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 conducted a study on the issue, but they aren't providing the details of the study, aren't providing a paper , aren't providing the methodology or questions asked, aren't providing any details whatsoever, the only thing they provide is the "conclusions" of their study.
So, apparently because this random website supposedly conducted a study, and they say the result was "81% posted fake jobs", that makes it true.
Hey, I also conducted a study, and 14% posted fake jobs. There, my claim has just as much backing as theirs does.
Instantly lost interest in the "study" and the article based on it.
Although I understand, and to some extent share, your skepticism regarding the "study", I have no problem conceiving that a trend might currently be setting around the practice of posting fake ads, for whatever reason. It doesn't require much. In an unregulated playing field, simple peer pressure and survival is all you need to drive everyone to shady practices.
So, the study might be moot, but the number isn't so surprising.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/11/27/how-gho...
You probably need to pay to see their surveys, but even if you don't trust that: the bureau of labor has had to make huge adjustments all this year and last year. This isn't just some bad optics.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm [2] https://thedispatch.com/article/jobs-report-revisions-explai...
But this SF Gate piece is dumb. The article has one source for its data points and the author does nothing to investigate or challenge the quality of that data. This is not journalism. It looks like a PR piece for resume builder.
The Forbes article you linked is much more informative.
I love San Francisco to death, but there's no reliable local newspaper. It drives me nuts.
What about job postings that are not taken down until a new hire is given the offer, agrees verbally, signs the paperwork, relocates and actually shows up on the job?
Same thing happens with H1B/PERM, except now it's the law requiring it rather than company policy. The company already has someone doing the job today, but legally they have to post the job and interview a certain number of candidates to prove there is no US citizen that can do it.
Terrible situation for all involved.
Posted obscurely in a corner of the cafeteria, but exposing my salary to anyone who cared to look. They were never going to hire someone else, and we all knew it, but the charade had to be played.
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 looking for work for six months to a year or more.
Yes, there's been mild movement away from this insanity, but we're still miles to the right of what actually supports the people who live here.
[1] To be fair, sometimes the headcount disappeared for various reasons, but that's not the same as "meh...just have a look around and jerk some peoples chains".
No. If you publish it, you have to give an estimation of the salary, but that's the only limitation, at least in my country. Companies have internal guidelines, like in mine, you can't hire a relative to your own department, but the job i got wasn't on a public listing, it's my agent who gave my CV to my current team leader, he was interested, organized an itw, then 3 month later i hoped to my current job (and i am way better for it).
Nowadays, in tech, it's all about who you know rather than what you know.
So, what option do teams have? Just hire the people that your good devs say are good is honestly the most effective practice that I've seen.
I've got my first job after moving countries in Europe, despite this (very similar but it was 6 weeks IIRC) limitation being in place by law, within a week. Consulting body shop through which I was billing per day, and the umbrella company took 20% cut.
It seems its trivial to circumvent this kind of rule across the globe, and TBH what kind of state employee team would go over every single foreign first hire in given region, all the evidence and check its validity, gather all the details. Heck police ignore smaller crimes below certain threshold, states have no real processing power to handle this well.
...except now the recruiting and HR can report these candidates and interviews on their metrics, candidates had a hope of finding a job, and Sam has a bulletproof explanation in case if anybody asks why his buddy was hired. Win-win-win.
Is this normal?
The amount of spam and fake jobs on LI + other major sites is just disgusting and is ripe for government to come in and crack some heads.
But then later another group asked me for references at the beginning, I declined to provide them, and then they were okay with proceeding through the interview process.
Maybe it would work in the general case to always reply to such a request with "some previous group ghosted me, and so I've vowed to withhold the references until later in the process."?
but that's not the only thing. in germany it is common to ask for written reference letters which are called "arbeitszeugnis" (work report card, like the report card you get from school). that term makes me feel like i was a kid. it clearly establishes a hierarchy. i am the lowly subordinate employee and you are the superior employer that i am to look up to. it gets really wierd when i consider that i have been on the other side as an employer myself. (and by law these letters must be honest and may not contain unfounded negative statements which makes employers avoid writing anything negative because they could get sued.)
and then there are places who ask for actual school report cards or at least grade averages or want to know how i did in math in school, as if that was in any way useful to understand how i would do as a programmer decades later.
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.
When I interview, I often ask the recruiter to share the cv, portfolio, and GitHub/other. As they often just share a LinkedIn URL but that’s up to the interviewer and team to decide if enough to compromise theirs and the candidates time.
