21 ms·

This doesn't surprise me at all. One thing I've come to learn in life is the importance of social proof. Social proof takes many form. It's why MIT and Stanfor

by cletus 14y ago

This doesn't surprise me at all. One thing I've come to learn in life is the importance of social proof. Social proof takes many form. It's why MIT and Stanford CS grads have tech companies come to their campuses and throw money at them (these institutions don't have a monopoly on good engineers). It's why if you have Google/Facebook/Twitter on your CV you are pretty much guaranteed a job. It's why academic staff who have a Harvard degree have a much easier time than those that don't. How long you've been out of work is more social proof. Were I in this situation I would absolutely without a second's doubt invent fictitious employment and get a friend to back up any reference check and I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about it. I know employers are filtering on superficial things and those that have had difficulty finding work is a pretty quick and easy filter. There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership. 10+ years ago I remember reading a study in Europe that showed the rate of unemployment was directly proportional to the rate of home ownership across the entire EU with a very high correlation. Spain had the highest rate of home ownership and unemployment. Britain (then) had the lowest for both. We push home ownership as a political agenda. While it has benefits for creating stable communities it also creates an inflexible labour market as people won't move to where the jobs are.

mgkimsal 14y ago
"While it has benefits for creating stable communities it also creates an inflexible labour market as people won't move to where the jobs are." Over the last few years it's more like they can't move to where the jobs are, at least not without taking a huge loss on a house or declaring bankruptcy. But yeah, you're right - we've got a rather immobile labor market, for a variety of reasons, and there don't seem to be any quick fixes. telecommuting you'd think would help, but it's not applicable to every single job, and even places that do allow for it don't necessarily orient their culture to take full advantage of it.
- david_l 14y ago
  Also, could it be that salaries offered are not worth the risk as well? For example, I've had recruiters contact me about the same/similar positions in the DC and NYC suburbs, where I'd only make $7k-10k (if I was lucky) more than my current position (in a middle market city). Why would my fiance (who would have to quit her job as well and find new work) and I leave for peanuts? I'd also lose any time base perks at my current employer as well. If companies/recruiters are expecting people to move for "same job, same pay" then there's your reason for an immobile work force. Add to that what you mention - many would have to take a loss on their home when they wouldn't have too.
enraged_camel 14y ago
>>There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership. Oh boy. There's so much I can say about this topic, and none of it is positive. Basically, the way our culture mindlessly promotes home ownership is insane. Absolutely insane! Every time I hear people complaining about "throwing away money" by renting, and how they would rather put that money into a house, I want to hold them by the shoulders and shake them violently. It's like the housing market crash did not teach anyone anything! It comes down to this: a house is a terrible, terrible means of investment. It's a fixed asset that, contrary to popular belief, is not guaranteed to always go up in value. In addition, people don't really take into account the negatives. Primarily, a house ties you down. You have zero mobility as a labor market participant if you own a house, and this significantly reduces your leveraging power when it comes to negotiating salary. Besides that though, houses have a ton of expenses, and as fixed assets they are subject to a lot of uncontrollable risk (fire, floods, earthquakes, the neighborhood depreciating, etc.). Instead of having that money tied down on a house, people are much better investing in the stock market, which has, over the past 100 years, gone up by 7% annually. The only time a house makes sense is when raising kids. The stability of the environment has a lot of positive benefits for their growth. It also makes social integration easier. /rant
- kens 14y ago
  One thing that puzzles me is that rising house prices are treated as inherently good, and falling house prices are seen as inherently bad. But for most things, it's the exact opposite - rising prices are bad. Is this just because newspaper articles are biased towards the perspective of real estate agents and homeowners? Or are high house prices good because houses are investments? Would cheap 3-d printed houses (hypothetically) make the country better off or worse off economically?
  - nostrademons 14y ago
    It's because 2/3 of Americans are homeowners, so for a majority of Americans, falling house prices are bad. It's the same thing for most goods - the price mechanism is inherently value-neutral, and then whether it's better if prices go up or down depends upon how many people are potentially on each side of the transaction. Falling wages are seen as a bad thing, because most Americans identify with labor and not capital. The social security crisis is seen as a bad thing, because senior citizens (who get the payouts) vote in much larger numbers than young adults (who pay the taxes). Falling stock prices are seen as a bad thing because most Americans own stocks, even if indirectly. Falling CDO prices are seen as a good thing because most Americans do not own CDOs.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership. 10+ years ago I remember reading a study in Europe that showed the rate of unemployment was directly proportional to the rate of home ownership across the entire EU with a very high correlation. Spain had the highest rate of home ownership and unemployment. Britain (then) had the lowest for both. We push home ownership as a political agenda. While it has benefits for creating stable communities it also creates an inflexible labour market as people won't move to where the jobs are. Beyond just the correlation with unemployment, it also results in the FIRE sector wielding far too much power over your economy and politics. When political effort goes into bolstering the stability of real-estate to keep all the homeowners afloat, that's the real-estate brokers, the landlords, the banks, and the insurance companies getting the boost.
larrys 14y ago
