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Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

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Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#11
post #3

Some long-term job listings, especially the vague ones, are dummies put there by recruitment firms who are keen to get you on their books.

I'm fairly confident of this as well. It's definitely a tactic I've seen used in the past when dealing with recruiters in the UK.

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#12
post #9

23% of interviews have a drug test. What's the incentive behind that?

To avoid addictive folks who will have a high incidence of no-show when on a binge. Or long absences while in jail.

I can imagine what the theory is, but does it make sense in practice? Do you know which industries it tends to apply to? Would a developer be asked to take a drug test?

It's interesting, because I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of places over the years and I've never seen drugs as a problem that impedes workplace attendance / performance. Alcohol / hangovers, sure - plenty of times - but they're not testing for that, right?

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#13
some long-term job listings come from: > the larger companies are for roles where there is constant churn (or growth) and they need to keep the pipeline of active candidates warm > As mentioned already, spammy recruiters looking to collect cv's

Also: > Companies are in-undated with applications and really can't separate the wheat from the chaff. They have thousands of resumes for one or two job openings because its so easy now to apply online and click submit. Perversely the harder they make it to apply online, causes those most in need of a job to jump through hoops to fill out a complete application

Tried hiring help on a local jobs board I was swamped and astounded with volume and eagerness of the responses. Ended up going with someone who was recommended by a friend as I didn't have the resources to process and filter the applications

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid addictive folks who will have a high incidence of no-show when on a binge. Or long absences while in jail.

I can imagine what the theory is, but does it make sense in practice? Do you know which industries it tends to apply to? Would a developer be asked to take a drug test? It's interesting, because I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of places over the years and I've never seen drugs as a problem that impedes workplace attendance / performance. Alcohol / hangovers, sure - plenty of times - but they're not testing…

I'm not sure they can test for alcohol since it is federally legal (I know that most places would test for on the job incidents however. I'm meaning it in a "drug test" style screening). Aside from that, I'm not sure how long you can find traces of it in your system. I wouldn't guess it to be longer than 48 hours.

EDIT: parentheses content.

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#15
As a fresh grad interviewing for (real, non-internship) jobs for the first time, I'm really surprised at how long the hiring process is. The article mentions 23 days average. I'm currently interviewing for a BigCo where I already had done an internship, so they knew me. After I contacted my former supervisor, it took him 2 weeks of wrestling bureaucracy to open a position, then HR insists on collecting CVs for 4 weeks, after which I got a phone screen. HR lady told me she would be phone screening for 2 weeks before passing on the CVs to the hiring manager who would contact people for in person interviews.

I'm finally scheduled for an interview next week. But really, 60 days before even interviewing a candidate they already have experience with? I'm surprised they even manage to hire people before they are extended another offer. But then again, this is not programming.

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid addictive folks who will have a high incidence of no-show when on a binge. Or long absences while in jail.

I can imagine what the theory is, but does it make sense in practice? Do you know which industries it tends to apply to? Would a developer be asked to take a drug test? It's interesting, because I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of places over the years and I've never seen drugs as a problem that impedes workplace attendance / performance. Alcohol / hangovers, sure - plenty of times - but they're not testing…

IIRC all US government contractors have to be tested on hire. Most of the large temp firms also do drug testing in the US (in my experience at least.) Never tested for booze, though everywhere I've worked on site has made it clear that you will be drug tested and breathalyzed in case of an on-the-job accident.

As i've moved up in job quality it has gone from "we will test you aggressively to see if you do drugs" to "why would we care about this?"

Practically it is very stupid because the heroin/meth/cocaine type drugs become undetectable within days while pot takes weeks.

It's a dumb US thing, basically.

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#18
post #5
post #2

I personally have little confidence in job postings that I've seen available for at least three months. Similarly with apartments rentals - in a market where developers and apartments are high in demand I usually see it as a red flag if a job or apartment has been available for three or more months. It begs the questions - why didn't others take it? I never considered that the average interview process is getting lon…

This fails to take into consideration a growing team. We have had a single job listing open well over a year, but that single listing at one point represented 7 open positions. It's interesting to see this possible view. We might be better off posting duplicates to make this nuance more obvious.

Even just an annotation "This post represents multiple open positions" might be good. It also directly sends a message you want to send ("we're growing and hiring lots!"), instead of implicitly by number of listings, which might be missed by a candidate doing searches.

Re: Seen that job listing for a while, its no coincidence

#20
Hiring velocity is one area where small companies can use their agility to advantage when competing against larger companies for talent. As a hiring manager, I always endeavor to make this process as streamlined as possible.

A couple of anecdotes:

I was able to hire an outstanding candidate simply because I got them through the process and extended them an offer. Our competition was a reasonably high-profile company in the area. In the end he joined us because after more than a week, the other company was unable to execute their paperwork to get an offer generated.

More recently, I saw a very big name West Coast company (think Google/Facebook/Uber) lose out on a great person because they had a third party do a reference check. In the time it took for that check to happen, the job seeker had lots of time to re-consider the offer and instead ended up working for a smaller company on the East Coast which kept in touch and was able to move blindingly fast.

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