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Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

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Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#141

Post by oh_fiddlesticks »

zahllos wrote: post #75
stewx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten 2 good jobs directly or indirectly from LinkedIn. I would argue LinkedIn is probably the one site that you absolutely need to be on.

Agree. Plus recruiters also sometimes reach out. There is quite a high signal to noise as always, but, it can be worth it. You don't need to engage in all the influencer crap at all, just ignore that and use it to be found by recruiters and to see some open positions.

I've gotten 3 separate jobs from linkedin recruiters approaching me cold.

I dont engage with the platform, I don't post, I won't connect with recruiters, and yet still... they find you, and inmail you. It's usually local jobs with humane commutes and decent pay.

By contrast, I've never gotten a single interview for an application submitted via linkedin, and I've put out hundreds.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#142

Post by zero-sharp »

joe_the_user wrote: post #124
thegrim33 wrote: post #82

Well I opened the article, near the beginning I saw the text: "81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled." Instantly that felt completely insane to me, my bullshit detector went off the chart, so since they provided a source, I followed up on the source to see the evidence for myself. What do you know, the source is from a "my perfect resume" website that apparently cond…

I've done tech interviewing for years. Job listing that are to various degree fake are quite common. Of course, fakeness comes in many flavor, from listings posted just to "see if there's anyone out there" (I had a boss who did this regularly) to jobs a supervisor really does want to fill but which they know they won't because the bureaucracy has forced impossible requirements on them. An example: "Junior programmer,…

This is another personal anecdote, but I had an interview earlier this year for a database related role. The job ad had a huge salary range and the interview had nothing to do with the role. I wasn't asked any behavioral or technical questions. The two people on the call just wanted to get to know me. We probably spent several minutes talking about sports. A few days later I got rejected. What the hell?

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#143

Post by hiatus »

singlepaynews wrote: post #136

I think there’s a legitimate market opportunity here. I am seeking a cofounder to build the job board that vets employers, and makes money by charging candidates to access it. The problem to be solved, imo, is ghost listings. - I don’t care if a company ghosts me because they hired someone else - I care if I spend time filling out applications for jobs that don’t exist I’m not sure how to make participation by the em…

This sounds similar to a problem dating sites face—solving the user's problem leads them away from the service. But you have the added difficulty that people looking for employment may not have the resources to spend on another monthly subscription.

It sounds interesting though, good luck!

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#144

Post by neonrider »

I'd love to go back to times where it was fine for a candidate not to have a LinkedIn. Currently, regardless of your blog, or your multiple StackOverflow answers, or your GitHub, or your posts on any of the other tech-focused communities, if HR doesn't see your LinkedIn, it's as if you're off-planet.

The tech field is centered around skills. You're under pressures to keep them sharp and up to date. When you're looking for work and you're done polishing the resume, updating the blog posts, doing your leetcode drills, do you really want to add playing LinkedIn games to the mix?

It seems to me that tech workers would benefit from having really tech-focused job networks. Not these hybrid platforms. LinkedIn, Indeed, and friends. They don't particularly care about you as a tech worker. They don't even understand you or your skillset. You're a backend dev with many years of OOP, FP, Agile, Kanban, Python, Go, SQL, JavaScript, and a slew of other relevant skills for the job, but they'll gladly inform you that you're missing a few skills to better match the list in the ad: go-getter, team-player, positive-attitude. Ok, sure, whatever...

Another thing, seeing an ad that asks for Python, Go, Node.js, SQL, React, Terraform, Kubernetes as an "Intermediate position" just tells me that no one in charge cares.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#145

Post by tmn »

singlepaynews wrote: post #136

I think there’s a legitimate market opportunity here. I am seeking a cofounder to build the job board that vets employers, and makes money by charging candidates to access it. The problem to be solved, imo, is ghost listings. - I don’t care if a company ghosts me because they hired someone else - I care if I spend time filling out applications for jobs that don’t exist I’m not sure how to make participation by the em…

Incentivize the employer to only provide real listings by having them pay to advertise a listing. Let them be reimbursed if it's filled via the platform.