"I would absolutely without a second's doubt invent fictitious employment and get a friend to back up any reference check " I've also heard people who will simply pick a company that went out of business where references or verification aren't even possible.
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  This is a dangerous game. Some HR managers and hiring managers won't have the time or the know-how to fact check that sort of thing. Others will. The expected value of the dice roll isn't worth the risk.
  - sokoloff 14y ago
    I'm not saying to do it, but the EV is almost certainly positive if the prospects for long-term unemployed are significantly negative. Suppose you get "caught" the first time? Just do it again, and you'll likely find a job sooner than if you played it straight.
  - rosser 14y ago
    Dangerous how? The only down-side appears to be that you don't get that job. TFA is suggesting that with an employment gap instead of a fake job, you wouldn't have, anyway.
    - jonnathanson 14y ago
      Dangerous because HR people and recruiters tend to switch companies and even industries constantly, and because any given company is obligated to keep your resume on file for a certain number of years -- inclusive of any remarks made by HR or the hiring manager about it. If you want to risk being essentially blacklisted for lying on your resume, I guess your risk tolerance is higher than mine. I get the argument about the risk's being mitigated over time by the downside of being unemployed for 6+n months. Mathematically, sure, this starts making sense after awhile. But it seems much less risky just to invent (or hey, attempt to start) a fictitious company than to lie about having been employed by a real one, defunct or otherwise.
_delirium 14y ago
The social-proof side not only means you need to have jobs, but they have to be a certain "class" of jobs. Though you can invent them pretty well. Here's a story from an acquaintance (don't know him that well, so may or may not be apocryphal, but it seems plausible). For a period of 2 years he worked at Home Depot to pay the bills, and did a bit of puttering around on tech side projects on the side. Not really any kind of business, just for fun mostly. So he listed that honestly: Home Depot was in the employment section, and a few side projects that had become releasable were listed under projects. Later, he changed his resume. He removed Home Depot from the resume entirely, because he had gotten the impression that working a retail job while post-college-age carried a stigma, at least if you were looking for "professional" jobs rather than other retail jobs. To explain what he was doing in those two years, he grouped together those side projects as an "unsuccessful startup". Big improvement in responses.
- pekk 14y ago
  It really seems that honesty is a gigantic liability in this industry.
jonnathanson 14y ago
A friend of mine worked on a consulting project that tracked how hiring managers looked at resumes for high-volume positions (defined, at that time, as 100+ resumes per opening -- probably a very conservative figure today). In interviews, they claimed they looked at everything. In eye-tracking studies, they basically spent about 30 seconds per resume, and they looked at education, companies, job titles, and dates. Almost nothing else on the page mattered. I'm almost positive you could have inserted complete gibberish into every other line of the accomplishments/bullet points, and still have passed muster if you'd had enough big names on the page. Of course, that was 5-6 years ago. These days, we also have computer filters to deal with. To some extent, these filters can be "SEO'ed" with the right combination of keywords, and the right percentage of linguistic overlap between job listing and resume. But on the flip side, they're almost certain to be very harsh and uncaring to employment gaps, unknown companies or brand names, and non-standard job titles.
vorg 14y ago
> I would absolutely without a second's doubt invent fictitious employment and get a friend to back up any reference check and I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about it. There's many managers who'll employ you if they suspect it's a lie so they'll have something against you if they want to get rid of you quickly later on. So the trick is to make up a lie that'll fool the HR filters but not the sociopath managers who'll employ you to be their bitch.
jjtheblunt 14y ago
"Twitter" a guarantee?
yardie 14y ago
Then how does the US factor into this correlation with an even higher rate of home ownership and lower rate of unemployment? No, unemployment and home ownership may be tangentially linked but one does not relate directly to the other. This is how the unemployment rate matches up for both countries. https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:es&fdim_y=seasonality:sa&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment%20rate%20spain#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:sa&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country_group&idim=country:es:uk&ifdim=country_group&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&... Notice a difference? Spain, and a lot of European countries, have some archaic debt laws. Where even if you could move to where the jobs are, the mortgage on the house you no longer own is still on your back. So you could take another job but half your income is going to service that old debt. This contrasts pretty well with the way the US and UK handle debt; you invested, the investment failed, liquidate everything, and then move on.
- youngtaff 14y ago
  Why do you consider them "archaic debt laws" Someone takes on a debt using property as security, if they forfeit the security why should they be excused from the difference between the value of the security and the value of the debt?
  - dagw 14y ago
    A counter argument is that someone agrees to loan you some money in exchange for some collateral. If the value of the collateral isn't enough to cover the value of the loan in case of forfeit then surely that is the lenders problem since he was the one who set the level of collateral too low.
  - LanceH 14y ago
    The aren't excused from the value of the debt. They are returning the collateral, which closes out the debt. The whole price of the loan (interest rate, points, etc...) was based upon the home being the only recoverable asset in the case of default. This is why most loans with less than 20% equity have to pay primary mortgage insurance. If your house declines in value, you probably have an agreement that PMI kicks it. The lender being the beneficiary if the PMI has to pay off. Theoretically this both protects the borrower from predatory practices and encourages the lender to make quality loans.

