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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs
- gilbetron 1y agoJust HackerNews this. It's probably an actual vibe-code project to have a list of ghost jobs that are crowd-maintained that people can use to filter them out of job sites. Like RSS for ghost jobs.
- snapetom 1y agoThis is going to be very hard to enforce on a Federal level, let alone pass. Companies are going to play shell games with the titles, responsibilities, and org structure just enough. There might also be 1st Amendment issues, too. The required reporting numbers will be hollow. The end result will be that it will be on the books, but the government won't have any enforceable actions for years. And when you do see action, it will drag on for years. The feds go after big fish like Microsoft, which will drag it out. Meanwhile, thousands of your Series B-sized companies that are the biggest culprits, will fly under the radar. I think you're going to see a few states do pass laws like this. The enforcement question will still be there, but it will be on a smaller scale. Results will be varied. Meanwhile, we need to keep naming and shaming companies and recruiters who do this. Great idea in theory, tough in practice.
- briffle 1y agoIn theory, they can be done at the state level. I know its not perefect, but because of a few states jobs laws, I almost always see salary ranges and averages now on job postings. Especially remote jobs.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoAll regulation is hard to enforce. Have to start somewhere, and then you keep pulling the ratchet via policy.
- mothballed 1y agoIf you create regulation you can't effectively enforce it can actually make things worse. This is why you can buy fentanyl on every corner, but now the people supplying it have small nation-state tier armies of guys in hiluxes with machine guns and truck mounted .50 cal anti-armor guns. Not saying that will happen with ghost jobs, but it's not a given things will improve.
- pessimizer 1y agoI have absolutely no idea why you think this regulation would be any harder to implement than any other regulation other than a hand-wavy brief first sentence in your first comment. I have no idea what sort of juggling of job titles you're predicting that will deceive anyone for more than 10 seconds. I have no idea what 1st amendment issue you see in advertising for an employment contract that isn't backed by employment; if you advertise asthma medicine that doesn't have any effect on asthma, people understand that it's fraud. Also, it seems that you're making a parallel case that it makes no difference to the fentanyl market that there is a law against fentanyl, which makes me think that you apply the Law of Averages to every change that you hear anyone suggest. e.g. if you make a law against fentanyl, some people will stop selling fentanyl, while other people will be more attracted to selling an illegal drug, therefore a law against fentanyl will have no effect on fentanyl use or sales. The Law of Averages is not real.
- mothballed 1y agoI haven't argued a single thing in the straw man you've attacked. I haven't even speculated whether regulation against ghost jobs would be effective. The thing about the 1A and law of averages is totally out of left field and seem like you're taking up issues with some other comment.
- terminalshort 1y agoWhich is why it should not be used to prevent minor annoyances like wasting a few minutes applying for a job that isn't there.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoThe easy way to enforce this would be to leave it individuals. Applied to a job and heard nothing back? Sue. You'd have to pretty tightly define the law, such that it could be simply applied, but I could imagine all sorts of concrete rules which would significantly improve the status quo. Something like "Public job postings may be up for no more than 60 days for a given position, interview process must last no more than 30 days beyond that. By the end of the subsequent 90 day window, the company must either hire at least one applicant and let the others know they didn't make the cut, or demonstrate that they received zero acceptable applicants by providing concrete reasons for rejection to all applicants. It's a "shit or get off the pot" type deal: the easiest solution to the problem is to just find an acceptable applicant and hire them.
- sokoloff 1y agoNo, the easiest solution is to avoid doing anything that would qualify as a “public job posting” until you’re absolutely out of other options, which is probably worse than the status quo.
- alexchantavy 1y agoThis. The unintended side effect is worse and I feel like the only winners would be the lawyers in the middle. There are many ways for a company to justify leaving a posting up if sued: - candidate’s resume did not meet bar so company did not interview - candidate could not be scheduled - candidate was interviewed but did not pass - offer was given to competing candidate but competitor rejected so company couldn’t fill position and still had to leave posting up Companies would then need to keep super detailed records on job postings which is overhead, and then many would just choose to not publicly post to avoid the hassle
- adolph 1y ago> Companies are going to play shell games shades of Sinofsky's description of federal HR reporting https://x.com/stevesi/status/1953920412506894347 https://x.com/stevesi/status/1953920412506894347
- didibus 1y agoThe proposal I think is simply to force listings to have more details like hire and start date, if it's for a backfill, if it gives priority to internal hires, etc. So the enforcement I think would be if you post listings without those details, you get fined. How you'd prove if people added false details I don't know, but I think the idea is at least by giving more info on the listing it might deter some ghost listings or enable the applicant to determine if the listing seems legit.
