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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

#571

Post by newaccount74 »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #564
newaccount74 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hired a developer who just wanted a cushy job and I offered him a cushy job. I offered 4 day work week, no on-call, no overtime, but paid less than their previous employer (because I couldn't afford it). I am sure lots of people value things besides salary.

You effectively offered them a higher dollar/hour rate. And depending on how much they value their free time, that's more $$ in their figurative bank.

I don't think I even paid them more per hour. The problem was that all the other companies only want to hire full time programmers, so I was able to hire them by offering a job with fewer hours.

Also, they complained that their previous job was super stressful because the sales people kept making promises to customers that were really hard to keep ("of course we'll implement this in two weeks") and so they were constantly scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.

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

#572

Post by MobiusHorizons »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #93
shmatt wrote: post #14

I have to put out a ghost job req and interview every person applying within reason for every green card a direct report is applying for. I have to show there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job The main problem is: even if the interviewee knocks it out of the park, is an amazing engineer, I still am not interested in firing my OPT/h1b team member who can still legally work for 2-3 years. So…

An understandable situation. But by admitting this, your company is admitting liability for citizenship discrimination (8 U.S.C. § 1324b). Even though you are not submitting a PERM and running into potential issues with fraud there, the underlying act of rejecting US citizen/LPR applicants is the same, so I don't see how this would be any different than, for example, the Apple case last year ( https://www.justice.gov…

I am not a lawyer and don’t know the relevant laws or legal precedent, but what the OP is describing is very different that what Apple got in trouble for.

> Specifically, the department’s investigation found that Apple did not advertise positions Apple sought to fill through the PERM program on its external job website, even though its standard practice was to post other job positions on this website. It also required all PERM position applicants to mail paper applications, even though the company permitted electronic applications for other positions. In some instances, Apple did not consider certain applications for PERM positions from Apple employees if those applications were submitted electronically, as opposed to paper applications submitted through the mail. These less effective recruitment procedures nearly always resulted in few or no applications to PERM positions from applicants whose permission to work does not expire.

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

#573

Post by Jabbs »

non- wrote: post #506
Jabbs wrote: post #359

I have been building an app for job seekers as the customer (rather than employers) and plan to build in feedback loops into companies that have ghost jobs by monitoring the number of applicants who never move to the next phase of interviews but still thinking about how that feature could work. But without employers as the paying customer for job search sites I see no reason why that data isn’t transparent for the jo…

Do you have an API?

No unfortunately not at the moment

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

#575

Post by marssaxman »

gigel82 wrote: post #508
marssaxman wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? I know quite clearly that people do value things besides salary!

Of course people value things besides salary, but if there was no salary or the salary would not be enough to live off, none of those things matter in any way. So first and foremost (unless you're a billionaire's son) is salary, for everyone.

Perhaps so, but in our highly-compensated industry, that is a very low bar! Your point may be technically correct, after you have sliced it so finely, but it is no longer very interesting.

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

#576

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

93po wrote: post #499
dentemple wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to see if _anyone_ has actually been hired through HN Who's Hiring over the past two years here. I can only offer anecdotal experience, but... Despite 1) being a US-based dev, 2) Applying only to US-based jobs, 3) With 10+ years work experience, and 4) Having skills in commonly asked for technologies such as JS, React, and Python... I've only gotten to the interview stage with an HN Who's Hiring listin…

I had an interview last month from a post there. Dude sounded like he was half asleep and hated talking to me even from the very beginning. He carried it on for almost an hour for reasons I don't understand if he was so disinterested. No rejection email follow up, posted again in November. The rule just says "you have to respond" and he did by interviewing me, it doesn't explicitly say you have to provide direct yes…

>He carried it on for almost an hour for reasons I don't understand if he was so disinterested.

He is just going the the motions that he's been prescribed. Either that or an idiot.