by cletus 14y ago

mgkimsal 14y ago

"While it has benefits for creating stable communities it also creates an inflexible labour market as people won't move to where the jobs are." Over the last few years it's more like they can't move to where the jobs are, at least not without taking a huge loss on a house or declaring bankruptcy. But yeah, you're right - we've got a rather immobile labor market, for a variety of reasons, and there don't seem to be any quick fixes. telecommuting you'd think would help, but it's not applicable to every single job, and even places that do allow for it don't necessarily orient their culture to take full advantage of it.

david_l 14y ago
Also, could it be that salaries offered are not worth the risk as well? For example, I've had recruiters contact me about the same/similar positions in the DC and NYC suburbs, where I'd only make $7k-10k (if I was lucky) more than my current position (in a middle market city). Why would my fiance (who would have to quit her job as well and find new work) and I leave for peanuts? I'd also lose any time base perks at my current employer as well. If companies/recruiters are expecting people to move for "same job, same pay" then there's your reason for an immobile work force. Add to that what you mention - many would have to take a loss on their home when they wouldn't have too.

enraged_camel 14y ago

>>There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership. Oh boy. There's so much I can say about this topic, and none of it is positive. Basically, the way our culture mindlessly promotes home ownership is insane. Absolutely insane! Every time I hear people complaining about "throwing away money" by renting, and how they would rather put that money into a house, I want to hold them by the shoulders and shake them violently. It's like the housing market crash did not teach anyone anything! It comes down to this: a house is a terrible, terrible means of investment. It's a fixed asset that, contrary to popular belief, is not guaranteed to always go up in value. In addition, people don't really take into account the negatives. Primarily, a house ties you down. You have zero mobility as a labor market participant if you own a house, and this significantly reduces your leveraging power when it comes to negotiating salary. Besides that though, houses have a ton of expenses, and as fixed assets they are subject to a lot of uncontrollable risk (fire, floods, earthquakes, the neighborhood depreciating, etc.). Instead of having that money tied down on a house, people are much better investing in the stock market, which has, over the past 100 years, gone up by 7% annually. The only time a house makes sense is when raising kids. The stability of the environment has a lot of positive benefits for their growth. It also makes social integration easier. /rant

kens 14y ago
One thing that puzzles me is that rising house prices are treated as inherently good, and falling house prices are seen as inherently bad. But for most things, it's the exact opposite - rising prices are bad. Is this just because newspaper articles are biased towards the perspective of real estate agents and homeowners? Or are high house prices good because houses are investments? Would cheap 3-d printed houses (hypothetically) make the country better off or worse off economically?
- nostrademons 14y ago
  It's because 2/3 of Americans are homeowners, so for a majority of Americans, falling house prices are bad. It's the same thing for most goods - the price mechanism is inherently value-neutral, and then whether it's better if prices go up or down depends upon how many people are potentially on each side of the transaction. Falling wages are seen as a bad thing, because most Americans identify with labor and not capital. The social security crisis is seen as a bad thing, because senior citizens (who get the payouts) vote in much larger numbers than young adults (who pay the taxes). Falling stock prices are seen as a bad thing because most Americans own stocks, even if indirectly. Falling CDO prices are seen as a good thing because most Americans do not own CDOs.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership. 10+ years ago I remember reading a study in Europe that showed the rate of unemployment was directly proportional to the rate of home ownership across the entire EU with a very high correlation. Spain had the highest rate of home ownership and unemployment. Britain (then) had the lowest for both. We push home ownership as a political agenda. While it has benefits for creating stable communities it also creates an inflexible labour market as people won't move to where the jobs are. Beyond just the correlation with unemployment, it also results in the FIRE sector wielding far too much power over your economy and politics. When political effort goes into bolstering the stability of real-estate to keep all the homeowners afloat, that's the real-estate brokers, the landlords, the banks, and the insurance companies getting the boost.

larrys 14y ago

"I would absolutely without a second's doubt invent fictitious employment and get a friend to back up any reference check " I've also heard people who will simply pick a company that went out of business where references or verification aren't even possible.