- guywithahat 1y agoIf the number is only 17%, I'm not sure we need to ban them. From my experience the big issue is hiring managers who either 1) are very casual about hiring (i.e. they're willing to wait 6 months and waste everyone's time), or 2) people who like the idea of hiring but keep changing what they want to hire for (like this month we're having issues with testing, so we want a test engineer, but next month we're having issues with embedded software, so we need a new embedded engineer. I really don't think there are bands of hiring managers posting fake job ads to make their company look more impressive, I think it's just bands of hiring managers who want a senior engineer with direct experience for <140k
- LorenPechtel 1y agoI do agree it's not about making the company look better, but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. And you're missing the recruiters who are simply gathering resumes. And the scammers looking to sell you training.
- tamimio 1y agoAnd the ones who are after collecting people's personal information in specific industries.
- conscion 1y ago> If the number is only 17%, I'm not sure we need to ban them. Job hunting is a market and the government should tryu to make every market as efficient as possible. Imagine if you went to any other store and 17% of the items you bought were just junk and didn't work.
- guywithahat 1y agoI can’t possibly imagine the government making job hunting, a task that’s hard to define and changes rapidly, more efficient
- liquidise 1y agoThis is a superb take. I've admittedly always thought of interviews as a process in desperate need of improvement. Thinking of it as a market is a helpful perspective shift on some long-standing ideas.
- LorenPechtel 1y agoOnly 17%?? Last time I was job hunting I found that 80%+ of postings were either dupes or bogus. Very vague description of the job? I'm going to keep seeing it for a long time, clearly they are not actually filling the role. Very specific, odd set of requirements, they're going through the motions but they've already picked the person and the ad is designed to match only that person. I think they're going about this backwards. Leave the ad up, but they are required to amend it with external hire/internal hire/H-1B when the position is filled. Let people see what has happened in the past. And all jobs must be associated with some entity and indicate how long that entity has existed.
- NoGravitas 1y agoWere a lot of those the same job being offered through different recruiters, though?
- nickff 1y agoThose 'one specific person' ads are usually there to comply with an internal requirement or external regulation/law, so they wouldn't be able to say that it was filled, because that would be an admission that the whole process was a sham.
- dmurray 1y agoWhy? They'd "find" the one specific person, and then report the job was filled by that person, as an internal hire if that was the case.
- nateglims 1y agoI suspect they mean it's for sponsoring a green card for an existing employee.
- mschuster91 1y agoAt large companies, this kind of stuff is the norm even for internal transfers. They got all sorts of whack policies in place, department leads try to work around the red tape and make very very VERY specific job postings that only the actually desired candidate can fill.
- carefulfungi 1y agoThis is explictly restricting speech (restricting the right to advertise for labor) and would have to meet a high first amendment bar in the US. Pay transparency law supporters have argued successfully that there is a compelling interest in closing gender and racial wage gaps and that salary range information can be mandated in job listings for that purpose. What's the compelling interest in this case that allows the government to control speech?
- NoGravitas 1y agoI want to downvote you, but you are technically correct. I think most of us agree that there exists a compelling interest, but that in practice the case would be made that this should be struck down because it restricts speech, and the captured judiciary would certainly uphold that argument.
- em-bee 1y agoadvertising for jobs that aren't actually available is fraud or deception?
- carefulfungi 1y agoIf you advertise a job and fail to find a qualified candidate, and then don't fill that role, is that fraud? If you advertise for talent constantly, interview regularly, and hire rarely (but hire), is that fraud? If you have a single role to fill and advertise it multiple times in multiple states as multiple listings because that's how job posting forums work, is that fraud?
- didibus 1y agoI think it can be argued that some of those are. Same as how false price advertising, or I don't know, say you kept calling customer support but never had any problems could start to look like abuse. Or squatting a business parking lot, you can always say, I eventually might need something from the store and intend to buy from it. I think they'd still have you towed and your argument would fail.
- bitwize 1y agoCan we get regulators to do something about devilcorp postings too?
- Scubabear68 1y agoSomewhat related, I learned to be very cautious about LinkedIn and their job postings. I hit a couple that looked like regular companies and started to apply, but they were really fake job postings just go harvest your information. Even when you abort the process, it's too late. They take your info and put you on a zillion job sites automatically with endless email spam.
- lostlogin 1y ago> I learned to be very cautious about LinkedIn A rule for life. It’s a spam machine, and nothing more as far as I’m concerned.
