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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

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446 points Teever | 2 comments | 26 Aug 25 16:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.027s | source
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guywithahat ◴[26 Aug 25 17:17 UTC] No.45029519[source]▶
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

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1. gwbas1c ◴[26 Aug 25 19:21 UTC] No.45031001[source]▶
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.

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2. bill_joy_fanboy ◴[26 Aug 25 20:26 UTC] No.45031904[source]▶
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.