Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

This 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.

In 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.

All regulation is hard to enforce. Have to start somewhere, and then you keep pulling the ratchet via policy.

If 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.

I 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.

The 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.

> Companies are going to play shell games

shades of Sinofsky's description of federal HR reporting

https://x.com/stevesi/status/1953920412506894347

I 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.

Which is why it should not be used to prevent minor annoyances like wasting a few minutes applying for a job that isn't there.

This is not a minor annoyance, this consumes time and resources both for candidates at scale and diminishes the integrity of data from a labor economics perspective ("open jobs"). It is arguably fraud and should be prosecuted as such (and I'm fairly confident this case can be made to an electorate who isn't going to shrug off even more corporate malfeasance in a softening labor market).

The 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.

No, 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.

This. 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