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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

#201

Post by monster_group »

ryandrake wrote: post #187
rightbyte wrote: post #13

Hireing and being hired seem to have devolved into a bilateral spamfest. The more applicants per position, the more applications you need to fill. “Always, always, always put networking as one of the top components of your job search strategy,” This is such a strange advice. It is too late when searching for a job. A 'network' takes year to build.

Embarrassing admission: I don't really understand how "networking" works when it comes to getting a job. It's always just stated: "Go network, bro!" but without any explanation of how it is supposed to work. I wish someone could pretend I was a dummy, and explain the process to me using simple words. From start (you don't know anyone working at company X) to finish (you accept a job at company X). I remember long ago…

The main (and possibly only) benefit of networking is that hiring manager will look at your resume. Without networking, your resume may never even been seen by the hiring manager. But beyond that networking does not matter for the candidate. In fact, FAANG companies go out of their way to make sure that the person who referred the candidate is excluded from having any involvement in the interview process. The days where you get to skip rounds just because you know someone are gone.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#202

Post by shiroiushi »

zero-sharp wrote: post #142
joe_the_user wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Perhaps a higher layer of management had a headcount target they wanted to fill for some reason, but this team didn't actually want or need new people but were forced to go through the process anyway.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#203

Post by deprecative »

matt3210 wrote: post #2

I’m not shocked at all. Another issue is recruiters posting fake jobs and asking for references as step one. Soon as I say “I don’t provide references until the last step, and only to the company hiring” they hang up on me

Personally, I find needing to provide references at all to be akin to me needing to get my parents permission. It makes my skin crawl and I will actively screen jobs that require them. The process feels demeaning and dehumanizing. Then you have to bother people who don't really know you anymore and beg them to waste their time on someone else's BS.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#204

Post by itqwertz »

itqwertz wrote: post #6

Don’t use LinkedIn or Monster or Indeed. You’re better off searching on Google with “ inurl:careers” and finding positions these companies are directly hiring for.

There is benefit to being an active participant in your job search. I don't depend on anyone for employment, as self-employment is ALWAYS an option if you're serious about longevity and profit ($$$).

Honestly, the ideal approach if you're going for traditional W-2 steady paycheck employment job is:

- recruiters/people already approach you. This works when you build your network and reputation. - use your network of trusted/worked-with-previously recruiters for leads. - fend for yourself in the murky depths of the scummy internet full of low-life tactics reference farming, resume scraping, and G*d knows else happens when you participate in a public forum.

Real question: did you really want that job or was this just a +1 for your gamified job search? I think quality searches yield quality results.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#205

Post by jamesfinlayson »

djmips wrote: post #171
hn72774 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones at Amazon were super generic. SDE skills were supposedly "fungible."

That's such a laugh IRL for a lot of job types. Are surgeons fungible? Need brain surgery?, oh don't worry we'll get the orthopedic surgeon in here. I feel confident there are software jobs where it's essentially as specialized.

Very much so - I worked at a place that tried to make all testers easily transferable between teams because apparently testing is testing. Except they didn't go so far as to do it for the team that tested some ancient Fortran application running on obscure hardware because it turns out that testers can be specialised.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#207

Post by johnnyanmac »

lupire wrote: post #3

Employees look for new jobs they aren't seriously interested in. Why shouldn't employers do the same? Filtering through a 1000 unemployed people spamming every job listing isn't going to give them useful intel.

>Why shouldn't employers do the same?

proportions. 1 uninterested candidate wastes maybe 5 hours at best of a million dollar company's time. All the while those doing the interviewing were paid anyway.

1 bad post wastes dozens, hundreds of applicant's time. Especially the damn Workday apps. That time is not compensated and only gets worse the farter in you go.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#208

Post by johnnyanmac »

nickff wrote: post #180
evoke4908 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be less application spam if there were fewer spam job postings. Because only one in a hundred postings is real, we have to send out hundreds of applications before even getting a rejection. There's no way to tell if a posting is real or if anyone will ever read your application, so the only option available is to apply to everything. A lot of people pose this as a prisoner's dilemma, but it really is not.…

> "There would be less application spam if there were fewer spam job postings." I disagree with this; in fact, I think there would be more application spam with fewer postings. Most of the application spam is from people who are either completely unqualified and just pressing the 'apply' button (which is made easy by websites which get paid per application), or people looking to move to a wealthier country (without a…

I think it would bifrucate the obvious spam from the obvious real posters and make your job easier, even if there's more apps to go through. Lot of the worst is that vague middle land of "is this qualified? but it also kind of looks like AI because job applications expect a very specific format of resume".

So you'd win out that way. But I also don't sympathize too much as the "unqualifies just pressing apply" was a natural endstate of years of bad job requirement postings.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#209

Post by shiroiushi »

FredPret wrote: post #47
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, this is the problem. We are doing a Kabuki dance where there is an illusion of good faith and meritocracy, when really, it's just a brutalist labor order book between employers and employees, unless you have a network (which takes years to build and might still prove useless if you can't refer someone into your org because blah blah hiring pipeline that is really just garbage anyway). For example, someone at the…

There is a cost to the employer. Any smallish 1-2 hour meeting with a couple of people on it can easily cost thousands if you work out people’s hourly wage. Add on the context-switching costs impacting the rest of their workdays. Then add the reputational damage among jobseekers - when word gets out that a company is a timewaster, qualified people will be less likely to apply.

>Any smallish 1-2 hour meeting with a couple of people on it can easily cost thousands if you work out people’s hourly wage.

Companies expect employees to work late, for free, to get their duties done, so time spent on time-wasting hiring meetings only affect the employees, not the company's finances.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#210

Post by shiroiushi »

switch007 wrote: post #46
SN76477 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told earlier this week by an organization > We leave this role posted because it's so critical to our operation and onboard as demand requires, however at this time we don't have enough demand to justify another full time hire.

99% of HR staff will swear till they're blue in the face that's there's nothing wrong with that lol HR is just PR with a different audience.

People who work in HR seem to generally lack ethical principles, from what I've seen.
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