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Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

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Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#431

Post by cj »

bangaroo wrote: post #376
lowercased wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Every recruiter on linkedin will swear blind that technology doesn't work like that, and they have to manually sort through and review hundreds of applications, and ATS don't just blindly trash/delete applications. But I can't believe your situation did not happen, and that similar things aren't happening regularly.

i'm a hiring manager for engineers and have worked with tons of ATSes and have yet to work with a system that does this. i'm not saying it isn't real, but even as a director with fairly privileged access to the hiring pipeline and near-administrative access to the ATS at a public company with tons of applicants, i've never even seen an option for this sort of thing. the ATS will tag candidates who meet certain key re…

> right now in particular, the terrible market combined with the intricacy of AI-generated applications for candidates that don't exist (this is the most bizarre trend I've experienced thus far

This is a major problem and isn't widely talked about because it's only seen by HR and hiring managers.

For nearly any engineering job post, companies are getting flooded with resumes from fake candidates in other countries.

At first they were easy to spot (their linkedin account would be The worst part is that the fake candidates are always the ones with the best resumes (since they're fake, their resumes are often also faked and tailored exactly the the job description)

The use of AI during interviews is also a major issue - hiring teams are slowly realizing that the types of questions and interview challenges that worked before no longer work today due to the rise in AI-assisted interview tools that candidates use. It's common to ask a question, then see the candidate wait a few seconds before they start to answer (w

It's really hard when you have 500 applicants in the first day of posting a full stack role, and 80-90% of them aren't real people.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#432

Post by jvans »

rcshubhadeep wrote: post #101

Ghost or not, I have applied for many jobs in the last few months and when I get a reply (I am not counting canned Thanks for applying but we decided to move with another candidate reply) it is almost always very early stage companies. I wonder if bigger companies actually look into CVs? I understand there are automated systems but I did not get replies several times even when the JD / Skills matched super closely wi…

It's crazy because the JDs will be so extremely specific to a niche skillset and I still won't get a reply.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#433

Post by carlosjobim »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #293
lotsofpulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary. Beneficial to owners of capital in said country. Not so beneficial to non owners of capital (also usually labor sellers) in said country.

It's not so binary. Economic growth and prosperity does benefit a broad swath of society.

For non-workers the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, while for workers the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.

If your income is from owning capital or from real estate value increase or from government benefits, then anything that can reduce the price of things you want to buy is a benefit. This is a large part of the population.

If your income is from working and producing goods and services, then getting paid less is a negative that is far worse than the positive from cheaper things.

Many people have their foot in both camps. Their main source of income is from their real estate appreciating in value, while working is just a means to pay off the old mortgage so that they soon can get a new cash out by mortgaging at a higher value.

It's very much also economic warfare waged by the elderly against the young. The elderly own almost all capital and are interested in increasing it. Keeping the young as poor as possible is excellent for them, so as to keep them from being a threat to their wealth and power.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#434

Post by lupire »

calculatte wrote: post #368
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence H1B workers in tech have lowered wages? I have only seen anecdotes while the law explicitly states H1Bs should be paid the prevailing wage or above.

Look up that "prevailing wage". It's a deep discount compared to the real world. Minimum for a Software Developer in SF: $113,444 https://h1bgrader.com/

What do you think that is wrong?

H1B devs at FAANG companies are paid far more.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#435

Post by INTPenis »

bradley13 wrote: post #59

I once applied for a job that precisely matched my qualifications. It was crazy - the job description could have been written by someone looking at my CV. I didn't even get an interview. Likely no one did. It wasn't a ghost job, though. It was a position created for a someone they wanted to hire. Being a public institution, they were required to advertise positions. That didn't mean that they actually wanted any of t…

Same here, I applied for a job where a friend already worked and he said he would be highly surprised if I didn't get the job. They didn't even call me to the interview. After the ad expired I just got an automated message that they had moved on, friend said no new person ever appeared.