You don't need to solve the problem 100%. An employer can still drag their feet and not fill a listing. But by aligning all incentives you can drastically reduce the problem.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#147

Post by emmanueloga_ »

dang wrote: post #59
FireBeyond wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. And a lot of spam. A few months ago there was a little flame war between a few people. Company posted an ad and someone replied "this is spam, and you don't respond, just keep posting the same ad", and the company replied "no, I own the company and hand write this job ad every month to fit our future needs" which was patently a lie (exact same headcount, exact same three positions, every month for the las…

It's against the rules to call out hiring companies in the thread, primarily because we don't want off-topic arguments and because it would be too easy to exploit it for shenanigans. But since people have been increasingly saying that this is a problem, let's do something about it. My current thought is to add a new instruction at the top asking companies to please only post in the thread if they're committed to resp…

Wouldn't any company unscrupulous enough to advertise a job opening without a genuine intention to hire simply disregard such a rule?

Thinking out loud:

* What if there were a bit more restrictions to posting on Who's hiring? Perhaps a counter of how many times a profile has posted, with a max of N posts allowed per M months, or something.

* Would also be nice to have some feedback from HN profiles on outcome of the job posting. Add a link to the job posting to your about page:

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=##### NOREPLY|HIRED|OK
... this way you can attempt to disregard the feedback if the profile posting it seems bogus. Posters wouldn't want to hurt their own reputation by lying about the quality of a job posting.

Anyway, maybe something like that would be out of scope for HN, but just thinking out loud here :-).

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#148

Post by ericmcer »

FireBeyond wrote: post #15
Buttons840 wrote: post #7

On this topic, do y'all think the HN Who's Hiring thread has ghost jobs? I know I've applied to one and never had back (a few years ago).

Absolutely. And a lot of spam. A few months ago there was a little flame war between a few people. Company posted an ad and someone replied "this is spam, and you don't respond, just keep posting the same ad", and the company replied "no, I own the company and hand write this job ad every month to fit our future needs" which was patently a lie (exact same headcount, exact same three positions, every month for the las…

Could this be a case where companies have a "people-ops" person who needs to justify their position even though the company hasn't hired anyone in months? So they create some new OKRs like: "Get 20 qualified candidates vetted and ranked in case we do decide to hire someone.", "Create 40 job ads" or something?

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#149

Post by astrange »

kristjansson wrote: post #101
astrange wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model that Americans would take any job if the wages were high enough is simple but obviously false. For manual labor there's no amount of money you could pay Americans to be farmworkers. For desk jobs there's no amount that'll overcome Americans' cultural belief that you can't do math unless you were born as a special sort of person who is "good at math".

You wildly underestimate American avarice.

I know a fair number of Silicon Valley "townies" and they are not trying and failing to get into tech companies. Only the Asian ones with tiger parents are even considering it.

The hippie aligned ones just want to get infinite degrees in something natural like forestry management. The rest are nurses or civil servants if they want a career, or real estate agents or artists or game streamers otherwise.

If anything I think younger Americans tend to go for the kind of vulgar Marxism where everything bad is caused by "corporations", and women in strongly prefer work that comes off as being good for society, which means they won't even consider it.

Same for me of course; I work in tech because I was on the computer too much, not because I was greedy and looked up good careers.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#150

Post by sangnoir »

ouddv wrote: post #86
UncleOxidant wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is, in fact, a US citizen who can fill any software engineering role a US company has. Right now I suspect you're probably right. But 2 or 3 years ago? If you're right then why would companies want to go through all of the extra paperwork and hoops to hire an H1B right now? Maybe the answer is "they can pay less"? But I'm not sure if it's actually all that much less than they could pay someone who's been look…

At large tech companies, the pay is entirely driven by level and rating; so there's no savings in salary; just added costs to comply with the directive. It's endlessly frustrating that the US government wants to centrally plan my hiring decisions.

> It's endlessly frustrating that the US government wants to centrally plan my hiring decisions

What's the alternative - the government outsources visa issuance to the companies employing foreign labor?

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