5 ms·

Ask HN: Recruiters, why do you repost jobs with 1000 applications a month later?

The majority of jobs on LinkedIn right now seem to be reposts of jobs from a month or two ago. You can see from the application data that each role that's been reposted already has hundreds of applicants, which implies that it did last month as well. Why would you repost a role vs just going through the 1000 applications you received last time? What is the reasoning there?

angmarsbane 2y ago
To see if you repost it with a lower salary if you get the same amount or fewer applicants and if there is a difference in applicant quality. It provides some insight into labor market.
- charliebwrites 2y ago
  Do they have any intention to hire for those roles or is it literally just for measuring market signal?
- gregjor 2y ago
  Unlikely companies do anything with the applicants they get for these jobs other than log them in a database. Of the many reasons companies post jobs they don't intend to fill, careful A/B testing seems one of the least plausible. No place I ever worked did this to determine lowest possible salary, nor did they worry about getting too few applicants unless the number approached zero. More likely reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240315-ghost-jobs-digital-job-boards https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240315-ghost-jobs-dig...
- Raed667 2y ago
  Nah, unless you have a huge recruiting department it is too much work. They usually pay big bucks to analytics companies who give them precompiled reports
hcrean 2y ago
Posting a nonsense job to accrue CVs and a call-list of details is a common tactic used by the people tasked with building the internal candidate database.
- charliebwrites 2y ago
  So you're saying they intend to call these applicants for future roles? Why not just post the role in the future when its ready and get applicants that way?
  - gregjor 2y ago
    Read the Wikipedia article for a start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job I think you have an erroneous model of how the job "market" works. Right now employers have the upper hand with tech jobs, at least junior and mid-level jobs. With so many people laid off and coming out of school competition will get most fierce at the low end. Employers don't have to care, they will get piles of applicants regardless, and can pretend to hire with online postings until it suits them to hire. The people asking about these practices, and getting upset and indignant, either never had to search for a job before, or got their last job back when demand meant anyone who could credibly put "React" on their CV got ten offers right away. Those days have gone.
gregjor 2y ago
Companies and the recruiters who work for them post ghost jobs for various reasons. You can find plenty of writing and discussion about it on HN, Reddit, YouTube, even mainstream media. Look at the Wikipedia entry for "ghost job." Not really a new practice, but having job postings and job searching online makes it more obvious. Running ads for jobs the employer may not fill has few downsides and doesn't cost much. Digging through job postings and applying to them has turned into a numbers game, and an arms race of automation and now AI tools. I suggest a more effective job hunting strategy, because worrying about ghost job postings just wastes your time if you intend to find a job.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > Digging through job postings and applying to them has turned into a numbers game It's always been a numbers game, at least over the course of my career.
  - gregjor 2y ago
    I learned to make it about people a long time ago. In 40+ years I have applied for jobs through ads maybe two times. Every other job I've had came through friends, former colleagues, word of mouth and referrals. I haven't updated my résumé or looked at a job board in decades. As a freelancer I do get gigs through an agency, but even that works mainly by word of mouth. I never apply or do anything resembling an interview for those jobs. I keep my freelance customers for a long time -- five years or longer -- so I don't have to churn for new projects all the time. Even a fairly small company can keep a few programmers and system admins busy. I understand that people early in their career don't have a lot of professional contacts, and that makes it hard to find a job. In that situation perhaps it makes sense to apply for a lot of jobs, but I think targeting a few specific companies and cultivating relationships will get better results, even for someone fresh out of school or laid off from their first job. A person who went to university should have quite a few contacts from school. A person who worked even for a few months has colleagues from that job. When someone posts that they have worked in the business for a while but have no professional network I wonder how that could happen -- take off the headphones, stop shunning every meeting and social interaction, meet more people, and not just other programmers/tech people.
bojo 2y ago
I asked that same question here a while back. One of the answers was (paraphrased), "because we're constantly recruiting for that title, but maybe not the same team." I'm not sure if that was a good or bad sign. Growth? Or constant turnover? Really makes you wonder. I manage a highly stable tier 2 software team embedded in enterprise, and only recruit maybe once every ~2 years, if that. Hard to relate to what is going on these days.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
  If your company has 1k devs you'll have to hire several people every single week. At the same time if you want any level of consistency, you can't let teams who have not hired for 2 years come up with their own process, so that's why pipelines are a thing.
  - bojo 2y ago
    I assume most HN job posts are from small startups. Even if they are established companies with a sizable head count, it seems weird seeing the same exact job post month after month for a year or two straight. > you can't let teams who have not hired for 2 years come up with their own process Perhaps? We're a 9 person backend department inside a 250 person ISP. Not the typical type of team we talk about here on HN. I doubt small startups need a pipeline either, they just hire on demand.
phendrenad2 2y ago
I think these are ghost jobs based on institutional optimism. The toxic positivity culture in modern corporations ensures that companies always want to be hiring, but the purse-string-holders and bean-counters block the hire when it comes to actually signing on the dotted line. This is why I don't look for jobs on LinkedIn, it's the garbage heap of false optimism.
scinadier 2y ago
Perhaps they need more data to fine-tune resume readers.
lifestyleguru 2y ago
The odds in job search market and in line with Tinder right now or even worse. There is no hiring. Don't waste time and energy, use your emergency supplies.
bob_theslob646 2y ago
Not a recruiter but it may have to do with state laws. > "It is possible that state laws have posting requirements for employers awarded state government contracts. " https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/hr-answers/regulations-require-company-to-post-open-positions-either-internally-externally-requirement-length-time-internal-posting https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/hr-answers/regulatio...
ipaddr 2y ago
What is worse is the fake job interviews. If they don't call you back at least you didn't have an assignment no one will look at.
muzani 2y ago
1 out of 200 people on the job market can't pass FizzBuzz back then. Today the odds are much better because they teach FizzBuzz on week 1 of bootcamp, but 1 out of 200 still won't meet some absurdly low bar you set for them. Note that this is out of the people on the job market applying for these jobs. Most of those people will never be hired for a coding job and so they'll be applying to every job they see on LinkedIn for a year or so. This is worse for low barrier job portals. 1 out of 2 may be able to pass FizzBuzz out of applicants from HN. There are a lot of people on HN who hate tech and are burnt out. A lot of these guys hate Next.js but will learn it for money. Half your applicants on LinkedIn don't know the difference between Node.js and Next.js and will go into the interviews without checking.
leros 2y ago
Many recruiters don't use jobs the way you expect. They're posting jobs as lead generation to fill up their ATS with candidates. They don't even necessarily care what job you applied to. However, they also primarily want active candidates, so they prefer to look at candidates that recently applies as it shows active intent. They repost jobs to get a new batch of active candidates to sort through. Is this messed up and totally broken? Yes. Is it how many recruiters operate? Unfortunately, yes.
Malidir 2y ago
Aside: ATS systems will reject, say, 75% of the 1000 for not having the requried skills listed.
cryptozeus 2y ago
Lately this is the way companies are marketing and collecting resumes with no job to offer
nextn 2y ago
[dead]
b20000 2y ago
posting jobs without the intention of hiring or having the headcount available should be illegal under CA law with a 1MM$ fine per occurence

