Ghost Jobs – it's not your fault that you are not getting hired in 2024 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKWJHHmi-6g

by titusblair • 2 years ago

81 79 2 years ago

Resume culling has been going on forever. It’s just a part of the game. This is why you need to make connections with actual people. Not networking. You need to build relationships and those relationships will automatically expand your ability to find work.

throwaway357773• 2 years ago

There also used to be Triplebyte. It filled a niche of talented people who have bad resumes and don't know anybody. Found a great job through them when I was starting out.

Real shame there's nothing to replace it, there's huge arbitrage in the market of good people who don't know people. If I were starting out now I don't know what I would do, how do you even meet people.

wodenokoto• 2 years ago

How did triple the identify those people? I remember the name, but not their service.

exitb• 2 years ago

I got my current job few years ago by just responding to a public posting, but I have noticed that nowadays most of new hires actually come recommended by someone. I wonder why the switch happened. Is it the community responding to lower demand for IT professionals?

ang_cire4• 2 years ago

IMHO, not lower demand but higher supply, especially with all the big tech layoffs, and so we have a glut of applicants who know enough about tech in general to make it tough to tell if they're lying about their specialized experience until after you hire them, and they're desperate to get hired because either they were laid off, or they know they're competing with all the people who were, so they're more likely to take a job they're not really qualified for because it takes at least 6 months to let a new hire go, and that's 6 months of rent and food, so it's an easy choice.

The first 5 years at my current job (7 years total), my team had *one* person join and leave. The past 2 years, we've had 3. No change in team leaders, style, nothing. In one case, they were just straight not doing anything. Like legitimately just not online for a whole week, except to pop into the daily standup on Friday, with their camera off and muted.

They were given a task to complete as basically a "complete this or you're out" ultimatum, and they came to me to help them with doing it because they were totally lost. I tried to give them advice, but when they saw I wasn't going to do it for them they just went AWOL, and quit the next week.

I'm lazy AF, and that shit was *wild*.

ThalesX• 2 years ago

I'd take this advice with a grain of salt. The best jobs I found in my life (n=1) were outside of my 'connections'. They were in other countries, continents and with some degrees of separation between the people involved and anyone I've ever built a connection with. Connections are important, but if you want to be seen, you need to put yourself out there, perhaps more important than making a connection with Ricky.

ChicagoDave2• 2 years ago

I'd add the caveat that relationships matter more as your career matures. If you're in the beginning or middle, regular job postings are probably a larger target.

GuardianCaveman• 2 years ago

He says 33% of hiring managers admit to creating job reqs and advertising them with no intention of filling them so that the existing people on the teams those new hires would go to feel that help is on the way and they don't quit.

But it's a trick to keep people from leaving and to be able to continue to overwork their employees and squeeze out a bit more before burnout.

tptacek• 2 years ago

Has anyone here ever seen this done, in any job they worked?

tshaddox• 2 years ago

I’ve never seen (as far as I know) the whole lying to your own team about hiring intentions, but I’ve been on small teams that aren’t actively hiring but leave stock job descriptions posted from the last time they were.

thaumaturgy2• 2 years ago

Yes. About five years ago (so, not new), and for a smaller company. After months of carrying multiple projects myself, including one that deserved at least three more devs on it, I had run out of all the nice ways to plead with management to actually hire someone. So, during a companywide meeting, I loudly and firmly said I'd be out the door in 30 days if they didn't have someone started by then.

They hired someone, I handled the technical interview, I trained him, and then they suggested maybe I should find a new job.

reactordev• 2 years ago

Yes. The tell is when the req has been open for a few weeks yet no one has been interviewed in person (or video) yet. The manager will claim they have, but have they really?

20after4• 2 years ago

I've definitely seen evidence of this from a few big name tech employers. Revolving job postings that are regularly re-posted with the exact same details, and it appears that they never actually filled any positions. It's possible that they are hiring a lot of the same job description but these are sort of specialized roles with highly specific job requirements. I have a hard time believing that they are constantly hiring people for a very specific job description and continue to have openings for the same. Seems especially unlikely after they recently had big layoffs.

More likely ghost jobs. I think that they aren't planning to fill unless a highly qualified candidate comes along that happens to be desperate and willing to accept a low offer. When that happens, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they hire them to replace someone who is earning significantly more. Potential for big cost savings at the expense of intangible accumulated institutional knowledge and team cohesion/morale.

latenightcoding• 2 years ago

As an ML consultant, I’ve seen it happen. It’s hard to find good people and most want to work on impactful things that require big teams, CEOs will tell you to stick around because they plan to hire, soon.