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

#577

Post by GreenWatermelon »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #340
eulers_secret wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got hired by directly applying via a company's website; it was my 11th application and my first that wasn't a moonshot (nvda/valve/etc). It was in late 2023 (very bad market), and I didn't have any connections to the company at all. I also have no online presence. Online applications are not fully dead. Of course this is just my experience as a senior engineer in embedded, so likely doesn't apply to others. But if…

I have a suspicion that your experience is representative of a general attitude in embedded engineering compared to other software disciplines. Embedded engineers usually still keep to proper part numbering, testing before shipping and working with greater platform limitations, all virtuous activities that are harder to find in other fields. I like to think this culture bleeds into other parts of the business such as…

I'd chalk it up to embedded not being a field you can hop into after a 4 month boot camp without prior Computer Engineering education. Of course, there are exceptional people who manage to do that, but they aren't the norm

Contrast that to the overglorified code monkeying that is present-day software development... You got react monkeys hard-coding every single width and height for every button and div in a webapp... And they get paid for it... And then someone like me will have to clean up this shit and explain to the client why the billion features he wants won't be ready in 3 months.....

Then you have AWS monkeys coding everything in lambas and amplify, instead of "if conditions" you got "Step functions" and instead of a function you got a lamda, and instead of async/await you got SQS queues and shit.

As a result, legit Engineers/excellent developers resumes get swallowed up in the raging ocean of noise, and a ton of those noise-resumes aren't distinguishable from legit-resumes due to resume generators being dime a dozen.

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

#578

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

silisili wrote: post #383
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…

I had a similar situation/question. I knew an old coworker who was eagerly trying to get me on their team at another company. They said I had to apply and then they'd take it to their manager who was already on board with the idea. So I did, at 10PM or so at night. And within a few minutes, got a rejection email. To this day I wonder if someone clicked reject, or the system just autorejected me because of something i…

>And within a few minutes, got a rejection email.

In some places I think there is an rejection autoresponder.

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

#579

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #429

This gave me a terrible idea for a business idea of dubious ethics. First create a ghost application bot that creates fake resumes which fit the job descriptions. Then once you have calls or contact back wanting to proceed in the process mark off the job as real. Compile a database of all jobs that are verified as actually conducting a hiring process and thus are probably not ghost jobs. Sell subscription access to s…

Better idea: Charge both recruiters and applicants to contact each other. Recruiters should be charged more because they are generally the spammers. The nuances can be worked out. But people can earn a small amount in the process.

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

#580

Post by morpheuskafka »

phil21 wrote: post #303
morpheuskafka wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that they are under no obligation to fire the employee on the H-1B. (In theory, they are applying for a "new" job, and them not getting it for whatever the reason isn't an issue for their current job and status.) However, what OP is missing is that rejecting the US citizen application based on their citizenship is still likely a prohibited discrimination case regardless of what they do with the existin…

OP isn't rejecting the US citizen application because they are a US citizen - they are rejecting all candidates applying for the position regardless of ability to do the job or not since the position is already filled. There was no intent to fill the position to begin with - just a test to see if they can sponsor the current h1b employee for their greencard or not. There is no discrimination if no applicant had a cha…

I think the issue is that they would hire at least one noncitizen if they apply (the "target" employee). So the odds are absolute zero for citizens, and higher for noncitizens.

As for actually submitting the application--as I understand they actually audit the job ad responses and your decisions--so if you didn't even pretend to have a reason for not hiring them, you would automatically be in a lot of trouble. The game is to come up with flaws in the citizen candidates by requiring highly specific experience--e.g. "JDK v17.0.9 Programming" vs "experience with Java" to justify your target being the only one qualified. That would ultimately be for the court to decide.

Only interviewing citizens to the exclusion of PR/EAD card holders as in your example as written would be a violation.

What I think you meant though, which is not interviewing those who don't have permission to work (without your future attempt to get it for them) is normally completely fine; however, this situation is a little different since you would be willing to provide that for the "target" employee but not the other applications. However, I still don't think it would run afoul of this particular law.

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