'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

Ahhhh! A new English expression, "defecto legal". I like it! It should be the name of a website, defectolegal.com, for purposes TBD later.

The proper term is "de facto": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/de%20facto

"Defecto" is Spanish for the English "defect", a flaw, an error.

Don't get me started about "giving a dam".

- they have limited resources and they are prioritising something else,

- there is little realistic chance of getting a conviction.

- it's not one of their politically set department targets

- they fundamentally don't think it should be illegal - say historic blasphemy laws still on the books.

Is your main concern resources or enforceability, lack of political focus or some combination of all of the above?

Fighting private lawyers is what costs courts money and is why the wealthy get way less criminal punishment.

Ahhhh! A new English expression, "defecto legal". I like it! It could be the name of a popular website.

The proper term is "de facto": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/de%20facto

A defect is a flaw, an error, and "defecto" is Spanish for the English "defect". The meaning of "defecto legal" (English) thus remains in the wind, TBD. But I look forward to it's landing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1pp0iej/thi...

In that case the company in charge, Columbia Gas, "exited" the market but all the scuttlebutt I heard in the area was that the Mass government was threatening the corporate execution of revoking their charter, which lead to Columbia gas selling their business off at a loss to Eversource

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiSource#Massachusetts_gas_lin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Consumer_Privacy_Ac...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bl...

But I would add one field: filled internally/externally/H1-B, rather than just "filled".

I could not figure out a way to painlessly gather this info without monitoring users' emails (privacy nightmare) or having users forward emails to the app (too painful/not conducive to user adoption). But if anyone has any ideas how to get around that?

What are you thinking of? In most cases, that falls firmly under the category of bullshitting. Annoying. Unprofessional. Dishonest. But rarely criminal.

What makes this possibly illegal (though I'm still unsure if it's crimial) is that it's specifically around employer-employee relations.

So everyone gets the same form letter.

And we also have the same problem that plagues modern life: the glut of choices leading people to think they can do better than they can. The pool is effectively infinite, there must be a better option somewhere. Companies don't hire. Dating has become very hard. Both lie behind very superficial screening gates that do not represent actual value.

But those are very hard, company-specific problems to solve, hence my agreement :-)

I think they have to pay that high because the work sucks so much in reality. That's the equilibrium point between the demand for people to work there, and the supply of people willing to put up with it.

>there is nothing to be won by working for them

As you can see above, not everyone sees it like that. And HR is working hard to pretend you're a big deal and not just a cog. People who read HN are a bit of a bubble in being disillusioned.

>I'd never hire a FAANG employee

Uhh, ok?

[1] but I had enough pride to quit after a year when they pulled off something I was not OK with.

[2] to be fair, I think at that time most employees did

There was a clique of employees who were tight with management and got recurring work. This wouldn't have been a problem if the temp agency stopped advertising open jobs when their docket was over-full.

Unless, you are actually hoping to find a full stack developer that can also serve as the principal engineer for your entire network, storage, VMware infra, plus support basically anything with cord all for ~$80-100k.

Normally when you get to the point of discussing things with a human, you find out what the actual job is. The job ad is almost always completely irrelevant to the actual job.

And we need to sort out needs vs wants. Job postings should include the required skills (do not submit if you don't meet them) and a separate listing for additional skills that would be desirable. Don't waste everyone's time with a guessing game where people need to decide if they are close enough to the wish list.

Making it difficult to apply reduces the number of legitimate applications, however.

Either way, you need an automated first screen.

The need for a referral to get human eyes on your resume is a different problem that isn't made better by making every application expensive for the applicant. Poor quality applicants have more time, you might say.

Effectively a/b testing job adds?

Or trying to get a range of candidates so they can find a good fit?

Let's say you have, like, 10 jobs to do but you're only going to hire two people (either loading them up with more work, or internally reshuffling responsibilities, probably a bit of both).

So you advertise for every role in your ideal team, then get the two candidates who plug the most holes, or look like the best fit.

I feel dirty suggesting it, but it probably happens.

Consultancies does that when they recruit for likely or ongoing leads too, though. To not leak the lead.

People are becoming much more adverse to bring panhandled or solicited in a way they cannot ignore, in the same way spam calls are more annoying than spam texts. It's not "initiative" or "extra mile" shit, it's taking advantage of someone's politeness to waste their time.

It also looks hopelessly boomerish, up there with expecting the firmness of a handshake to land a job. I've seen this happen dozens of times and the resumes always end up in the trash within minutes. I've never seen anyone hired this way.

If you can't be bothered with a simple cover letter (a paragraph or two is fine) highlighting why you are a good fit and just send a CV..... Frankly, it comes across as low effort spamming.

I applied for some jobs, two of them liked me and I reached the point where they were competing with each other for me, and I was in salary negotiations. One of them, suddenly, decided to stop trading. I still don't know why.

Another time, I started working(!) and getting paid, but after 6 months the person who everyone (including themselves) was expecting to leave and for me to replace had still not found a new job (presumably due to all the ghost jobs), and there wasn't enough money for both me and them. Last in, first out, bye to me.

One place hired an PM about two weeks before the investors decided to shutter the entire company. (For actual ghost jobs: in my own job hunt after that, I found listings on job boards for that company, that were clearly from several years before I'd joined given the advertised wage range; as the company had told everyone to stop coming in for their notice period, there wasn't even anyone left to ask for those to be deleted).

Back when my dad was around, one of his anecdotes about interviewing candidates was asking the candidate "Why did you leave your last job?" and getting a reply along the lines of "After 6 months, management found out that our entire floor had been hired to do the same thing as the floor next to us. One of the floors had to go."

- the boss has agreed to the role but has reservations, seeing a few candidates solidifies them and permission to hire us withdrawn

- the team is inexperienced at hiring and don't know what they want until they've seen a few candidates

- the company is hiring a new whole team. To make hiring easier, roles that are listed are "representative roles" - the total desired skill set across all roles is accurate but the company doesn't care what the split is, they just want a team that covers it. So a candidate who is a better fit for a listed role can be passed over in favour of one that happens to be the right jigsaw piece.

- circumstances changed since permission to hire was given, and no-one remembered to update the hiring portal; because unless you're actively hiring no-one looks at it.

This last one is quite common, because there are so many applications usually that no-one wants them in their email.

External recruiters might then re-advertise the job with the company name removed, planning to funnel people to the company and collect their 20% commission.

External recruiters with several jobs might merge them into one. $250k job for a senior java developer with 5 years finance experience + $75k job for a junior java developer = advertise $250k job for a java developer.

A company might have a slow, centralised hiring pipeline for some roles. Google has a recruiter check the candidate's resume before putting you into a lengthy 6+ interview gauntlet, but only at the end of it do hiring managers actually check if the resume matches an open job. And if course if it takes 2 months to get through the full pipeline, the jobs open at the end aren't the same as the jobs open at the start.

I might be willing to hire for two different levels of seniority/experience, but only one xor the other, not both.

Or be willing to hire for a role in Boston, London, or Zurich, but only one of those.