YZF• 2 years ago

No company I ever worked for did this but I have seen this once when looking. A job posting that is basically perpetual for a single role by a relatively large company with a bad hiring reputation. The posting is always up, for this single role, I think for more than a year now, when there's no way you can't find many people that could do that role. I applied and I had to go through some silliness before they told me they have a better candidate. A year later, that job is still posted.

I would guess this practice is pretty rare. There can be stale postings e.g. when a large company pauses hiring but nothing along the lines of what parent is describing.

hlfshell3• 2 years ago

Yes. Interviewed someone that the team loved. We said definitely hire.

HR said they didn't accept the offer and went elsewhere. What they didn't know is that the person LinkedIn messaged me saying they enjoyed the team, and were disappointed we passed, respectfully asking what I would recommend to work on for their interviewing.

Opinions on whether to reach out after a rejection aside, it highlighted what I already suspected; the job was never going to be filled, and even as the team lead they were lying to me and the team.

When there was yet another round of layoffs months later, the spot remained, unsurprisingly, unfilled.

naet2• 2 years ago

I haven't personally seen that. I've seen us open a job and get really bad applicants, or one good applicant who ends up taking another job for whatever reasons, and have it go unfilled for long periods of time. I think we probably could have made the hire with a higher salary or looking in other regions or both, but the company wasn't flexible on those things.

I've also seen my company open applications for a job that is almost definitely going to be an internal promotion rather than a new hire, but for the sake of "fairness" they interview a handful of other people.

Hiring is expensive. It takes a lot of time and energy to do interviews and screens and stuff like that, and usually some higher ups are involved in the process, so wasting their time is probably worse than just not posting the job if you're not going to hire.

zerr2• 2 years ago

You can often see this even on HN Who's Hiring threads - people post the same exact blobs again and again over the years. I tend to believe that this is a form of masked advertising as well.

_nalply• 2 years ago

I thought that's because Corporate wants to show that they are doing good, in fact so good that they look for employees.

Probably Hanlon's Razor applies: «Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.»

In other words, it's a mixture of laziness, some need for employees but not following through, rigid software for job applications, corporate politics and plain stupidity.

I imagine one example how it might happen more or less like this:

- A product owner sees that their team is overworked

- They ask for a job opening or just enter the job description in the software

- They get shot down by someone higher up or they are replaced or fired themselves

- The process starts anyway and nobody is responsible for incoming applications

cpcat2• 2 years ago

I'm a witness of that. Both to threaten that you're being replaced once we find someone and to make you think there is someone coming to help. I know for a fact it's the former. Since there was no hiring manager nor HR where that happened, I believe this is a common practice which is being advised to startups at some level. I've seen three or four YC startups do that which makes me wonder if someone is spreading this terrible practice among their network

red-iron-pine• 2 years ago

so that the existing people on the teams those new hires would go to feel that help is on the way and they don't quit.

I don't buy the reasoning/justification.

The HR folks I worked with threw out fake job adverts to gauge the quality of applicants, salary expectations, and ability/speed to fine new hires. Essentially lets you create a few action plans if Jimmy in Accounting gets a better gig, or gets fired for sexually harassing people. Also generates plans / forecasting for layoffs, or windfalls that demand many new bodies.

DustinBrett• 2 years ago

Isn't "it's not your fault" some kind of positive affirmation?

awelxtr• 2 years ago

Of course, why wouldn't it?

kevingadd2• 2 years ago

What's the purpose of this question? It's also a statement of fact in many cases.

_wire_2• 2 years ago

The entire market is a game and sham according to my experience:

When employers actually need labor they hire who comes along and train them to fit the needed roles while managing attrition.

But what I'm seeing is all about arbitrage. When an employer prefers to leave positions unfilled without facing the costs of constructing skilled labor, they're just scalping.

Employees are expected to self fund training in branded products to be "competitive".

"Growth" / "innovation" become PR terms for automated scalp removal.

What's weird is that internally at fat corps they don't know what to do with the skilled staff they have.

For example Intel has a perpetual purgatory they literally call "the pool" where they send skilled staff to tread water before being laid off. They've had the pool for 35 years but have no internal equivalent of LinkedIn. They don't even bother to curate the staff they already have while endlessly seeking greenwood. The training is more than half outsourced to the community while the firm enjoys humongous tax breaks because it's "employer of choice". But weirder still, they'll help arrange for a PhD then dump the staff member a few years later.

