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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

(www.cnbc.com)
446 points Teever | 4 comments | 26 Aug 25 16:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.238s | 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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conscion ◴[26 Aug 25 17:59 UTC] No.45030063[source]▶
> 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.

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1. elevation ◴[26 Aug 25 20:56 UTC] No.45032229[source]▶
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.

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2. PhantomHour ◴[26 Aug 25 23:07 UTC] No.45033433[source]▶
> 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.)

3. edoceo ◴[26 Aug 25 23:29 UTC] No.45033611[source]▶
Yelp for interview process? Isn't Glassdoor doing (something like) that?
4. devnullbrain ◴[26 Aug 25 23:48 UTC] No.45033769[source]▶
Most people need a job to live. Other marketplaces for things people need to live are heavily regulated from seed to stomach.