angmarsbane 2y ago

To see if you repost it with a lower salary if you get the same amount or fewer applicants and if there is a difference in applicant quality. It provides some insight into labor market.

charliebwrites 2y ago
Do they have any intention to hire for those roles or is it literally just for measuring market signal?
gregjor 2y ago
Unlikely companies do anything with the applicants they get for these jobs other than log them in a database. Of the many reasons companies post jobs they don't intend to fill, careful A/B testing seems one of the least plausible. No place I ever worked did this to determine lowest possible salary, nor did they worry about getting too few applicants unless the number approached zero. More likely reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240315-ghost-jobs-digital-job-boards https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240315-ghost-jobs-dig...
Raed667 2y ago
Nah, unless you have a huge recruiting department it is too much work. They usually pay big bucks to analytics companies who give them precompiled reports

hcrean 2y ago

Posting a nonsense job to accrue CVs and a call-list of details is a common tactic used by the people tasked with building the internal candidate database.

charliebwrites 2y ago
So you're saying they intend to call these applicants for future roles? Why not just post the role in the future when its ready and get applicants that way?
- gregjor 2y ago
  Read the Wikipedia article for a start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_job I think you have an erroneous model of how the job "market" works. Right now employers have the upper hand with tech jobs, at least junior and mid-level jobs. With so many people laid off and coming out of school competition will get most fierce at the low end. Employers don't have to care, they will get piles of applicants regardless, and can pretend to hire with online postings until it suits them to hire. The people asking about these practices, and getting upset and indignant, either never had to search for a job before, or got their last job back when demand meant anyone who could credibly put "React" on their CV got ten offers right away. Those days have gone.

gregjor 2y ago

Companies and the recruiters who work for them post ghost jobs for various reasons. You can find plenty of writing and discussion about it on HN, Reddit, YouTube, even mainstream media. Look at the Wikipedia entry for "ghost job." Not really a new practice, but having job postings and job searching online makes it more obvious. Running ads for jobs the employer may not fill has few downsides and doesn't cost much. Digging through job postings and applying to them has turned into a numbers game, and an arms race of automation and now AI tools. I suggest a more effective job hunting strategy, because worrying about ghost job postings just wastes your time if you intend to find a job.

