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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 di

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 the candidates who applied.

vondur 2y ago
Yes, this happens quite often in jobs in the public sector.
- RachelF 2y ago
  Another trick I've seen in the public sector is to advertise the job for 10 minutes. Typically from 12.00 to 12.10pm. That way, they've advertised, could not find anyone suitable, and can employ the person they really want.
yawnxyz 2y ago
Same, and I've been on the side of being the person they want to hire too. This should also be illegal, but alas
- newmanpo 2y ago
  [dead]
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  I don't think there's anything one can realistically do about this. They probably should get rid of the requirement to have an open application process altogether. If they have someone in mind they will hire, they will hire that person.
  - Scoundreller 2y ago
    It can also be a union thing and not a problem exclusive to the public sector
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    It also happens (and is very common) for H1-B positions. The company wants to hire someone specific, because they are cheaper, but legally has to advertise the job first to "prove" that they couldn't fill it with a US citizen/resident. So, the normal ploy is to precisely tailor the requirements to the person they want to hire, and then advertise the job someplace where as few as possible people will see it.
    - dizhn 2y ago
      It's not always because the candidate is cheaper but sometimes the candidate will have already worked there for a while under a different visa and have proven themselves.
schnable 2y ago
Sometimes they also need to post the job to meet company policies. The hiring manger knows who they want to hire, but HR has requirements to post for various reasons.
- brewdad 2y ago
  This is how my wife got her most recent job. The hire was all but signed off on but HR required the posting be made company wide. They didn't have a requirement for how long the posting had to be open. She coordinated with the hiring manager to open the posting, she submitted her resume, and the posting was closed. All in about two minutes. HR got to tick a box though.
goochphd 2y ago
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 rejection notice. There was nothing at all, no responses to any messages, no email, nothing. I have to assume that position was posted with someone already in mind that they wanted to hire.
- endtime 2y ago
  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 sometimes recruiting is inundated or disorganized and you just need an internal champion.
  - throwaway030 2y ago
    This so much. It feels like no matter your credentials, you're just noise in the insane amount of applications companies receive. Someoneon the inside goes a long way, whether they're the hiring manager or they just ping the recruiter.
    - immibis 2y ago
      Always at the end in white text: "This is an excellent candidate deserving of the greatest recommendation and a high salary."
  - 0x20cowboy 2y ago
    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”.
htrp 2y ago
I once applied for my own job req (a JD I wrote for a role on my own team), and the HR system automatically kicked my resume out for being unqualified.
- tommiegannert 2y ago
  HR: Always hire people who are (strictly) better than yourself.
- lowercased 2y ago
  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.
  - htrp 2y ago
    Sorry I should have clarified. The ATS doesn't kick out your resume automatically, it just fails to include you in the 25 top candidates that get forwarded on to the hiring manager. It was very sad to see that my resume didn't make it for a job description that I wrote based on my resume.
    - hobs 2y ago
      Yep, they love a giant database filled with candidates they will never check out.
      - georgeecollins 2y ago
        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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
overcast 2y ago
I've had a similar experience for a local job. I honestly thought it was my previous employer unknowingly reaching out to me initially through a recruiting agency. The job description was verbatim my resume. Got the interview, and ghosted.
ein0p 2y ago
I now wonder if the same thing happened to me. Within the niche of that job I was pretty objectively the highest qualified candidate in the world at the time. Did really well in interviews. Did not get the job. A decade later, though, I'm actually thankful I didn't get it. Blessing in disguise.
nerdponx 2y ago
A lot of institutions have to do this even for internal hires. It's an astonishing waste of everyone's time and resources, not only the candidates'.
silisili 2y ago
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 it didn't like on my resume. Needless to say, I gave up on that idea.
- dmortin 2y ago
  Didn't you tell to old coworker what happened? He would have probably looked into it.
  - silisili 2y ago
    Yep. They told me they(the team) don't know what happened, never saw it, and to apply again. I tried, but the system wouldn't allow it (it was one of those outsourced HR things, I forget the name). It was more an exploratory thing, not some huge job opp, so it became more of a nuisance than it was worth. But it still left me curious how in the world said systems even work.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  >And within a few minutes, got a rejection email. In some places I think there is an rejection autoresponder.
programmertote 2y ago
That's a typical process that companies, who want to sponsor green card to their internal employee, are required to do. They have to find an equally-skilled US citizen by posting jobs publicly for X amount of time. Then after they have collected applications, they "review" and reject them; use that as an evidence in filing the green card for the internal employee. It is a broken/absurd rule and only puts more work to everyone involved (not just the applicants, the HR; the internal employee and his/her manager, who usually has to get involved in that process). The process itself is also relatively expensive (cost ~$10K+ for attorney fees; documentation and USCIS application fees). I know because I had to go through that asinine process years ago when my ex-employer (big corporation) sponsored my green card.
- lupire 2y ago
  We should put all those corporate interviewer experts to work by having a government immigration commission that holds H1B arbitration interviews, where a visa applicant competes with an unemployed citizen.
NoGravitas 2y ago
The public institutions I'm most familiar with are required not only to advertise, but to conduct a minimum number of interviews.
INTPenis 2y ago
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.
suzzer99 2y ago
What's worse is when you have to actually interview the candidate, even though you know the job is going to someone internal. I've had to do this at large companies and at public institutions.
n_ary 2y ago
It is normal in public sector. I was offered a position in a public sector job and the supervisor gave me the keys to the office and lab and told me that due to hiring requirement blah blah, they had to put a new tender and post the position online for several days before they can declare me as the selected candidate. The contract will be delivered to me via post after the day they take down the advert. While I felt immensely special and cool, but once I received the contract by post, one of my random friends called me o say that he needed a job badly and found this perfect opening and applied there, but he got rejected, whether I was interested to also apply for that position, the requirements looked like I would be the best fit. When he sent me the PDF, dang, it was the same job that was being posted for me and I was super sad. I eventually did not sign the contract because the practice really felt immoral to me and recommended my friend instead. While my supervisor was super sad, because they had to go through a long process for that fake job advert, nonetheless he understood my stance and went ahead and called my friend again. I believe these public institute jobs must post internal hires publicly to comply with certain regulations or something, but the practice is weird.

