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

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551–560 of 598 posts

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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And double yearly income for 150 million working Americans is a hell lot more benefit for them than the $600 washing machine.

Indeed. And we should absolute pick that if we are presented with those two options.

All market effects are exponential. Of course a doubled salary is unrealistic, but not ridiculous. The generation of people who are elderly today, had more than double the salary of anybody who is a worker today. Yes, they had more expensive consumer goods, but they could instead afford the important things: land, houses, vehicles and have a surplus to invest.

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

#552

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.

[deleted]

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

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I last changed jobs, I started looking at the end of 2021. I was a staff SWE at Google, MS CS from Stanford, etc. - a good resume. I also found myself applying into a black hole. But when I used second degree connections to get someone at the company to acknowledge I existed, everything started moving, and I ended up with great offers from both the companies I had applied in. Sometimes there are ghost roles, but…

I don’t think you intended this, but it made me chuckle… Your comment essentially boils down to “come from a privileged background and things will work out”.

Specifically, I asked a former colleague at Google to to ask one of his connections at the prospective employer to ping HR. Sounds like you thought I was asking my dad's friend to help me or something...?

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

#554
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing someone inside an organization is corruption ? I don’t buy it; please explain how having human connections is corrupt.

Because he did not get the job for what he knows, but who. Another candidate of equal knowledge, without the privilege of his connections, would not have succeeded.

That's a very odd take, not what I meant at all. All it got me was an interview, and then I went through the standard process, at two different companies.

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

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once applied to a position like this. It was eerily similar to my background, and when I did a little digging I found that the group lead had even directly cited my research papers in his own research work. I applied on the site, reached out on LinkedIn to the group lead and the recruiter, and even was able to find emails for those two, which I also messaged as well. They didn't even bother to send me an automated…

When I last changed jobs, I started looking at the end of 2021. I was a staff SWE at Google, MS CS from Stanford, etc. - a good resume. I also found myself applying into a black hole. But when I used second degree connections to get someone at the company to acknowledge I existed, everything started moving, and I ended up with great offers from both the companies I had applied in. Sometimes there are ghost roles, but…

Self-reply since I can't edit my comment: I used professional connections, not personal ones. And all it did was get me an initial interview vs. being ignored by HR.

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

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. 3rd-party recruiters get paid on commission: they make money when their candidate gets hired in favor of the other recruiters' candidates. In that sense, the incentives are actually aligned in your favor when you're applying for a job that you really want: the recruiter is motivated to work to get you hired, and is only constrained by the need to not annoy the hiring manager. The incentives turn against you…

The recruiter is still not really working for you, and the incentives are not aligned enough in your favor. What we need is more of an "agent" like actors have: Maybe I don't have a full picture of what a Hollywood agent does, but I imagine they're constantly working in the background, looking for gigs for their busy actor, doing all the toil and paperwork and research on their behalf. Their end product is: "Studio X…

Out of frustration, and because this now validates what I was thinking but couldn't put my finger on, I sat an AI agent down to 100% tailor cover letters and which resume to use based on the description of the job in question.

Turns out none of that actually mattered if the whole point is to generate busy-work and turn HR into another function like sales/marketing afraid to lose their budget for the year, or even worse to evaluate market conditions poorly. This entire thing should be illegal with the study at hand as evidence to make it so.

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

#557
post #17

A question I've had on my mind for a while now, watching this progression of fake or poisoned jobs, and miles of automatic systems to navigate: At what point do people consider the well poisoned? Where they just check out and stop applying, to specific companies or in general, because its very very obvious that there isnt actually a valid hiring market at all. I ask this question, because I've already passed this thr…

If I had to wager a guess, and this is being conservative and fortunate, after about a year and exhausting unemployment you start staring into the wall and saying 'WTF' to yourself out loud. It's a bummer and discouragement is the last sort of thing that person needs at that point.

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

#558

Some IT service corporations that are known for a very high employee churn rates often post the same position a dozen times, for each of their office locations. Sometimes it's a 100% remote job, and they still post it multiple times with different locations. They probably litter job portals this way so that they can compensate for the frequent personell changes. They are impossible to miss.

Ah, i thought the multiple posting in different locations was to be able to show or hide the salaray range depending on U.s. state-level legislation related to that...also, in those cases where maybe if the role is remote, maybe they only want to hir candidates in a somewhat near/adjacent area to one of their offices.

The ones I encountered were purely German companies, so I doubt it had to do with salary ranges.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, you don't build up a catalogue of people you can get back to. Ie. this technique does not make sense - search for people on demand instead.

Searching for people from scratch in reaction to a sudden demand will have much more latency than having someone you can pull from a recent roster of validated candidates. It's exactly the same like how an integrated circuit can pull a sudden power demand from a capacitor placed next to it (often required by the datasheet), rather than from the power supply upstream, so there is no voltage sag affecting it and nearby…

If you have a "sudden demand" demand I would say that you have other issues in your HR planning strategy.

You should not plan to do projects that require you to hire a special resource tomorrow.

And also: Having an open pipeline really does not hedge for that, and you open pipeline might not align with your sudden need.

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