Not to mention it's "discouraged" to call employers out on poor behavior. I know of at least three companies who post pretty steadily who ghosted at final rounds or in one case, "We intend to present a written offer" (though in "fairness", they did eventually inform me that they'd decided to freeze hiring, well, nearly three months later).
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 responding to every applicant. Other suggestions for addressing this issue are welcome!
Edit: since the next Who Is Hiring day is tomorrow, let's get precise. I'm including this text at the top of the thread:
NEW RULE: Please only post a job in this thread if you are committed to responding to everyone who applies.
Thoughts?
Edit per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42011360: "Please only post a job if you intend to fill a position and are committed to responding to everyone who applies."
We recently changed the HN /jobs page to gradually reduce the frequency of those. Newer startups, who by definition haven't been around long enough to have had many posts, should be significantly better represented. The system has been designed to favor them for a long time, but it's favoring them more now.
I feel that was the natural conclusion of a system where "requirements" are as realistic as a unicorn. But we're all suffering from that
So LinkedIn approximates (lots of people), not just (people hoping to get hired). If you're hiring, the former is a more talented pool to hire from.
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.
17500. It is unlawful for any person, firm, corporation or association, or any employee thereof with intent directly or indirectly to dispose of real or personal property or to perform services, professional or otherwise, or anything of any nature whatsoever or to induce the public to enter into any obligation relating thereto, to make or disseminate or cause to be made or disseminated before the public in this state, or to make or disseminate or cause to be made or disseminated from this state before the public in any state, in any newspaper or other publication, or any advertising device, or by public outcry or proclamation, or in any other manner or means whatever, including over the Internet, any statement, concerning that real or personal property or those services, professional or otherwise, or concerning any circumstance or matter of fact connected with the proposed performance or disposition thereof, which is untrue or misleading, and which is known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading, or for any person, firm, or corporation to so make or disseminate or cause to be so made or disseminated any such statement as part of a plan or scheme with the intent not to sell that personal property or those services, professional or otherwise, so advertised at the price stated therein, or as so advertised. Any violation of the provisions of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by both that imprisonment and fine.
The language is broad, but they didn't cover the case of ads where no transaction was even contemplated. This is a bug.
Posting ghost jobs is a deceptive act.
> 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.
HR is just PR with a different audience.
> While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it’s also used [...]
For securities fraud?
I wonder how demoralizing this must be on HR workers, having to post a job, screen CV's, trying to stay professional while knowing that the hiring manager actually doesn't care, having to constantly put people with hopes off, and ultimately let people feel they are not good enough just because some C-hole wants to bring in his buddy who's most likely not half as competent as the people who were rejected.
But the real issue are these "ghost" job postings where there's no intention to hire anyone at all in the first place. Some companies use them to, I guess, just gather some data and CVs + salary expectations, while others want to appear active and growing to investors, but don’t engage whatsoever when people spend time and apply. This distorts the job market and creates a lot of frustration in applicants. 90% of people I know here and more broadly in Europe have gotten their jobs via connections and people they know. I wouldn’t be surprised if some regulation comes soon, as I doubt I'm the only one impacted by this situation.
wow, HR and management really have a lot of contempt for their staff.
i deleted my ln in 2022. i have a deep mistrust of all web platforms. i know what i do on the UI and what happens in the code are not the same.
“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.
"Knowing people" seem to have become even more important. But I feel that is a really long term thing. It is really hard to get into a position where you get valuable contacts or do interesting stuff. And your contacts more or less need some power.
It is just that, I feel it is like telling some lonely child "so get friends". For most programmers trying to get a job, I think "just keep the grind up, champ! I'll buy you some ice cream if you give it your best" is more helpful.
These "ghost jobs" the article writes about is poisoning the well. Applicants need to spam even more. Employers get more half hearted applications.
I've noticed these probably fake job ads for years, but it seem to have escalated.
It wouldn't surprise me that we will end up in the straw man "first man or woman through the door with a firm handshake that looks the boss in the eyes gets the job" hiring process as the current formal one gets totally dysfunctional.
If you offer up a job req, there should be punitive consequences if it is not legitimate. You are incurring cost and harm on job seekers spending time engaging with said post, at no cost to the employer. This is to be solved for, just as pay transparency is slowly being solved for with regulation and statute. If you have policy suggestions, I'm interested, as someone who engages with policymakers.
