Thread

1. legitster · 1790181951 · focus · HN ↗

   There are some browser plugins you can use for job sites like LinkedIn to filter out Ghost Jobs. It's been somewhat helpful, but honestly it feels like 90% of tech jobs right now are Ghost jobs.

   It's happened so many times. Apply for a job, within an hour get an email that says I am not qualified (not true), and then a week later the same job gets posted again.

   I'm normally a pretty free-market guy, but it should be illegal. It's clear-cut fraud - they are advertising something that doesn't exist, specifically to game numbers. And what's more, governments report on these numbers as if they are real job opportunities in the economy.

   1. Aurornis · 1790183980 · focus · HN ↗

      > Apply for a job, within an hour get an email

      Hiring has been crazy for years. It's worse with remote jobs because you get a firehose of applicants everywhere.

      When I was doing a lot of hiring I tried to be as responsive as possible because you don't want to lose the best candidates. I would try to review applicants as fast as they came in. You have to understand that in that hour I might get 40 resumes. 1 or 2 are amazing, another 2-3 could be worth a look, and another 5 might have made the cut if I didn't just read those 2-5 much better resumes ahead of them.

      If you met the listing qualifications but got rejected as not qualified, I would double check that your resume wasn't unclear about something. You would not believe how many times I've interviewed candidates who had some key experience that they forgot to include on the resume and didn't realize it was missing until it spontaneously came up in talking to them.

      The simpler explanation is that a tired hiring manager was just clicking buttons to dismiss applicants who didn't make the cut.

      1. quadrifoliate · 1790186097 · focus · HN ↗

         At this point why don't you try to go out and contact candidates yourself or via a recruiter rather than posting jobs? It seems to me that with LLM-based tools you are going to find it increasingly difficult to get those 2-3 out of the 40; all 40 will be LLM-written to perfect match your posting.

         1. legitster · 1790186337 · focus · HN ↗

            Especially if the job is posted on LinkedIn. You can already just poll a list of the most qualified candidates and reach out to them with opportunities.

            The problem is companies would actually have to make compelling offers to qualified people.

         2. pixl97 · 1790186539 · focus · HN ↗

            >via a recruiter

            While not as bad as applying yourself, they can be pretty damned awful.

         3. Aurornis · 1790186744 · focus · HN ↗

            I do reach out to LinkedIn profiles and some social media accounts, but I'd never use LLM-written text to do so.

            You have to appear like a real human. The candidates in demand get recruiter spam all week long. If you go LLM slop canon on their inbox they're not going to respond.

            Cold outreach has a low response rate. It's worth doing, but you can't rely on it. You have to go through all angles.

            Typically I'd be doing a mix of my own cold outreach, public job postings, an internal company referral program, and for difficult roles a trusted external recruiter who I know is good for candidates.

         4. gedy · 1790188509 · focus · HN ↗

            Yeah, I’ve never understood this - earlier in my career this was the standard to have technically skilled hiring managers look for and contact people.

            Now people act like they must have this ridiculous firehose of resumes to sort through, then have non-technical HR gals sort and filter out based on whatever random criteria they use, and then by the time it gets to the hiring managers - they still have no idea if this person is a complete idiot or has any skills at all. The qualified people you actually want to hire don’t want to be treated like idiots or liars either.

            I just don’t feel it has to be this way - there is zero value in a firehose unless you were looking for desperate and cheap people.

            1. whstl · 1790188861 · focus · HN ↗

               I don't think anyone really wants the firehose. It's just something that happens when you advertise on any popular platform.

               However I'll agree with you, the non-technical people sorting CVs on unknown criteria is something that became very widespread lately, and is certainly part of what's contributing to the problem.

               Perhaps managers starting to do it by themselves rather than having HR in the middle is the answer to the problem.

         5. criddell · 1790188714 · focus · HN ↗

            AI tools have devalued resumes and cover letters, personal repos, leet code scores, etc...

            It's always been the case, but now it's more true than ever: your professional network is super important. If somebody on the inside can recommend you, your chances of getting an offer are good compared to throwing your resume on the pile.

            1. quadrifoliate · 1790193146 · focus · HN ↗

               Even for non-inside hires, I feel like it's more efficient for me as a hiring manager to go out and look for candidates rather than triage some AI-generated pile of crap.

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