jonnathanson 14y ago
This is a dangerous game. Some HR managers and hiring managers won't have the time or the know-how to fact check that sort of thing. Others will. The expected value of the dice roll isn't worth the risk.
- sokoloff 14y ago
  I'm not saying to do it, but the EV is almost certainly positive if the prospects for long-term unemployed are significantly negative. Suppose you get "caught" the first time? Just do it again, and you'll likely find a job sooner than if you played it straight.
- rosser 14y ago
  Dangerous how? The only down-side appears to be that you don't get that job. TFA is suggesting that with an employment gap instead of a fake job, you wouldn't have, anyway.
  - jonnathanson 14y ago
    Dangerous because HR people and recruiters tend to switch companies and even industries constantly, and because any given company is obligated to keep your resume on file for a certain number of years -- inclusive of any remarks made by HR or the hiring manager about it. If you want to risk being essentially blacklisted for lying on your resume, I guess your risk tolerance is higher than mine. I get the argument about the risk's being mitigated over time by the downside of being unemployed for 6+n months. Mathematically, sure, this starts making sense after awhile. But it seems much less risky just to invent (or hey, attempt to start) a fictitious company than to lie about having been employed by a real one, defunct or otherwise.

_delirium 14y ago

The social-proof side not only means you need to have jobs, but they have to be a certain "class" of jobs. Though you can invent them pretty well. Here's a story from an acquaintance (don't know him that well, so may or may not be apocryphal, but it seems plausible). For a period of 2 years he worked at Home Depot to pay the bills, and did a bit of puttering around on tech side projects on the side. Not really any kind of business, just for fun mostly. So he listed that honestly: Home Depot was in the employment section, and a few side projects that had become releasable were listed under projects. Later, he changed his resume. He removed Home Depot from the resume entirely, because he had gotten the impression that working a retail job while post-college-age carried a stigma, at least if you were looking for "professional" jobs rather than other retail jobs. To explain what he was doing in those two years, he grouped together those side projects as an "unsuccessful startup". Big improvement in responses.

pekk 14y ago
It really seems that honesty is a gigantic liability in this industry.

jonnathanson 14y ago

A friend of mine worked on a consulting project that tracked how hiring managers looked at resumes for high-volume positions (defined, at that time, as 100+ resumes per opening -- probably a very conservative figure today). In interviews, they claimed they looked at everything. In eye-tracking studies, they basically spent about 30 seconds per resume, and they looked at education, companies, job titles, and dates. Almost nothing else on the page mattered. I'm almost positive you could have inserted complete gibberish into every other line of the accomplishments/bullet points, and still have passed muster if you'd had enough big names on the page. Of course, that was 5-6 years ago. These days, we also have computer filters to deal with. To some extent, these filters can be "SEO'ed" with the right combination of keywords, and the right percentage of linguistic overlap between job listing and resume. But on the flip side, they're almost certain to be very harsh and uncaring to employment gaps, unknown companies or brand names, and non-standard job titles.

vorg 14y ago

> I would absolutely without a second's doubt invent fictitious employment and get a friend to back up any reference check and I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about it. There's many managers who'll employ you if they suspect it's a lie so they'll have something against you if they want to get rid of you quickly later on. So the trick is to make up a lie that'll fool the HR filters but not the sociopath managers who'll employ you to be their bitch.

jjtheblunt 14y ago

"Twitter" a guarantee?

yardie 14y ago

Then how does the US factor into this correlation with an even higher rate of home ownership and lower rate of unemployment? No, unemployment and home ownership may be tangentially linked but one does not relate directly to the other. This is how the unemployment rate matches up for both countries. https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:es&fdim_y=seasonality:sa&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment%20rate%20spain#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:sa&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country_group&idim=country:es:uk&ifdim=country_group&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&... Notice a difference? Spain, and a lot of European countries, have some archaic debt laws. Where even if you could move to where the jobs are, the mortgage on the house you no longer own is still on your back. So you could take another job but half your income is going to service that old debt. This contrasts pretty well with the way the US and UK handle debt; you invested, the investment failed, liquidate everything, and then move on.

youngtaff 14y ago
Why do you consider them "archaic debt laws" Someone takes on a debt using property as security, if they forfeit the security why should they be excused from the difference between the value of the security and the value of the debt?
- dagw 14y ago
  A counter argument is that someone agrees to loan you some money in exchange for some collateral. If the value of the collateral isn't enough to cover the value of the loan in case of forfeit then surely that is the lenders problem since he was the one who set the level of collateral too low.
- LanceH 14y ago
  The aren't excused from the value of the debt. They are returning the collateral, which closes out the debt. The whole price of the loan (interest rate, points, etc...) was based upon the home being the only recoverable asset in the case of default. This is why most loans with less than 20% equity have to pay primary mortgage insurance. If your house declines in value, you probably have an agreement that PMI kicks it. The lender being the beneficiary if the PMI has to pay off. Theoretically this both protects the borrower from predatory practices and encourages the lender to make quality loans.