This should be followed in every state.
'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
61–70 of 143 posts
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting a rejection message, even an automated one, removes ambiguity. You're no longer wondering if you missed a call or an email went to spam, you have it right there in writing. In college, I interviewed with two different local companies that had internships that would continue as part-time positions during the year. Both interviews went well and I felt that the interaction was positive overall. I was confident t…
It's not like job searches are the only context where you can get ghosted. It happens often enough in friendships, social activities, finding romantic partners, etc.
Those aren't usually time-sensitive.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#63If you make Ghost Jobs illegal the whole thing will still be happening, it will just be driven underground to unlicenced 'haunted houses' which are less safe for the workers and less safe for the patrons. Its much better to keep this sort of thing legal and have licensed haunted houses where its easier for authorities to keep a check on the unwelfare of the ghosts and make sure organised underworld groups are not moving in and taking protection money or soul dealing.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#64I'm just about to launch a job posting data api with postings I aggregate and very lightly normalize ( https://kaleh.net/trace ) Anyone have an idea how this might impact me? They're not my postings, I just package em up and ship em. Strive to comply with all laws and TOS and not trying to make trouble.
1) You would be in a good position to find and report violations to the NY department of labor. 2) You might be considered a third party platform.
1) Yay
2) Fuck
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every employer would send "We have decided not to continue with your application". That would still be a big improvement over just getting ghosted
Doubtful you would still feel that way if it became the legally mandated norm. The reason ghosting is offensive is it feels so disrespectful and impersonal. How is some bland automated message triggered by a cron job any better? The automated message doesn't respect or care about you, no person would have put any thought into it. It would be entirely automated. If that makes you feel better it is suggestive of a deep…
The primary negative aspect of Ghost jobs (from the perspective of job applicants) is not simply that it "feels bad" but that it floods the usual channels of seeking work with garbage data.
Assuming a world where there is a set of employers that would actually like to hire someone and a set of workers who are desiring employment, the set of listings that are not seeking to hire (or are only floating a job listing in perpetuity on the off-chance that some overqualified sap will take up their offer for less than they would expect in the market) encourage bad behavior from the other two parties.
It becomes substantially more difficult to parse through a pile of job listings to find what is a real (or realistic) listing and encourage the "shotgun approach" for applicants.
The flood of competing fake listings and the resultant tidal wave of shotgunned-resumes requires employers to spend more time cross-posting openings to reach real applicants and sorting through a greater number of low-effort bad-fit applications
Mild legislation that requires expected hiring dates and requires employers to say if they are just collecting resumes or face fines does not totally fix the issue but it is a welcome change in the right direction.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#66I love this initiative. I also feel like there's a very clear private solution here which is creating a company for both employers and employees to use which requires more transparency from both. This would essentially become a signal to both sides of the transaction that this is someone you want to do business with, and it's self-regulating.
Good recruiters can fill this function. Yeah, there's a lot of sleazy ones out there. But the better ones only take work from real companies that intend to actually hire and real candidates that are actually looking for jobs, and have the information to screen out bad actors on both sides.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting a rejection message, even an automated one, removes ambiguity. You're no longer wondering if you missed a call or an email went to spam, you have it right there in writing. In college, I interviewed with two different local companies that had internships that would continue as part-time positions during the year. Both interviews went well and I felt that the interaction was positive overall. I was confident t…
It's not like job searches are the only context where you can get ghosted. It happens often enough in friendships, social activities, finding romantic partners, etc.
The main relevant difference between the former and all of the latter is that we're generally fine with regulating the labor market, but (liberals at least) are generally much less willing to regulate the interpersonal relationships market.
(The other relevant difference is that the labor market involves a significant unilateral power imbalance between the employer class and the employee class, which is the biggest contributing factor which leads to the above difference)
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every employer would send "We have decided not to continue with your application". That would still be a big improvement over just getting ghosted
Doubtful you would still feel that way if it became the legally mandated norm. The reason ghosting is offensive is it feels so disrespectful and impersonal. How is some bland automated message triggered by a cron job any better? The automated message doesn't respect or care about you, no person would have put any thought into it. It would be entirely automated. If that makes you feel better it is suggestive of a deep…
Nobody cares about getting a bespoke hand crafted notification, it's just nice sometimes to check that one off in the list.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#69My company does it all the time. I've noticed all these ghost jobs are advertised in the same large city (Toronto), yet our offices are elsewhere.
Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York
#70How do you enforce that? I don't even know what I applied to that's a ghost and what isn't. Maybe I'm completely clueless, but there's no difference: recruiters ghost, sometimes companies ghost and sometimes they reply, sometimes you get an F U letter, you're not good enough, sometimes not. How did people even find out ghost jobs existed? I feel like the swindle must not be new.
I'll give you an example I've experienced myself: I save all the jobs I apply to, so it's fairly easy to check/compare and I found plenty of cases where job ads get reposted after some time. In one instance, I applied for a role in December '25, got a (boilerplate) rejection email a couple of days later (although my profile directly matched the job requirements and I had previous experience working in that specific f…
Sorry, but why is that a problem? If they didn't find someone, they closed the posting, then reopened it later, what is the issue?
Or, as in some cases, perhaps they did find someone? I've been at companies where we hired many engineers sequentially over time using the same job description. Should we just have arbitrarily changed the JD?