I can understand ghost jobs, I mean large public corporations have even had useless jobs to inflate their share holder value, but this was for a Swedish government agency!

I became unemployed in August, I had to apply for at least 6 jobs every month to get benefits, and now I have two offers on the table but both of them came from recruiters that contacted me, not jobs that I applied for.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#436

Post by nonameiguess »

gigel82 wrote: post #278
para_parolu wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means small companies may not get good talent that value things besides salary (wfh, perks, fun project) and will have to compete with corporations for people who only cares about money. This may (or may not) impact startups

Stop it, no one "values things besides salary", and you know it.

Maybe software-adjacent people applying to startups, but in general, this obviously can't be true. Relatively low-paying but high-status jobs, like FBI agent, military officer, elected official, judge wouldn't exist, nor low-paying passion work like social worker, wildlife conservation, most non-profits, low-paying jobs that are simply fun like most musicians, pro athletes in unpopular sports. Plenty of capable, talented people who could be making more money choose not to.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#437

Post by pylua »

hwbehrens wrote: post #242
pylua wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that companies are committing FRAUD ?

From my reading (IANAL), there are three types of occupational fraud: asset misappropriation, corruption, and financial statement fraud. Since job posting are interpreted as a positive signal but are not (it seems) typically and explicitly included in formal financial statements, this wouldn't rise to the level of criminal fraud.

I am also not a lawyer, but it seems like purposefully lying about how many jobs you have in order to increase the stock price seems… shady at best.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#438

Post by georgeecollins »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #406
georgeecollins wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this is like: Why work for a big company? I worked for a big company once and did not like it. Kids out of college are always drawn to the big names, and they can look good on your resume. My feeling is, if you want to work for a big company, work for a small one and make it big. I can say from experience that turns out really well.

> Why work for a big company? Most large corps have higher total comp compared to smaller corps.

Maybe, I don't really have data on that but there's a huge range for both. I would say, think about your career, its growth and longevity. Posters on HN have pointed out some large companies that have a habit of laying people off before they fully vest. And there is the whole challenge of getting meaningful responsibility in a large organization. Everyone thinks when they are starting out that they are going to march up the organizational ladder.

Everything I am saying is anecdote, not data, but I have seen people propel themselves up into large organizations by being entrepreneurs. I think of a friend who worked for a bit for a large company, had a start up with mixed results, and then went back to another large company as an SVP. I don't know if that person would have gotten their marching through the ranks.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#439

Post by quesera »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #53

This is willful labor theft and at this scale, a single fake job posting could cause thousands or tens of thousands of hours of wasted labor on the part of job seekers. Multiply the prevailing hourly wage equivalent for that job by the number of applicants and how much time it would have taken them to apply (Workday users, you're doomed!). That's how much money was stolen from the public by the company. Prosecute it…

But there is no basis in law for any of these objections.

"Wasting peoples' time" is a byproduct of every activity in a less-than-perfectly-efficient economy (which is all of them, obviously).

"Wasting lots of peoples' time, and leaving them disappointed and emotionally/economically fragile" is ... crappy and miserable. But it's still legal.

Even if there was a law against posting unrealistic job descriptions, or posting for jobs that don't exist, it's near-impossible to distinguish those cases from legitimate corporate "changes in direction" which cannot be made illegal.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#440

Post by lupire »

gruez wrote: post #421
newaccount74 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone? I live in Austria and you can fire people for pretty much any reason. You have to give them 6 weeks notice, and there are some extra protections for people who are old or who have disabilities and who have been working for your company for a long time, but even then you can fire them. You can even fire people for getting sick a lot. And that's assuming you directly hire…

>That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone? Maybe the statement isn't true for EU as a whole, but some member countries have far higher bar than what you describe. For instance in Spain the company must provide justification to the government before firing someone. https://www.rippling.com/blog/termination-in-spain

That's a low bar for "hard".
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