- gosub100 1y agoI still won't forgive them for the incident circa 2012 where they were sending out emails from your email account to everyone in your address book or recent contacts list in your own voice (!!) saying "hi $name, I joined linked in come network with me!".
- tietjens 1y agoVivid memories of this happening to me and many I knew. Totally insane and horrible. Wonder who had the brilliant idea.
- alistairSH 1y agoI'd be more interested in knowing what the ROI was for it. And how big a bonus did that person get for the idea.
- TrousersHoisted 1y agoYears later, Pinterest repeated this offense. And years after that, NextDoor did... and even used physical mail to spam people's real neighbors using the "inviting" user's name. Despicable, and even potentially dangerous in these sad times of polarized and unhinged trash. Oh yeah... NextDoor also exposed people's exact physical addresses to all users by default for a year or two. I mean... that's just inexcusable and deliberate irresponsibility.
- diego_moita 1y agoIn the end this is like banning fake news, you just can't. I suggest people just take a credibility approach. As an example, I no longer bother with HN's "Who's hiring", everything there is bullshit. Besides, job sites are just social media, their purpose is not to inform, it is to create eyeballs to advertisers. You should discard them, like you should also cancel Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
- apercu 1y agoIf I wanted to game my stock price and mislead my competition, a bunch of highly specific (and fraudulent) job postings on my website (in combination with other investor-adjacent reporting) would be a great low cost start.
- hopelite 1y agoyes, and that's what is done.
- maxk42 1y agoHow, exactly, would that convince an investor such as myself that your company is suddenly worth more? Generally when I'm looking at a company's financials more employees means less profitable.
- apercu 1y agoSince when are financials in line with stock price these days?
- mxuribe 1y agoIf i post a bunch of ghost/fake jobs, then investros *could potentially* see that as a signal that i am growing, and they should invest NOW before its too late...as one example. Another example, could be that my competition sees "enough/so many open jobs", that they might assume their market position is less than it might be - think of it as a sort of distant intimidation...but also, could be an approach for that competition to get distracted and spin their wheels trying to hire unnecessarily (to try to block up the pool of relevant candidates), thus burning budget in process, etc.
- coredog64 1y agoYou need to think outside the box. Once you've determined that a particular technological avenue is a dead end, gin up a bunch of job postings that would suggest that you're doubling down on it and watch your competitors set money on fire trying to catch up. (There's a classic story from the Windows 3.x era regarding pen computing, where Microsoft spent money on it and advertised that solely to force competitors to expend efforts where Microsoft knew there was no payoff)
- behnamoh 1y agounfortunately this happens in academia too. last year was brutal for most PhDs in business schools because the number of positions dropped significantly compared to the year before, and the ones that were "on the market" weren't all legit. there were several top tier schools that did the first-round interviews or even flyout seminars only to test the waters, with no intention of hiring. the fact that universities and professors thought it was okay to waste candidates' time was in itself telling about the culture in those schools.
- snapetom 1y agoThe disconnect between academia and private is real and often bizarre. I have a good friend that's a recruiter for a top 20 flagship research university in the US. Her line is always, "We're education. We don't do things like ghost jobs and ghostings." She'll then often tell stories where she and her colleagues do the exact same thing you hear in the private sector. Recently she asked me if I thought it was ok to go ahead and fly a candidate out for an interview knowing the funding had just been cut. Her boss (in recruiting) wanted to anyway in case the funding was restored. Luckily the hiring managers refused to go ahead.
- behnamoh 1y agohonestly these people should be called out so maybe shame stops them from doing such shenanigans. some universities just fly candidates to show to the dean as proof that they're working towards the school's AI initiatives. last year a school that flew me made a huge deal about how serious they were about AI and all the infrastructure they were willing to purchase for the 60 new faculty they were hiring across the entire school who do AI work. they ended up hiring a psychology major who does nothing AI related.
- smccabe0 1y agoSo now that another admin is in power, it's useful to have accurate numbers. But during the last several administrations, job posting numbers were used to backstop failing economic activity, especially post covid. I'm not mad it's happening, I'm mad it's taken this long to do.
- didibus 1y agoI don't think it's related. This proposal if I understood hasn't reached any political sphere, it's just a grassroots effort.
