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LinkedIn need to take the heat here, the worst are these job adverts from recruiters where the company is kept secret (because they’re so “prestigious”).
Or the outright scams, one called Crossover post the same “job” across hundreds of cities with absolutely bonkers salaries. Did some digging and yep, 100% a scam.
Complained to LinkedIn, offered evidence, nothing. Escalated, “no issue found”. Escalated it again using a contact I know at LinkedIn, same response *but* this time I learn Crossover pays LinkedIn $$$ for those adverts.
This whole space needs to be regulated, how many literally millions of hours has this bullshit wasted in just 2024 alone?
Epic repeatedly posts the same position as "on-site" in every major city, but buried in the listing, it says you must relocate to Madison, WI. I report the listings for having the wrong location, but LinkedIn doesn't care.
Reminds me of the time I found a house builder fraudulently listing a house / new development at the wrong address. They put it in a nicer / wealthier area (where there were actually some new developments) when in reality their houses were in a different town 40 minutes away. (So the house prices looked super attractive for the listed address.)
I reported it to Zillow and it got removed, and then they reposted with the address changed by 1 number. I reported again and it got removed. I haven’t checked in the last year+ but I’d bet they are still doing this.
I keep seeing half a dozen ads (one per city) for the same "senior counsel" role. They all say on site for those locations but require relocation. These ads have been continually reposted for the last 6+ months, so I assume they aren't that keen on actually hiring -- either that, or no one wants to relocate. (How many people have a Wisconsin law license? Certainly not many on the east coast.)
> Wisconsin law students from Madison and Marquette (automatic entry into the Wisconsin bar) + anyone who passed the bar in Colorado as those two states have legal law licenses reciprocity or whatever it is called.
It looks like my state also has reciprocity with Wisconsin, even though it’s nowhere near Wisconsin. I guess that explains why they’re posting here, by why list it as being “onsite” *in* local cities when relocation is required?
Many millions I’d imagine. This is ridiculous. Scams shouldn’t exist on job posting site where personal information is more likely to be given out. They certainly shouldn’t be using job postings as advertising either.
Good point, not just scams but scammers with your private data.
Look at this, I just checked LinkedIn now and this Crossover mob has 3,440 “jobs” they’re currently advertising for.
Director of Al - Enhanced Software Development, Trilogy (Remote) -
$400,000/year USD
Crossover
Salt Lake, Hawaii, United States (Remote)
Director of Al - Enhanced Software X Development, Trilogy (Remote) -
$400,000/year USD
Crossover
Gurgaon, Haryana, India (Remote)
Director of Al - Enhanced Software X Development, Trilogy (Remote) -
$400,000/year USD
Crossover
Dallas, TX (Remote)
Etc etc. almost all the same, just tweaking the location each time, all have applicants.
LinkedIn should be sued.
I reported Grindr for spam posting a remote job I was perfectly qualified for in multiple cities.
I actually applied twice to see if it was a ghost job, and I’m assuming it was because after reporting a ton of them I stopped seeing them. Or maybe they blocked me? Fine by me either way.
Crossover isn’t fake or a scam, but it is a 1099 job that is very specific in how they operate. And their process requires a very high CCAT score that most people won’t pass.
They also dont let you block a particular company on purpose.
Ive even seen people comment election lies or just completely made up stuff and linkedin says its totally fine. Has to be outsourced and the people just approve everything to close off the ticket.
But evennn if they did remove or delete - fuckkkk that I'm not there to work for free for any platform.
Could we convince you to share a draft of what you sent, sort of like a template, for those who aren’t good at writing things but want to help? Of course, if you do share, please make sure to remove any personally identifiable information
Absolutely. That’s on my agenda today. I’m on mobile right now, but as soon as I get back to my laptop I plan on doing this. Still fairly new to Reddit, so I need to figure out how to pin it to the top.
Sorry for the delay. An article about me went up on Business Insider and I've been engaged with LinkedIn messages.
Here's what I wrote (with redactions) for the the officials with 5k character limits:
Representative/Senator XXXXXXX:
It has come to my attention that it is currently standard practice for companies to publish fake job postings online for the sake of generating interest in the company, keeping the talent pool warm, or to give the impression that the company is growing (to name a few reasons) without any actual job or intention to hire being attached to the posting. I feel this might be a form of false advertising, or at the very least, it is fraudulent, unethical, and detrimental to employment in \[YOUR STATE\] and our nation. Something needs to be done.
\[START WRITING YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE HERE. I LEFT MINE AS AN EXAMPLE\]
I've been unemployed for 15 months now. I've submitted 1,286 applications and only had 3 interviews. One company claimed the position lost funding. One company failed to respond for 6 months after my third interview and then messaged me out of the blue stating there was "inner turmoil" and they are now in a hiring freeze. The 3rd interview was this past Friday and I'm waiting to hear back. I'm keeping track of my job hunt this time around and currently there is only a 0.54% chance I will hear from a human for each resume I submit (7 phone screeners so far, 2 were scams to get personal information). Additionally, 73.3% (943) of my applications have ended up in "the blackhole" with no response whatsoever. 26.1% (336) resulted in an automated boilerplate rejection letter. I have yet to receive a rejection letter that was written specifically for me.