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.
I remember long ago the career development people at my university would tell us to all go out and "network" company representatives when they come during career week. The way it was explained to me was to go up to them and pretend to be their friend, talk about sportsball, drink alcohol with them, gain some rapport or something... It was never really clear what the right magical incantation was. All I know was some people were really good at it and got invited to interview at dozens of companies, and other had no luck at all.
But, just for argument's sake, let's say I go out and successfully manage to "network" you. You now know me and think I would be a good employee. What now? I guess I say "Hey, rightbyte, I'm looking for a job at your company. Do you know of any roles that are hiring?" You say "Sure, here's job position XYZ, and the link to go apply. Good luck!" And now I'm back where I started. Or if I'm lucky, you will refer me in your company's HR system, giving your digital "thumbs up" in that system, and that referral will send me... an E-mail with the link where I should go apply. I'm still not that much better off. Is that thumbs up going to let me skip rounds of interviews or give me extra points when the yes/no decision happens? How does it help me break through the hundreds of other candidates that are cold-applying?
I've had people reach out to me and ask me to refer them for a job with my employer, and in most companies, all I can do is point them to a job link. I'm lowly worker-bee number 52231, I don't have some kind of hiring boost I can hand out to people.
The whole 'networking' enterprise seems like a bizarre, opaque process where nobody can explain how it works, but everyone's advice is that we should all somehow "go do it" as it's an important component of a job search.
Maybe some of these networking people are the same that force others to come to the office to entertain them?
There's two methodologies.
1. you work with peers (can be in school, work, or even a hobby if you're lucky), be a good person and provide good work. Years later you reach out and see how they are doing (ideally you keep good tabs on them, but let's be real. Men can just kinda disappear for years and resume a conversation with no tension nor animosity. So just reach out). They may or may not have something to refer you for. And ideally it's vice versa if they reach out to you. This method is organic but takes months, years of contact.
2. You're extremely specialized and you're your own business. Networking for future leads is part of your job. This will yield faster effects but mostly because you're already offering something of value.
of course, most people are stuck in the first bucket, especially early in your career.
>The way it was explained to me was to go up to them and pretend to be their friend, talk about sportsball, drink alcohol with them, gain some rapport or something... It was never really clear what the right magical incantation was.
Yeah, that's schmoozing networking. If a person likes you, it opens doors. This is just a universal sensation. it's the "dirty networking", but also the "classic networking". How you meet mates, how you make a good impression among socialites, etc.
This method relies less on your skills as a prospective. employee and more on your ability to quickly hit it off with a new person to the point where you're memorable. It's a way, but definitely not one everyone can do (nor wants to do). It's an entirely different skillset so you really have to train that muscle (and given your participation here, you may need to adjust your "likes" to more mainstream stuff. Or at least "tolerances". Sportsball discussion can open new doors if you really want to go that route).
>But, just for argument's sake, let's say I go out and successfully manage to "network" you. You now know me and think I would be a good employee. What now? I guess I say "Hey, rightbyte, I'm looking for a job at your company. Do you know of any roles that are hiring?" You say "Sure, here's job position XYZ, and the link to go apply. Good luck!" And now I'm back where I started
not all networks are created equal. Your goal with a job network is to get a referral, if not an outright fast track to an offer. If you got nothing more than a recruiter response, that person either can't do much more or doesn't want to do much more. Don't underestimate the power of a referral though. Those applications go through an entirely different pipeline. Basically the fast line for Disneyland.
That's also why "natural networking " is a long game. Juniors networking with themselves don't yield much. 20 years later, those juniors turned managers/founders/leads might just bring you into a company with the wave of their hand.
>The whole 'networking' enterprise seems like a bizarre, opaque process where nobody can explain how it works, but everyone's advice is that we should all somehow "go do it" as it's an important component of a job search.
That's because relationships are a bizarre opaque process where nobody can explain how it works. Sometimes you just trip into the right person and you're friends for life. Sometimes you are off on the wrong track with someone forever because you remind them of an unrelated person in their life. people on a macro level are a lottery of some sorts.
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 employer tractable. They can’t exactly be mandated to hire, can they? Unless I’m trapped in a prison of the mind that seems like too risky of a proposition for them.
That said, as a candidate I would happily pay $USD/month for access to a job board where I know that the job as posted is definitely for real and definitely getting filled in a certain timeframe. I don’t care if my particular resume gets read, or replied to. I only care that the phenomena of “ghost job” is nonexistent in the walled-garden that I’m paying for access to.
