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The outrage from job seekers is justified but Gizmodo doesn't help matters by categorising fraud (fake jobs) with failure (never filled). Hiring is hard, as any

The outrage from job seekers is justified but Gizmodo doesn't help matters by categorising fraud (fake jobs) with failure (never filled). Hiring is hard, as anyone who has ever done it will attest, and very many vacancies opened in good faith are not filled for a variety of reasons - budget pulled, hiring manager won't make a decision, internal candidate appears at late stage etc. We also need to draw a distinction between employers posting jobs directly vs 3rd party agencies posting jobs for the company's they represent, or purport to represent. There is a disincentive for the former to post 'fake jobs' - who wants to deal with the applicant flow, but an incentive for the latter to do so - harvest resume's, build a database. Anyways. My point is, there _is_ a problem but mainstream magazine treatment like this from Gizmodo serves to add smoke when there's already a fire

reptation 2y ago
Sure, hiring is hard but the factors you mention are rare, and teams are extremely motivated to fill vacancies.
- derektank 2y ago
  Teams are also strongly motivated to not hire a bad team member that drags down morale and wastes resources. I want to say this is more true in government hiring, where it's difficult to fire people, but I've seen private companies hold out for a long time until they find someone with the right combination of cultural fit and technical skills.
  - spratzt 2y ago
    It’s extraordinary how frequently companies discuss the cost of a bad hire and never consider the opportunity cost of a no-hire. Companies that keep waiting for Mr. Right are really saying that the opportunity cost of not completing their project is very low. In other words it’s not really that important at all.
    - danaris 2y ago
      On the contrary. "Not completing the project" is not an option—if they don't hire someone to fill a vacancy on the team, the rest of the team will just be expected to work extra hours to keep up. Oh, not with overtime—you're salaried, remember? (Alternate version: Oh, no, you can't actually log the extra hours; we don't have the budget for overtime, and I, the manager, can't be seen asking for more money, or it would affect my bonus!) And you'd better step up and work those hours. You want to be seen as a team player, right?
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >Not completing the project" is not an option—if they don't hire someone to fill a vacancy on the team, the rest of the team will just be expected to work extra hours to keep up. And that's the opportunity cost we don't talk about. The cost isn't "we slow down on a project from a bad hire". It's "demoralize/burned out engineers quit to a point where the deadline is impossible to reach". You can't force overtime to engineers that leave and take their institutional knowledge with them There's also a lot of fake job postings as a sort of carrot to overworked engineers that "promise more help is coming". Which is just as ingenuous to existing employees as it is to applicants.
NVHacker 2y ago
The way I read it, Gizmodo cannot tell whether those jobs are fake or just never filled. How could anyone tell from outside ? The visible fact is that no-one is hired for those jobs.
spandrew 2y ago
Disagree. If you post a job then reneg on it that still leaves folks out in the cold who are, in earnest, looking for work. Mistakes happen, and I don't blame hiring managers for the shifting financial landscapes they often have to face. But that job wasn't solid enough to count as a real position. Lump them together.
- lazide 2y ago
  A posting which was never intended to be filled is still different than one that was intended to be filled, but never actually happened. Good luck telling them apart however. If you make it so every posting has to be filled or it’s ‘fraud’, it will be an even bigger mess.
  - kylebenzle 2y ago
    Maybe, but it's too hard to distinguish between the jobs that were posted with intention to not be filled and jobs that were posted with intention to be filled but through other circumstances weren't. So the distinction is moot. It's a lot like this website. It used to be pretty obvious which comments were trolls and which are real people but more and more the people have gotten dumber and the trolls gotten smarter so it's almost impossible to tell the difference between maliciousness and stupidity and for the rest of us it doesn't really matter one way or the other. A person wasting our time is a person wasting our time, the intentions aren't important.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      different is a matter of use case. The difference doesn't matter to the applicant. It probably does if you propose the death penalty for posting fake listings.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        A fine large enough to make bad job postings (genuine or not) unprofitable is fine. We don't need reducto ad absurdum here. Just make businesses put thought into their postings and not let someone who has no idea of the qualifications right them up themselves.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
If you get hundreds of apps and you can't get a single qualified candidate, you either have a horribly inefficient recruiting system or your job needs are so specific that general job boards won't help you anyway. If you have years of inefficiencies happening without being addressed, at what point to we just call it fraud instead? Or possibly you highly overestimate your job needs vs. The requirements posted. Which is endemic of the above reasons anyway.