It's this incredible selfishness to process absent of purpose that leads to a community corroding pathos which explains why the Bay Area is one of the most stratified and regressive regions in the world. It produces churn where the only feature of the landscape that represents stability is in "Defense" contracts and a culture that produces policy like this:

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/R...

rockemsockem2• 2 years ago

I'm sorry that's been your experience. I have the good fortune to be able to say that it is not like that at many, many places.

I also suspect that the state of affairs at Intel that you described is largely due to incompetence as opposed to selfishness.

_wire_2• 2 years ago

There's no need for condolences, it's not personal. Business is churn and crisis.

If you've never seen it yourself, it's only that it hasn't occurred to you -yet-.

It's in the news every day with reports like Tesla lays off thousands to cut costs while board gives CEO $50 billion payout.

I do not see this as explainable through any idea of incompetence. It's about some wiley edge of control over profits.

It's not contradictory that firms depend on skilled labor but are incapable of producing the conditions for constructing the needed labor force. Business has a long track record of enslaving labor and prefers to wreck labor as a force. Even at business's very best, it's widely understood that business / community partnerships are required to meet needs, where the community funds the training from which business cherry picks "talent" and while negotiating tax breaks that get passed on to investors executives.

This can't be explained as incompetence, it's explained through organized contention between specific vested corporate interests and the broader community who bears the costs of cultivating the labor force.

It's a story of business competency that led to Michael Moore to write about his stories about Flint Michigan, which became emblematic of US corporate culture.

Within corporate enclaves you can always find a small population who have never endured the ongoing existential crisis which is business churn: People for whom the crisis of labor hasn't occurred... yet.

For the special few who get to the grave in business having never seen any pathos... Is this good luck or a curse? There's no shortage of evidence!

Look around your community and the commons, do you see decay? Is it explainable through "competence" or "incompetence?"

It seems some other language is needed to explain what we see.

sublimefire• 2 years ago

Underrated comment, especially the part about companies not knowing what to do with the skilled employees. A lot of what I observe is about a lack of ideas from the management which in turn puts breaks on the existing velocity and morale.

jader2012• 2 years ago

This can’t happen in companies where you’re part of the hiring process.

Every company I’ve worked for in the past several jobs has had me interviewing candidates directly. I’m part of the decision making on whether the candidate is hired, or which candidate from a panel is hired.

duskwuff2• 2 years ago

Every company I’ve worked for in the past several jobs has had me interviewing candidates directly.

That doesn't mean you (or other employee interviewers) are seeing all the candidates. There are almost certainly a lot that are getting screened out before they reach that stage.

jader2012• 2 years ago

This isn’t about whether all candidates receive a response.

This is about whether positions are being created without ever planning to fill them.

I think it’s perfectly fine to screen out candidates and not interview them. And while ideally they’d still get a response, I can see how volume can make it hard to receive a handcrafted personal response.

But again, this is about companies creating positions strictly to improve the morale of the employees still around.

augunrik• 2 years ago

Can you also see if every job position was filled in the end?

veltas• 2 years ago

I filled a job role that had been up for a year once, they weren't happy with the candidates until they saw me, this was in a less populated area.

dehrmann• 2 years ago

Aside from it just being a tough job market, the rise in remote work means there are now an order of magnitude more candidates for any position that isn't explicitly hybrid or in-office, and there ends up being a paradox of choice.

TheChaplain• 2 years ago

In my experience office jobs in general seem to get a lot of applicants per opened position. Majority of them does not even pass requirements for the job, but they try anyway (recruiting is SO exhausting in that aspect).

Doesn't seem to be enough jobs and too much people needing one.

richrichie• 2 years ago

I see it as free brand advertisement. The company appears "active" and "growing" in google searches.

Head hunters have started doing it as well.

infogulch• 2 years ago

It seems like this practice of always having job listings posted, even if you don't intend to fill them, effectively hides the internal status of a company from the public. This signal -- "the company has more or fewer job listings compared to the past or compared to other companies" -- could have a marked effect on current employees, investors, analysts, etc. But the company may want more control over how these groups perceive it, so it masks this internal state by adding noise to the signal.

geraldhh2• 2 years ago

somewhat like ppl that oversell their sexual availability in order to always have options and never be in need.

it's a way of life, but not everybody can do it

keiferski• 2 years ago

Probably an inevitable consequence of valuations being based on information and speculation, and not bottom line economics. The companies that don’t project an exterior of “we’re doing great” end up losing to the ones that do, regardless of what’s actually going on inside.

dottjt• 2 years ago

I feel a large part of it is that companies are getting regular employees to do more of the interviewing, so it's like they get people in simply so they can train those employees interviewing skills.