It sounds interesting though, good luck!
Sounds like awful monetization. Dating site issue is right. Your best candidates (so ideally, all the ones you vet) won't be long term subscribers. And sadly, there's way too many grifts in the job system where a candidate paying is a red flag. You'd need to offer the candidates something of value to justify that. Not just "a promise of no ghost jobs").
Is there an issue with the usual recruiter pipeline where you can charge the company some percent of the hire once they get hired? Candidates get hired, company pays a little extra on a successful hire, and your profit incentives come from quality to offer for the companies (hopefully).
The main issue is that it assumes that companies genuinely care about an efficient hiring pipeline. And I've been very cynical in recent times...
(Also, seconding the part about grifts where a candidate is charged upfront. Charging upfront for access to training materials, equipment, or some kind of licensing agreement is often a sign that you're about to get roped into a multi-level marketing scam.)
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.
Error 1: "In the US, non-profits are heavily regulated in their operations..."
Correction: There are no more or less regulations than other sectors, but there is almost ZERO enforcement, so if anything, the nonprofit sector is more accurately described as very lightly regulated.
Error 2: ", and exempt from income tax."
Correction: Nonprofits are NOT exempt from income tax on revenue from earned activity that is not mission related, known as Unrelated Business Income.
Error 3: "Across the many different structures, though, non-profits have one thing in common: They don't have owners."
Correction: Oversimplification - nonprofits are run and functionally owned by a board of directors, people who hire and fire the CEO, decide how revenue is allocated, and approve any merger or dissolution. Nonprofits can also own for-profit subsidiaries (see OpenAI) so there are a lot of gray areas here.
In sum, nonprofit status is far more complex that OP thinks and there are a ton of opportunities for skulduggery - just because Ghost is a nonprofit does NOT mean it is free of conflicts or other bad things than companies do.
If Ghost really wants to demonstrate its transparency, it should publish its tax returns (IRS form 990) and also an itemized P&L -- then they can stake a claim to being holier than the typical business.
People often think that "non-profit" means that the company can't make a profit. It actually means that the company doesn't have any owners who can personally take the profits. Any revenue earned can only be reinvested.
We'll call it DevHiringOps
Seriously tho, always use the companies website instead of believing whatever is on some job posting website.
Ah... recruiters at it again.
I've tried working with 3rd-party recruiters, and always found them to be a waste of time, because the companies they worked with weren't good and didn't pay very well.
I think my secret is working in a specific niche, but I could be wrong.
I became curious long after the fact if a job description for my last job that was written for me was ever posted.
The part of the picture I'm more interested about is how the managers see it.
There must be a lowly manager actually trying to do something about their overworked team, and I assume they have access to HR and know which positions are real which aren't. And they know the company not only doesn't intend to hire, but is also gaslighting them, and they're made part of it.
It feels so gloom and just depressing beyond words.
In other cases, it's considered criminal if a company deliberately puts out false information about itself. E.g., if you lie about your companies products (like Theranos), it's pretty clear that this is not legal.
I don't see why it should be legal to lie about your job opportunities.
It’s a trivial abuse of monopsony pricing power, it’s illegal in the sense that the laws as written prohibit it on a common-sense, “intended by the legislature” sense, a lawyer can tell you if it’s maybe legal via stare decis via activist judges bench legislating.
But more importantly it has destroyed what loose social contract there was: they cannot in fact run these businesses at 60-70% of peak headcount sustainably: they can merely coast on previous investments long enough to crush salaries and then clean up the mess because there isn’t any real competition. They can distort hiring to where McCarthyist vibe checks and loyalty tests hit a precision/recall that is Pareto optimized for the minimum amount of competence that admits an endorsement of their nepo baby “nice trumps kind” mythology.
And they’re going to get away with it at the level that matters: the individual incentives of executives are nothing to do with the long term interests of shareholders or the commons on this: progress is stalling out in a way that will never show up on a quarterly report in time to matter to the executives.
And you can see it in real time: we haven’t had such an embarrassing crop of people who were someone’s roommate at Harvard running the show in at least 30 years, the outcomes are awful, the software sucks, the products suck, and the game is soft communist friction around leaving the platform.
Filtering through a 1000 unemployed people spamming every job listing isn't going to give them useful intel.
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.