reptation 2y ago

Sure, hiring is hard but the factors you mention are rare, and teams are extremely motivated to fill vacancies.

derektank 2y ago
Teams are also strongly motivated to not hire a bad team member that drags down morale and wastes resources. I want to say this is more true in government hiring, where it's difficult to fire people, but I've seen private companies hold out for a long time until they find someone with the right combination of cultural fit and technical skills.
- spratzt 2y ago
  It’s extraordinary how frequently companies discuss the cost of a bad hire and never consider the opportunity cost of a no-hire. Companies that keep waiting for Mr. Right are really saying that the opportunity cost of not completing their project is very low. In other words it’s not really that important at all.
  - danaris 2y ago
    On the contrary. "Not completing the project" is not an option—if they don't hire someone to fill a vacancy on the team, the rest of the team will just be expected to work extra hours to keep up. Oh, not with overtime—you're salaried, remember? (Alternate version: Oh, no, you can't actually log the extra hours; we don't have the budget for overtime, and I, the manager, can't be seen asking for more money, or it would affect my bonus!) And you'd better step up and work those hours. You want to be seen as a team player, right?
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >Not completing the project" is not an option—if they don't hire someone to fill a vacancy on the team, the rest of the team will just be expected to work extra hours to keep up. And that's the opportunity cost we don't talk about. The cost isn't "we slow down on a project from a bad hire". It's "demoralize/burned out engineers quit to a point where the deadline is impossible to reach". You can't force overtime to engineers that leave and take their institutional knowledge with them There's also a lot of fake job postings as a sort of carrot to overworked engineers that "promise more help is coming". Which is just as ingenuous to existing employees as it is to applicants.

NVHacker 2y ago

The way I read it, Gizmodo cannot tell whether those jobs are fake or just never filled. How could anyone tell from outside ? The visible fact is that no-one is hired for those jobs.

spandrew 2y ago

Disagree. If you post a job then reneg on it that still leaves folks out in the cold who are, in earnest, looking for work. Mistakes happen, and I don't blame hiring managers for the shifting financial landscapes they often have to face. But that job wasn't solid enough to count as a real position. Lump them together.

lazide 2y ago
A posting which was never intended to be filled is still different than one that was intended to be filled, but never actually happened. Good luck telling them apart however. If you make it so every posting has to be filled or it’s ‘fraud’, it will be an even bigger mess.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  Maybe, but it's too hard to distinguish between the jobs that were posted with intention to not be filled and jobs that were posted with intention to be filled but through other circumstances weren't. So the distinction is moot. It's a lot like this website. It used to be pretty obvious which comments were trolls and which are real people but more and more the people have gotten dumber and the trolls gotten smarter so it's almost impossible to tell the difference between maliciousness and stupidity and for the rest of us it doesn't really matter one way or the other. A person wasting our time is a person wasting our time, the intentions aren't important.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    different is a matter of use case. The difference doesn't matter to the applicant. It probably does if you propose the death penalty for posting fake listings.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      A fine large enough to make bad job postings (genuine or not) unprofitable is fine. We don't need reducto ad absurdum here. Just make businesses put thought into their postings and not let someone who has no idea of the qualifications right them up themselves.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

If you get hundreds of apps and you can't get a single qualified candidate, you either have a horribly inefficient recruiting system or your job needs are so specific that general job boards won't help you anyway. If you have years of inefficiencies happening without being addressed, at what point to we just call it fraud instead? Or possibly you highly overestimate your job needs vs. The requirements posted. Which is endemic of the above reasons anyway.