JohnFen 2y ago
> Digging through job postings and applying to them has turned into a numbers game It's always been a numbers game, at least over the course of my career.
- gregjor 2y ago
  I learned to make it about people a long time ago. In 40+ years I have applied for jobs through ads maybe two times. Every other job I've had came through friends, former colleagues, word of mouth and referrals. I haven't updated my résumé or looked at a job board in decades. As a freelancer I do get gigs through an agency, but even that works mainly by word of mouth. I never apply or do anything resembling an interview for those jobs. I keep my freelance customers for a long time -- five years or longer -- so I don't have to churn for new projects all the time. Even a fairly small company can keep a few programmers and system admins busy. I understand that people early in their career don't have a lot of professional contacts, and that makes it hard to find a job. In that situation perhaps it makes sense to apply for a lot of jobs, but I think targeting a few specific companies and cultivating relationships will get better results, even for someone fresh out of school or laid off from their first job. A person who went to university should have quite a few contacts from school. A person who worked even for a few months has colleagues from that job. When someone posts that they have worked in the business for a while but have no professional network I wonder how that could happen -- take off the headphones, stop shunning every meeting and social interaction, meet more people, and not just other programmers/tech people.

bojo 2y ago

I asked that same question here a while back. One of the answers was (paraphrased), "because we're constantly recruiting for that title, but maybe not the same team." I'm not sure if that was a good or bad sign. Growth? Or constant turnover? Really makes you wonder. I manage a highly stable tier 2 software team embedded in enterprise, and only recruit maybe once every ~2 years, if that. Hard to relate to what is going on these days.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
If your company has 1k devs you'll have to hire several people every single week. At the same time if you want any level of consistency, you can't let teams who have not hired for 2 years come up with their own process, so that's why pipelines are a thing.
- bojo 2y ago
  I assume most HN job posts are from small startups. Even if they are established companies with a sizable head count, it seems weird seeing the same exact job post month after month for a year or two straight. > you can't let teams who have not hired for 2 years come up with their own process Perhaps? We're a 9 person backend department inside a 250 person ISP. Not the typical type of team we talk about here on HN. I doubt small startups need a pipeline either, they just hire on demand.

phendrenad2 2y ago

I think these are ghost jobs based on institutional optimism. The toxic positivity culture in modern corporations ensures that companies always want to be hiring, but the purse-string-holders and bean-counters block the hire when it comes to actually signing on the dotted line. This is why I don't look for jobs on LinkedIn, it's the garbage heap of false optimism.

scinadier 2y ago

Perhaps they need more data to fine-tune resume readers.

lifestyleguru 2y ago

The odds in job search market and in line with Tinder right now or even worse. There is no hiring. Don't waste time and energy, use your emergency supplies.

bob_theslob646 2y ago

Not a recruiter but it may have to do with state laws. > "It is possible that state laws have posting requirements for employers awarded state government contracts. " https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/hr-answers/regulations-require-company-to-post-open-positions-either-internally-externally-requirement-length-time-internal-posting https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/hr-answers/regulatio...

ipaddr 2y ago

What is worse is the fake job interviews. If they don't call you back at least you didn't have an assignment no one will look at.

muzani 2y ago

1 out of 200 people on the job market can't pass FizzBuzz back then. Today the odds are much better because they teach FizzBuzz on week 1 of bootcamp, but 1 out of 200 still won't meet some absurdly low bar you set for them. Note that this is out of the people on the job market applying for these jobs. Most of those people will never be hired for a coding job and so they'll be applying to every job they see on LinkedIn for a year or so. This is worse for low barrier job portals. 1 out of 2 may be able to pass FizzBuzz out of applicants from HN. There are a lot of people on HN who hate tech and are burnt out. A lot of these guys hate Next.js but will learn it for money. Half your applicants on LinkedIn don't know the difference between Node.js and Next.js and will go into the interviews without checking.

leros 2y ago

Many recruiters don't use jobs the way you expect. They're posting jobs as lead generation to fill up their ATS with candidates. They don't even necessarily care what job you applied to. However, they also primarily want active candidates, so they prefer to look at candidates that recently applies as it shows active intent. They repost jobs to get a new batch of active candidates to sort through. Is this messed up and totally broken? Yes. Is it how many recruiters operate? Unfortunately, yes.

Malidir 2y ago

Aside: ATS systems will reject, say, 75% of the 1000 for not having the requried skills listed.

cryptozeus 2y ago

Lately this is the way companies are marketing and collecting resumes with no job to offer

nextn 2y ago

[dead]

b20000 2y ago

posting jobs without the intention of hiring or having the headcount available should be illegal under CA law with a 1MM$ fine per occurence