most cases, that falls firmly under the category of bullshitting. Annoying. Unprofessional. Dishonest. But rarely criminal. What makes this possibly illegal (though I'm still unsure if it's crimial) is that it's specifically around employer-employee relations.

Fraud is very illegal.

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

#143

Post by harvey9 »

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]

HR departments post the jobs other departments tell them to post so unless there's a lot of HR-role ghost posts I would say these things are unrelated.

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

#144

Post by cmiles8 »

In the US a lot of these are pseudo postings for immigration applications. They are technically posting the job, but in pt 3 for on page 72 of a random newspaper in a hope that nobody sees it and applies so they can say “we couldn’t find anyone so we need a visa/green card.”

That’s starting to get cracked down on, but it’s been a mess and a sham for a while.

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

#145

Post by terminalshort »

moralestapia wrote: post #75
terminalshort wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your time might be worthless but mine isn't.

Yeah, you go ahead and sue someone for the few minutes of your time it took to send in a application for a fake job. Then you'll really see what wasting time looks like.

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

#146

Post by harvey9 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #5

I was an employment counselor in the late 1990s. Even then, ½ to ¾ of realistic, worthwhile jobs were phantoms. FF to now and hiring portals silently drop viable applicants for a long list of never disclosed reasons. I know temp agencies that hire, send the employee out on 1 job then never again. I've never know a time when hiring wasn't crap for entire classes of viable applicants.

How come temp agencies would only send someone out on one job? They make money based on placements so unless that worker has bad feedback from clients it would make sense to place them again.

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

#148

Post by harvey9 »

tjpnz wrote: post #138
pastel8739 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies already get so many applications that applying is a crapshoot without a referral. I feel like this is the opposite of what we need.

A referral isn't really useful on its own. Ideally the person doing the referral needs to have the ear of the HM and followup regularly. Otherwise it's an easily missed note on an ATS.

We could make the referrer's company email a field in the ATS

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

#149

Post by cons0le »

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"?

Please stop thinking about laws, and think about enforcement. If the cops don't care about something, it's defecto legal. We have all sorts of fancy laws on the books that aren't enforced. Environmental regs, animal welfare regs, anti trust laws, white collar anti fraud laws. Data laws fall into this bucket. Nobody that would actually enforce those laws gives a dam. We won't be able to solve any of our problems with new laws, until we can actually enforce the laws already on the books

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

#150

Post by cons0le »

randycupertino wrote: post #51
josefrichter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it actually is illegal, via a set of more general rules on data collection, on what constitutes a fraud, etc. May not be spelled out exactly like this specific use case, but still very likely covered by law. Just difficult to prove.

I saw this post on reddit where some sketchy AI company (Alpheva AI) is posting jobs and requesting a screenshot of all applicants having left their app a 5-star review in the app store as part of the application process: https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1pp0iej/thi...

This is another thing were it clearly is illegal, but good luck actually trying to sue or get them to stop it. Worst case scenario they'll set up another cheap company on paper, and keep doing the same scam
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