The biggest irony is that the majority of HN's own "Who's Hiring" are ghost jobs.
That thread is just bullshit.
'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
151–160 of 253 posts
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#152Years ago, there was a job agency advertising an IT banking job in the Caribbean. Every week. For years. Apparently it was just a way for them to harvest CVs. 'Sorry you didn't make the interview for that job, but can I interest you in a role creating TPS reports for a company in Slough?'. Scummy behaviour. But I guess they got away with it.
At least you don't have to worry about tropical storms in Slough
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#153I 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.
Talking about "ghost jobs" is like talking about "fake news": everyone that does assumes that only others do, not them. Everyone will somehow always pretend to be "the real thing", even to themselves. It is like misleading propaganda, it will always find a way.
The biggest irony is that the majority of HN's own "Who's Hiring" are ghost jobs.
I won't disappear, it won't even decrease, even with regulation.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Having been on the other end of this repeatedly (as an engineer with a desk near the door, not a hiring manager) and I hate it when people do this. People are becoming much more adverse to bring panhandled or solicited in a way they cannot ignore, in the same way spam calls are more annoying than spam texts. It's not "initiative" or "extra mile" shit, it's taking advantage of someone's politeness to waste their time.…
> Submit resume through company site
>AI rejects it for unknown reason and HR never sees it
>Go to company HQ to prove I'm human and see the culture
>Seething antisocial neckbeard engineer refuses to shake my hand, throws my resume in trash, and HR never sees it
The fact a simple human action like job hunting makes you boil with hatred and antipathy is shocking. I guarantee you, none of these people are thinking about you hard enough to consider intentionally wasting your time. They want to feed their families just like you.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#155> 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"?
America has no data protection law, apart from some hyper-specific ones: healthcare, video rental records. That makes all of this data sharing completely legal. As well as that, it is widely agreed there that lying is free speech. It is not wire fraud because you do not pay to apply. (In general; places that charge applicants are even more scammy.)
"healthcare, video rental records" wait what? One of these things, etc. Curious how that came to be? Is it like special rules for (IIRC) onions in finance?
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#156I 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…
I honestly think at least 50% of the blame for ghost jobs in on HR. Ghosts jobs are great if you're an HR person trying to not get laid off. You get to look busy all the time, sending emails that don't matter. I think HR people are the masters of looking busy. It of course also makes the company itself look better, like they're still hiring all the time when they aren't. It also benefits the hiring manager to have ghost jobs, because it makes the current team feel more replaceable
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#157My first job was in an industry where "ghost jobs" had a different meaning. Local mafia used to add fictitious names to the worker register at work sites, and someone would come and collect the pay in cash every month. The daily work reports would show these workers as engaged in some house-keeping work.
should probably shut up before you end up one of the names used in those ghost jobs
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's technically fraud, but there aren't any damages.
This seems analogous to the following. A company asks users to fill out an online survey in exchange for participation in some raffle, except the company never pays out any prize. As with the job application there was never a guaranteed reward, but it's still easy to see the damage. The company induced to you to provide them with an economically valuable asset (filled out survey/application) for which you expected a…
Except a job offer is generally non binding, so they could interview you, offer the job, then withdraw it.
So never being offered a job because it doesn't exist doesn't lose you anything.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Im sure it isnt that hard to get candidates to tick another check box that says the data can be used for other stuff.
The box would need to be off by default and clearly state the purpose. It would at least be possible to verify it exists and no example has been shown.
”We and our 972 partners…”
Re: 'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly - no national, general data protection law. Although the California one looks pretty similar to the GDPR from the summary, it's not truly national.
Even if there was, under the current regime, the probability of it being enforced is near-zero, especially if you are in the good graces of the child king.
The problem of enforcement doesn't fall only on the executive branch. They're tasked with executing laws passed by congress. Congress is ultimately a check on the executive, and if they care to have their laws enforced they do have actions they could take.