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'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

fastcompany.com

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Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#121

Post by happymellon »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #88
autoexec wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have been using data brokers to get info on potential employees for ages in violation of the law. The law has almost zero enforcement and when something is done nobody does to prison. It's almost always just the government wanting a cut of the action. For example: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2012/06/... https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2014/04/...

Prison is a limitation of freedom of movement. The equivalent for a company should be the limiting of movement of shares (no shares bought/sold/traded) for the duration of an imposed sentence. Since corporations are people and all, there needs to be an equivalent punishment.

They literally hire someone to be the head of the company, and pay them obscene amounts to set the company culture and policies but somehow they mostly avoid being responsible for bad company behaviour.

Prison for illegal behaviour should be applied to the C suite.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#122

Post by weakened_malloc »

probably_wrong wrote: post #91
weakened_malloc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just allow what happens in the EU. Every time I've applied for a job and been rejected, I put through a GDPR request and find out the reasons I was rejected.

Which right exactly are you invoking?

Have a read here!

https://github.com/Leader-board/OA-and-Interviews/blob/main/...

Once they take in your job application, they're processing your data. You've then got a right, wherever you're from, to see what information they hold on you. That includes interview feedback, test scores and so on.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#123

Post by mancerayder »

tagyro wrote: post #54
mancerayder wrote: post #14

How 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…

Some companies don't know what they want and there's internal confusion. I've observed this first-hand. They'll release recs and shut them down a few weeks later, confusing HR (or HR confuses everyone), maybe re-open. It's annoying but more disorganized behavior than fake jobs.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#124

Post by mxkopy »

wps wrote: post #18

In the same way that credit card companies are required to tell you the exact reasons your score has changed, companies should be required to give at least any sort of notice of rejection. Something as simple as: we have proceeded with another candidate (if and only if the role was actually filled). I know this opens up a lot of questions about enforcement and employer discrimination, but something has to be done.

You’re conflating being ghosted with ghost jobs, which are positions that are posted but are never intended to be filled (usually cited as for data collection purposes). These waste people’s precious time while they apply for jobs.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#125

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pseudalopex wrote: post #111
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general problem with this one is that there are a thousand legitimate reasons not to hire someone that are also infeasible to efficiently establish the veracity of. Suppose you post a job because you'll need to fill that position if you get a contract you expect to get with 85% probability. You legitimately expect to hire someone but can't in good faith make anyone an offer until the contract with the customer is…

The proposed law would require disclosure. Not legal penalty for no hire before the projected date. Employers can reject candidates for employment gaps. They can do this without allowing candidates to explain. Or they can decide to reject an explanation. Candidates should have equivalent information. And equivalent choice. > The actual way to improve it is to reform the laws that cause companies to list jobs they hav…

> Employers can reject candidates for employment gaps.

They can also reject candidates for a thousand other reasons, so if you make any given reason an inconvenience or liability risk then they just claim it was one of the others.

> The evidence this is the real problem is what?

It's a known problem with, for example, H1B. They're required to advertise for a job before they can hire H1B, but they don't actually want to hire the applicants because they just want to hire the H1B, so then you get a sham listing where no candidates will be accepted.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#126

Post by gib444 »

sh34r wrote: post #92

IMO they don’t need another law for this. Fraud is already illegal. They need to make a very public example by indicting a few HR ghouls under wire fraud statutes for their fraudulent job listings.

Same story in the UK. Our politicians think the answer to everything is a new more specific law for something already illegal. They always co-opt the police into the announcement to back them up

It’s nonsense. The police etc just need more resources, and bigger upstream issues need to be fixed

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#127

Post by ralferoo »

mullingitover wrote: post #48
godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reason ghosting is offensive is it feels so disrespectful and impersonal. That part is annoying, but the open-ended nature of it is a true problem. Having a deadline on a thumbs up/down decision at least lets you move on with your life.

My sister once applied for her dream job and didn't hear anything back for 6 months. In the mean time, she'd applied for another job, been accepted, signed all the paperwork, and worked out the notice on her old job. A week before she was due to start, the dream job contacted her to offer the job.

She decided that it wasn't fair to leave the company she'd already accepted a job with in the lurch by pulling out so late in the process. Many people wouldn't have done that, and just switched jobs.

It's definitely an ethical dilemma either way, but in this case when the company hadn't given her any indication whatsoever that she was still being considered (most likely somebody else pulled out and she was their backup option), I think she made the right choice. Better to be a company's first choice than their backup choice.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#128

Post by jex_the_ape »

happymellon wrote: post #121
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison is a limitation of freedom of movement. The equivalent for a company should be the limiting of movement of shares (no shares bought/sold/traded) for the duration of an imposed sentence. Since corporations are people and all, there needs to be an equivalent punishment.

They literally hire someone to be the head of the company, and pay them obscene amounts to set the company culture and policies but somehow they mostly avoid being responsible for bad company behaviour. Prison for illegal behaviour should be applied to the C suite.

That just leads to the classic scheme of hiring a scrapegoat CEO, while in reality the company is being run by a person who technically holds a lesser title.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#129

Post by chaosharmonic »

pseudalopex wrote: post #112
chaosharmonic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But to be clear, since "anyone" is vague: I specifically mean talking to hiring teams, about ex-colleagues who haven't given them permission to ask around in the first place. Because the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs background checks. It isn't limited to money, or to scoring -- it covers any third party that reports data about you, for the sake of determining if you're eligible for anything from a loan to a…

Part of the law was broad. Part of the law was narrow. How did you establish the broad part was intended broad and the narrow part was not intended narrow?

I mean, I'm more than willing to take the reductive approach and just say that the purpose of a system is what it does.

But if we assume that it wasn't designed maliciously, we can look at this through another lens: FICO already existed at the time, so banks in particular would simply have no reason to bother calling around to all of your former creditors in the first place.

They would also probably need a third party agency just to find your former creditors.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#130

Post by snapcaster »

aakresearch wrote: post #115
snapcaster wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not engaging with all the political and game theory issues that make that difficult to do in practice. Let alone the uncertainty that impacts businesses (even ones that are acting in good faith)

Ghosting does much more harm to candidates than the burden to not-ghost does to companies. I'm not going to cry over all "talent acquisition experts" having to do some actual work. Uncertainty that businesses face does not compare to uncertainty that a candidate face after 18 months of unemployment. Ask me how I know.

I meant this idea that you can quickly iterate on laws. At least in america that's just unrealistic outside of very narrow instances
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