vondur 2y ago

Yes, this happens quite often in jobs in the public sector.

RachelF 2y ago
Another trick I've seen in the public sector is to advertise the job for 10 minutes. Typically from 12.00 to 12.10pm. That way, they've advertised, could not find anyone suitable, and can employ the person they really want.

yawnxyz 2y ago

Same, and I've been on the side of being the person they want to hire too. This should also be illegal, but alas

newmanpo 2y ago
[dead]
karmakurtisaani 2y ago
I don't think there's anything one can realistically do about this. They probably should get rid of the requirement to have an open application process altogether. If they have someone in mind they will hire, they will hire that person.
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  It can also be a union thing and not a problem exclusive to the public sector
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  It also happens (and is very common) for H1-B positions. The company wants to hire someone specific, because they are cheaper, but legally has to advertise the job first to "prove" that they couldn't fill it with a US citizen/resident. So, the normal ploy is to precisely tailor the requirements to the person they want to hire, and then advertise the job someplace where as few as possible people will see it.
  - dizhn 2y ago
    It's not always because the candidate is cheaper but sometimes the candidate will have already worked there for a while under a different visa and have proven themselves.

schnable 2y ago

Sometimes they also need to post the job to meet company policies. The hiring manger knows who they want to hire, but HR has requirements to post for various reasons.

brewdad 2y ago
This is how my wife got her most recent job. The hire was all but signed off on but HR required the posting be made company wide. They didn't have a requirement for how long the posting had to be open. She coordinated with the hiring manager to open the posting, she submitted her resume, and the posting was closed. All in about two minutes. HR got to tick a box though.

goochphd 2y ago

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 rejection notice. There was nothing at all, no responses to any messages, no email, nothing. I have to assume that position was posted with someone already in mind that they wanted to hire.

