Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

If 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

I 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.

> 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.

It may be 17% overall, but distributed in such a way that its 95% of the jobs you are applying for -- because some industries or positions do it much more often.

And the ones who are after collecting people's personal information in specific industries.

This 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.

Ever go to Fry's back in the day? A lot of the items they sold were junk, but they had a liberal return policy.

My Dad told me he worked for a manager who always kept a job open "just in case" someone good walked through the door. It also made it easier to hire if he got a phone call within his network, because he didn't need to jump through hoops to open the req.

(Although it's not the approach I would take if I was a manager,) I do think there's merit in the approach. It was a real opening that could be filled, just not one that they were actively seeking people for. (IE, if someone applied, the resume would be reviewed.)

This was the 1980s or 1990s, though, so I doubt it was SPAMMed with applicants like what happens today, though.

This "a senior engineer with direct experience for <140k" is a fake job.

So imagine job hunting is Amazon where you can’t return bad products.

I've done consulting work for a company with an open job req (it's been open for over 6 months) for a senior embedded engineer in a high cost of living area, offering 140k and no equity. In the meantime they've been paying me $240/hour to do the same work that person would do. It truly makes no sense to me, why they wouldn't just raise their offer to 200k or whatever. But it does happen.

I actually hope such open roles are spammed.

I recently saw a project that spammed online job postings with AI slop resumes. This is great since... if your posting is slop and you don't intend to hire, you should have your inbox filled with slop. It only makes sense.

I would bet it's so they can cook the accounting by counting you as a "temporary" expense, unlike the salary of the as yet nonexistent permanent hire.

You don't need the legislation for this.

You are free to build a job marketplace that profiles employer posting behavior and shares relevant info with applicants. Like it or not, employers will be forced to cooperate with you to get access to the talent pool you attract.

For the last few months when I go on linkedin I'm spammed with a position out of CA who wants someone with 8+ years experience, in a C-tier CA desert city, for 80-110k. They've had it listed as "urgently hiring" for about 3 months now

We pay junior engineers more than 80k, and that's to live in a nicer, lower tax area. I hope they don't find someone and have to urgently hire a contractor with a clearance for $300 an hour

> Imagine if you went to any other store and 17% of the items you bought were just junk and didn't work.

I dunno, that sounds like real life? The percentage of purchases that I return or ultimately don't use is probably around there, for non-repeat purchases.

A kitchen gadget that doesn't really work, a T-shirt I order that turns out to have a weird fit or weird material, a Bluetooth whatever that randomly disconnects after 5 minutes...

If 80% of my new purchases turn out to work as expected and do their job, I consider myself to be doing pretty well.

> Like it or not, employers will be forced to cooperate with you to get access to the talent pool you attract.

Except for the problem of "talent will be forced to seek out employers, no matter how shitty or stupid the latter behaves, because they'll starve and die within a matter of weeks or months while understaffed companies can survive for years."

Doubly so in tech where the combination of A) A huge hiring spree during covid & following layoffs has created a glut in applicants, B) Economic malaise is slowing the economy, and C) Companies are being irrationally hestitant to hire because of AI.

Ghost Jobs are fraudulent on several levels, they should be legislated out of existance. (The public company favourite of "pretending we're still growing when we're not" is very clear securities fraud.)

Yelp for interview process? Isn't Glassdoor doing (something like) that?

Most people need a job to live. Other marketplaces for things people need to live are heavily regulated from seed to stomach.

I’ve seen similar listings. Urgently hiring [long list of specific skills, experience, and certifications] for in-person work only in [high cost area].

If it was really urgent, there would be some flexibility in the requirements.

I can’t possibly imagine the government making job hunting, a task that’s hard to define and changes rapidly, more efficient