- tptacek 1y agoThe controls summarized in the CNBC piece seem reasonable, or, if not that, then at least not all that onerous. The controls in the actual proposal are less reasonable: they create finable infractions for any claim in a job ad deemed "misleading" or "inaccurate" (findings of fact that requires a an expensive trial to solve) and prohibit "perpetual postings" or postings made 90 days in advance of hiring dates. The controls might make it harder to post "ghost jobs" (though: firms posting "ghost jobs" simply to check boxes for outsourcing, offshoring, or visa issuance will have no trouble adhering to the letter of this proposal while evading its spirit), but they will also impact firms that don't do anything resembling "ghost job" hiring. Firms working at their dead level best to be up front with candidates still produce steady feeds of candidates who feel misled or unfairly rejected. There are structural features of hiring that almost guarantee problems: for instance, the interval between making a selection decision about a candidate and actually onboarding them onto the team, during which any number of things can happen to scotch the deal. There's also a basic distributed systems problem of establishing a consensus state between hiring managers, HR teams, and large pools of candidates. If you're going to go after "ghost job" posters, you should do something much more targeted to what those abusive firms are actually doing, and raise the stakes past $2500/infraction.
- DelightOne 1y agoMaking people able to sue for anyone feeling bad about not having gotten the job is a path you should not take. We have something similar in Germany and its horrible for companies. Leeches bleeding you dry.
- Braxton1980 1y agoIsn't Germany the largest economy in the EU and one of the most productive workforces in the world?
- DelightOne 1y agoIts death by a thousand cuts.
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- gwbas1c 1y ago> (essentially banning HR ghosting in the interview process) (Joke) Let me guess: Companies will start immediately rejecting candidates after they submit an application, and after every interview. Then, when they want to move forward they will re-invite a candidate.
- phendrenad2 1y agoSure, this is a good step. But there's something the government can do that would be much more effective: Make their own job board. California already has this by the way, but it's a bit clunky and is intended for unemployed folks. We need a serious LinkedIn competitor from the government. Just like USPS competes with UPS and Fedex, and keeps them honest, a job board run by the government would raise the quality of all job boards, effectively setting a floor on how anti-user they can be (and we all know, LinkedIn is only a job board ostensibly, it's really a dark pattern factory that nags you to pay a monthly fee for random services almost no one needs).
- djoldman 1y ago> What counts as a “ghost job”? A job listing is considered a ghost job if: > · There is no intent to fill the role > · It’s not currently funded > · It’s posted to collect résumés, test the market, or boost visibility > · It’s recycled indefinitely without an actual opening https://www.truthinjobads.org/faq https://www.truthinjobads.org/faq Even if this gets passed, it's probably unenforceable.
- azemetre 1y agoWhat would make it more enforceable?
- IshKebab 1y agoI think realistically the only way you could enforce this is to legally required registration of job adverts with the government (you register the advert, you receive an ID; anyone advertising jobs without a valid ID is heavily fined), and then also require companies to register the outcome of the advert (internal hire, external hire, withdrawn, etc.). Then it would be possible to actually identify suspicious behaviour, and you could publish stats about companies' hiring practices so candidates can avoid them etc.
- befictious 1y agothen it would just be like real estate with off market listings where companies have a black market hiring pool and then just do the legal loophole steps of registering before "officially" posting and immediately hiring their desired candidate... which would probably have the shady side effect of making the policy "look efficient" without actually solving the job search problem.
- azemetre 1y agoFor this analogy to hold, wouldn't there have to be some way to withhold all people from applying to a job? Why would a company want to do this if it just increases the cost of hiring? What is the benefit to paying more for a workforce when you can just hire people normally. The alternative could be like a $2000 fine per listing violation. To make it worthwhile to enforce, offer half the fine as a tax credit that can be claimed anonymously after an investigation.
- farceSpherule 1y agoGood luck getting anywhere with this... Companies will lobby hard to squash it. Ghost jobs help companies do one important thing: hire the person they already selected and want in the position but have to go through the "interview" process to make things look "transparent." They post the job, "interview" some folks, included their preferred candidate, then miraculously "select" their preferred candidate over everyone else.
- farceSpherule 1y agoDownvoted for being honest? Interesting. I have been a hiring manager at companies who engage in this behavior.
- joewhale 1y agolet's start with removing posts from who's hiring that have had the same position for 3 years.
- maxk42 1y agoThe problem is most "ghost jobs" aren't: They're real jobs with a real intention to hire, but the hiring team can't come to a decision. I've seen it time and time again: A role gets reposted 2, 3, 4 times until the one curmudgeon on the team finally relents and somebody gets hired. It's a tremendous waste of time but it isn't a "ghost job". I predict this legislation will have approximately zero impact on people posting roles that don't actually get filled.
- Zigurd 1y agoThat's a very generous interpretation of what's actually going on out there. Companies post jobs out of vanity. They think they look better when they're hiring. Good data is essential for a good economy. Fake jobs are pollution.