I know at the previous company I worked at you couldn't get promoted unless if you were partaking in interviews, so I feel that might be a potential reason.

phtrivier2• 2 years ago

The video's description, channel and host trigger so many "this is a scam" alarms that I'm prevented to watch more than 2m.

Does the guy at any point provides any kind of substantial proof that companies are actually doing that ? I'm curious what it could be.

But maybe it's because my gig has a hard time _actually finding people to hire_ ...

geraldhh2• 2 years ago

my gig has a hard time _actually finding people to hire

lots of ppl have a hard time finding a gainful employment; seems there is something wrong with expectations (probably on both sides)

bionsystem2• 2 years ago

Pretty sure I found a bunch of fake jobs in my previous research (H2 2023). Best exemple was an SRE job where I'm a 95% match on the (long and specialized) job description, the 5% being some xp in HPC but they have a dedicated team and a separate job offer for HPC specialist, so that sounds fine.

They tell me I "don't have enough experience with debian" and offer me to apply for the HPC job. I go and list them all the experience I have with every bullet point of the job offer, and mention that I've been using debian for 20 years and ask what specific skillset they are looking for. No answer except "all we can do is start the process for the HPC job".

I ended up finding something else where I'm not particularly interested, have no prior experience, but I'm paid way more than my previous job and they seem to love my work despite it being very slow and frustrating. So I'm just going to stick to that, and give up on the idea of finding "the dream job". More recently I found an offer where they told me they have a "multiple month hiring process" and I stopped answering to emails, pretty sure it's fake as well.

redrove• 2 years ago

seems there is something wrong with expectations (probably on both sides)

It’s pay, on both sides. Maybe remote working too.

People work for money, fake company “benefits” are a scam and people have caught up.

cpcat2• 2 years ago

I actually saw a job posting that said at the very end "this is just an example". Previously it didn't have that line. So I'm guessing someone complained about being replaced and they had to put that line in there. Unfortunately they have since removed the job posting، It's a YC startup too

squiffsquiff• 2 years ago

What the presenter here chimes absolutely with my recent/ongoing experience. I've interviewed for a mix of permanent and contractor positions where supposedly everything has gone well with interviews but there's some BS or other, including:

- Position withdrawn midway through interviews

- Position withdrawn after final interview

- Rejected on a minor skill component when employer has re-advertised this and several similar/associated positions repeatedly each week since

- Repeated requests for 'one more interview' (did one, they decided they didn't need another) . Got 'verbal confirmation they want to take you' and told that 'everyone in the company at every level says they want to go ahead' but mysteriously they somehow haven't been able to commit that to writing.

Matches ChatGPT summary of transcript for this video:

To recognize signs of fake job postings, the presenter advises looking out for certain red flags, such as:

- *Vague Job Descriptions*: If the job description lacks detail or is unclear about the responsibilities and requirements, it might be a ghost job.

- *Repeated Postings*: If you notice the same job posting recurring over several months or even years without apparent updates, it could indicate that the role is not intended to be filled.

- *No Response or Ghosting*: If you apply and even proceed through several rounds of interviews, only to be ghosted or told the position is no longer available, this could be a sign of a fake posting.

- *Prolonged Hiring Process*: Companies that keep stringing along candidates without clear timelines for hiring or giving vague excuses might be using ghost job tactics.

The presenter advises job seekers to be cautious and not take rejection personally, as these practices are often due to the company's strategies, not because of the candidate's qualifications. Ultimately, these signs help job seekers avoid companies that might be toxic or engage in unethical practices.

DebtDeflation• 2 years ago

Fake job postings have existed for the entire 27+ years I've been in the job market.

A big part of it is recruiters just trying to build their CV database for the future.

Another big part is recruiters and companies doing market research to see what skills are out there and compensation levels to make sure their employee compensation and candidate offers are in line with market.

The final part is companies fulfilling the regulatory requirement to be able to say "we tried to find Americans and couldn't" before bringing on the H-1B's they always planned to bring on from the start.

rasso• 2 years ago

Another reason I could imagine for fake job postings: the company looks more successful if it has a lot of open positions listed. Kind of like a free advertising.

Ghost Jobs – it's not your fault that you are not getting hired in 2024 [video]

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