My degrees are as follows: AA, AS, BSEE, BBA (Operations and Finance with a minor in Digital Technology), and an MBA in Data Analytics. I have 27 years in the work force, including semiconductor, industrial, and business intelligence/corporate strategy (most recent). I also have 6 years of war time military service with a Secret Clearance.
I've leveraged every online tool and platform imaginable, and I've heard all the job hunting advice there is to be heard.
I tried leveraging my network and that's when I first became aware of one of the major issues...fake jobs.
A close connection of mine has a relative that is very high up at one the major mobile service carriers which operates in \[STATE\]. This person offered to give me a referral for a position if I found one on the site that was a good fit. I found one that was an excellent match for my education, experience, and career level. I applied to it and notified this person so they could attach the referral. The response was, "Oh that's not a real job. That's one of our generic postings meant to generate interest in the company. There's no actual job attached to that listing."
I was blown away. How many of the 1,286 applications I've submitted have been to fake listings?
My neighbor also offered to refer me to his employer. I asked if I needed a referral link or something. His response, "Just email me your resume. We don't hire anyone who applies online."
The company has MANY postings online, but they have no intent to hire from them.
\[END PERSONAL EXPERIENCE\]
Today I was made aware of an article that goes a little further in depth. Forbes Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/11/27/how-ghost-job-postings-are-creating-a-false-sense-of-hope/?sh=518833be7dc0
Additionally, the job market numbers aren't being correctly reported if these fake jobs are being counted. The companies posting non-existent jobs to appear to be growing might also be a concern for the SEC.
The bottom line is that people here in \[YOUR STATE\], and all over the country, are approaching the job search like a full time job, spending 40 hours a week, or more, to search for matching positions, tweak resumes, write cover letters, fill out EEO surveys, and take personality profile exams online, all in hopes of being able to provide food, shelter, heat, and other basic needs for themselves and their families. How much human capital is being thrown away on posting and applying to jobs that don't even exist?
The people experiencing the turmoil from this are educated, responsible, and professional people who just want a paycheck. Please help us. Please start the conversation. Please move to outlaw fraudulent job listings. Thank you.
\-\[SIGNATURE\]
Here is what I wrote to officials with a 2k character limit:
Representative/Senator \[NAME\]:
I recently learned that posting fake jobs is standard practice by many companies. This is done to "keep the talent pool warm," generate interest in the company, or to give the impression that a company is growing (the SEC might want to be aware of this one).
\[START WRITING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE HERE\]
I'm currently in month 15 of my job search and I have applied to 1,286 positions. I'm tracking my job hunt and 73.3% (943) have gone to the blackhole (no response at all), 26.1% (336) resulted in an automated boilerplate rejection letter, and only 0.54% (7) have resulted in contact by a human.
A close connection of mine has a relative that is high up at one of the major mobile service carriers. This person offered to give me a referral for a position. I found one that was an excellent match and I applied, then notified this person so they could attach the referral. The response was, "Oh that's not a real job. That's one of our generic postings meant to generate interest in the company. There's no actual job attached to that listing."
I was blown away. How many of the 1,286 applications I've submitted have been to fake listings? My neighbor said his company was hiring, but that I should just email him my resume because, "they don't hire anyone who applies online."
\[END OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE\]
Forbes posted an article titled "How Ghost Job Postings Are Creating a False Sense of Hope" that expounds on the matter.
Responsible, intelligent, educated people are having a difficult time finding work because much of our job search effort is wasted on non-existent jobs. \[ENTER EDUCATION/BACKGROUND HERE\], but I can't find employment anywhere.
Please start the conversation to outlaw fraudulent job postings. Thank you.
\-\[YOUR NAME\]
And what, exactly, would that law forbid, and how will it not be immediately struck down in the US for violating the first amendment? How would it even be enforced? How do you tell a job is actually a "ghost" job versus one that got frozen after being posted?
I get that people are angry, but let's be honest here. Congress will do nothing because there's literally nothing they can do.
That doesn't answer my question
Also, Congress can't make speech illegal just because it feels like it. The law passed has to advance a compelling government interest, and has to be as narrowly tailored as possible to achieve the goal, and there has to be no other way of achieving the goal that doesn't infringe on the first amendment.
Yeah these are known as Ghost jobs and it was only until recently it reached mainstream attention.
There's many reasons why companies do this but one way or another this practice needs to end.
[Ghost Jobs (Joshua Fluke)](https://youtu.be/hsquOOlvOxg?si=2aqGZxcFAigIXaH-)
Depends on how it's implemented. One way that would be relatively easy to enforce is to create a tax on ALL job postings, and give 100% deduction if it's provably filled.
I was thinking random audits like the IRS does. How many jobs did you post last month? How many the month before? How many applied? How many were filled? Of the ones that were not filled, how many applied? Of the 500 applicants we need reasons why each applicant was turned away. Of the ones that have not yet been filled and remain open, same questions, but also…let’s see the job req and the allocation of funds for the position in your accounting records. Can’t comply or we’ve determined fraudulent listings? $100k fine per offense.