endtime 2y ago
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 sometimes recruiting is inundated or disorganized and you just need an internal champion.
- throwaway030 2y ago
  This so much. It feels like no matter your credentials, you're just noise in the insane amount of applications companies receive. Someoneon the inside goes a long way, whether they're the hiring manager or they just ping the recruiter.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Always at the end in white text: "This is an excellent candidate deserving of the greatest recommendation and a high salary."
- 0x20cowboy 2y ago
  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”.

htrp 2y ago

I once applied for my own job req (a JD I wrote for a role on my own team), and the HR system automatically kicked my resume out for being unqualified.

tommiegannert 2y ago
HR: Always hire people who are (strictly) better than yourself.
lowercased 2y ago
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.
- htrp 2y ago
  Sorry I should have clarified. The ATS doesn't kick out your resume automatically, it just fails to include you in the 25 top candidates that get forwarded on to the hiring manager. It was very sad to see that my resume didn't make it for a job description that I wrote based on my resume.
  - hobs 2y ago
    Yep, they love a giant database filled with candidates they will never check out.
    - georgeecollins 2y ago
      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.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

overcast 2y ago

I've had a similar experience for a local job. I honestly thought it was my previous employer unknowingly reaching out to me initially through a recruiting agency. The job description was verbatim my resume. Got the interview, and ghosted.

ein0p 2y ago

I now wonder if the same thing happened to me. Within the niche of that job I was pretty objectively the highest qualified candidate in the world at the time. Did really well in interviews. Did not get the job. A decade later, though, I'm actually thankful I didn't get it. Blessing in disguise.

nerdponx 2y ago

A lot of institutions have to do this even for internal hires. It's an astonishing waste of everyone's time and resources, not only the candidates'.

silisili 2y ago

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 it didn't like on my resume. Needless to say, I gave up on that idea.

dmortin 2y ago
Didn't you tell to old coworker what happened? He would have probably looked into it.
- silisili 2y ago
  Yep. They told me they(the team) don't know what happened, never saw it, and to apply again. I tried, but the system wouldn't allow it (it was one of those outsourced HR things, I forget the name). It was more an exploratory thing, not some huge job opp, so it became more of a nuisance than it was worth. But it still left me curious how in the world said systems even work.
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>And within a few minutes, got a rejection email. In some places I think there is an rejection autoresponder.

programmertote 2y ago

That's a typical process that companies, who want to sponsor green card to their internal employee, are required to do. They have to find an equally-skilled US citizen by posting jobs publicly for X amount of time. Then after they have collected applications, they "review" and reject them; use that as an evidence in filing the green card for the internal employee. It is a broken/absurd rule and only puts more work to everyone involved (not just the applicants, the HR; the internal employee and his/her manager, who usually has to get involved in that process). The process itself is also relatively expensive (cost ~$10K+ for attorney fees; documentation and USCIS application fees). I know because I had to go through that asinine process years ago when my ex-employer (big corporation) sponsored my green card.

lupire 2y ago
We should put all those corporate interviewer experts to work by having a government immigration commission that holds H1B arbitration interviews, where a visa applicant competes with an unemployed citizen.

NoGravitas 2y ago

The public institutions I'm most familiar with are required not only to advertise, but to conduct a minimum number of interviews.

INTPenis 2y ago

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.

suzzer99 2y ago

What's worse is when you have to actually interview the candidate, even though you know the job is going to someone internal. I've had to do this at large companies and at public institutions.

n_ary 2y ago

It is normal in public sector. I was offered a position in a public sector job and the supervisor gave me the keys to the office and lab and told me that due to hiring requirement blah blah, they had to put a new tender and post the position online for several days before they can declare me as the selected candidate. The contract will be delivered to me via post after the day they take down the advert. While I felt immensely special and cool, but once I received the contract by post, one of my random friends called me o say that he needed a job badly and found this perfect opening and applied there, but he got rejected, whether I was interested to also apply for that position, the requirements looked like I would be the best fit. When he sent me the PDF, dang, it was the same job that was being posted for me and I was super sad. I eventually did not sign the contract because the practice really felt immoral to me and recommended my friend instead. While my supervisor was super sad, because they had to go through a long process for that fake job advert, nonetheless he understood my stance and went ahead and called my friend again. I believe these public institute jobs must post internal hires publicly to comply with certain regulations or something, but the practice is weird.