- mxuribe 1y agoPerhaps, for the slice of the world that you have observed, that might be the case. But, i assure you that ghost jobs are real, and they exist on top of the types of scenarios that you described...so you can imagine that folks trying to land that job have challenges on multiple fronts...and if you live on the side of the team that can benefit when that person is hired, well, you suffer also whenever a role is not filled - either for reasons like you described, or for ghost jobs, etc.
- nativeit 1y agoI’m not saying this isn’t an issue, but in the face of what’s happened to the labor markets and economy, this feels a little like pissing in the wind.
- bill_joy_fanboy 1y agoI somewhat agree, but I still think the "job posting" market needs regulation. If you aren't going to shutdown offshoring and the importing of labor through the abuse of things like the H1B program, you aren't going to accomplish much in terms of fixing how the average American worker is treated.
- neonrider 1y agoThe hallmarks of ghost job posting are so obvious that detecting them could probably be automated now. - Recurrent and yearlong ad for the same position, with numerous applicants (sometimes in the hundreds, if not thousands). This is probably the poster child of the ghost job ad. - Unrealistic compensation for required skills, guaranteed to weed out the junior (skill issue) and the senior (comp issue). This could also signal that the company is looking to hire from offshore markets. - Plain unrealistic skill requirements. Even companies that hire "full-stack" know that there's a practical limit, beyond which it's probably better to spread out responsibilities, if we want any kind of productivity gain. Being unreasonably greedy about skills might be a sign that the poster wants a cop out when candidates actually turn up. "Yeah, he was capable of writing his own OS kernel as we asked, but his CSS was shit". If endeavors like the present proposal prove inept, there are enough tools to supplement posted job ads with metrics meant to easily signal to job seekers and investors something useful about the companies posting them, with a nice and accessible UI. The other day there was an article about streaming services driving viewers back to piracy due to their shenanigans and the resulting subpar user experience. If LinkedIn and friends continue to pretend that it's technologically beyond them to solve ghost job posting on their own network, eventually it will be addressed somewhere else.
- cute_boi 1y agoand can they stop asking me whether i am disable or vetern or not by default.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mumbisChungo 1y agoSeems completely unenforceable. My companies have posted an awful lot of job ads in earnest over the years that haven't found suitable candidates, despite an absolute barrage of slop resumes.
- 486sx33 1y ago[dead]
- neilv 1y ago> The first time Thompson, 53, [...] Could it be all the roles he was submitting to weren’t actually real? Probably. But there's also another obvious explanation for why he wasn't hearing back. (Widespread ageism, which is already illegal in the US, but many, many companies don't care.)
- nicksbg 1y agoThe problem of the ghost jobs existing in first place is because of weak HR. HR that does not have education, can not be influential strategic personnel necessary to steward management toward right decisions. Ghost jobs are also an alternative to marketing since companies see it as a way to market themselves as successful company. Because there is no one to stop such foolish decisions, we see effect on market.
- ungreased0675 1y agoI support the idea, but the actual proposal is far too restrictive. We don’t want to make hiring harder for businesses to do, we want to cut down on fake job listings.
- pogue 1y agoBut what will America's hard working ghosts do now?
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoPeople are too eager to tackle problems using regulation. Taxes are often preferable, because they're simpler to administer and they generate revenue for the state. Here's one way to address the problem of ghost jobs using taxes: Force every job post to include a salary range. Make companies pay a small "job posting tax" for every listing, which is proportional to the product of the job's stated salary, and the number of views or applications it gets. Including a salary range in every job will improve gender equality and help jobseekers save time. The nominal "job posting tax" should aim to be a small fraction of the actual cost of making a new hire (say 1-5% of the equivalent labor cost for all the work that goes into filling a role). The tax needs to stay small, so companies aren't seriously discouraged from hiring. (Heck, you could even have the tax automatically get reduced a little bit if the economy is in a recession -- or automatically go up if data analysis determines there are too many ghost jobs. Or even refund some taxes once a hire actually gets made!) The goal is just to apply some financial drag to companies that spam job listings. If you're inconveniencing jobseekers, you've got to pay a little tax for it. Identify the right tax scheme and everything should sort itself out.
- high_priest 1y agoIn Poland, no company hires through the employment office. Why? Because when hiring through employment office, you actually have to commit to the process and hire someone and do it with respectable sallary. With thousands of candidates for one position, it is much easier to skip the governmental supervision and have the opportunity to manipulate the candidates.