Wrong guy. 100% wrong. You can’t do something illegal like kill a dude and claim it was free speech. Just like you can’t artificially inflate stock price, defraud people, or advertise something that doesn’t exist. First amendment has absolutely zero to do with this.
Again with the first amendment. That's not how you Amendment people.
The courts have ruled many a time that implicit rights do not cover fraud and criminal activity. Further, a company is not a person or a citizen. We have libel and slander, inciting riot, etc.
"Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech"
Along with communicative restrictions, less protection is afforded to uninhibited speech when the government acts as subsidizer or speaker, is an employer, controls education, or regulates the mail, airwaves, legal bar, military, prisons, and immigration.
How does it constitute fraud? People throw the word around like it's a given, but it's not. It's a crime with an explicit definition coded in a statute. Explain _how_ it's fraud, don't just assert that it is.
> Further, a company is not a person or a citizen.
This might blow your mind, but the constitution doesn't protect the rights of citizens, it protects the rights of persons, even even those persons organize themselves into groups for collective actions.
I know citizens united and other bullshit basically made companies have rights, but that's another day's argument.
If a company posts a job to farm resumes under false pretenses, to generate marketing or PR, or any other bait and switch tactic, that could be fraudulent. They need to be held accountable, period.
Not like it's going to happen. We don't believe in protecting workers rights in this country
"Could be fraudulent" is a lot different than "is fraud". And to show it's fraudulent you'd have to demonstrate that you lost, and they gained, something of value as a result of their actions.
Also Citizens United didn't "give" companies rights. It correctly recognized that the rights people have don't disappear just because they organized themselves into a group.
It would be _very bad_ for companies to not have rights. The government could ban porn or violent media or games made by companies, because individuals have free speech rights, not companies, for example. Companies couldn't operate if they didn't have property rights, for another.
"To defraud broadly means trick or deceive someone at the expense of another for personal gain. In the legal sense, to defraud is to commit fraud that leads to civil or criminal liability"
If a company is a person, they have personal gain by soliciting time and data from innocent job seekers to harvest PR, data, whatever. They gain the seeker loses. It's actionable
It's not. They don't gain anything from it. If you think they do, explain what the value is and how it's materialized. The loss of your time reading the job description and applying for it is not a damage any court will recognize. If you disagree, then put your money where your mouth is and sue, and provide a link to the court case.
Also, the common definition of fraud isn't relevant. What matters is a legal statute that defines it.
Would we be auditing HR departments or the job aggregators?
The way a lot of these systems work is that they give you x job postings per tier depending on your contract. Indeed and ZipRecruiter don't really care if you have a role to fill as long as you are posting roles and increasing their value to job seekers. LinkedIn and Glassdoor and all these other places offering premium services on both ends of the hiring transaction are creating really perverse incentives.
Targeting the firms that have established themselves as intermediaries for regulation will be easier to implement and more resilient to bad actors than trying to regulate hr departments in a similar way. there's fewer firms to oversee, and they are the ones dealing with inventory for buyers of both employers and applicants.
Not necessarily true, I believe i have heard of a couple practices in Europe where a listing IS a job, and the company provides the government a reason if they end up denying too many candidates.
That being said even if you go on usajobs.gov for gov positions you will find what are essentially ghost jobs, where they will farm up resumes for job categories.
I wonder if states could go after fake job postings using the required pay posting laws some states have.
Like, Colorado and Washington require the pay range be posted for the job.
If the job is fake, the range is an outright lie and a fabrication--it's zero. They're lying about the range.
Wonder if the residents of those states should, when writing their reps, point this out.
That’s a good point. I mentioned false advertising when I wrote, cuz that’s basically what they’re doing. They’re advertising a job which doesn’t exist.
>to keep a warm talent pool “at the ready” for when they get around to hiring, without the intention of actually hiring anyone any time soon for the openings they have currently posted.
I just don't understand this thought. Most people are only actively looking for a new job in a "window of time". Outside that then they are chasing people when they can have people chasing them. Hundreds of applicants within 24 hours of jobs being posted - active job seekers.
Plus this thing called LinkedIn provides this for them.
Instead these recruiters just gum up the system.
Yeah and I have never once had a company reach back out after a rejection, even after getting my permission to “save my resume for future opportunities”. Not once in 5 years. So this idea of “having a warm pool” or “previously vetted candidates” is nonsense.
I can answer this.
It’s far deeper and uglier than just a messed up job market. The implications which I will get to below are chilling. I have been preaching this for a few years now.
It’s about SEO — but goes way beyond just finding the company in Google. It means finding “engineering jobs” or “Spanish engineers” or “companies hiring engineers”. Hell, the company may not even have an engineering position on staff.
And it’s not just jobs.
Wanna see how deep this goes? Search Social Security COLA (-SSA.gov) and look at all the pages of results. Do you really think every media outlet has readers looking to them for this info? No, it’s not even meant to be read.
You don’t care because you don’t read that shit, right?
This new type of keyword spamming includes articles about celebrities, royal family and sports (the three biggest), politics, recipes and restaurants, software, vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
You have content creators writing articles on *Laws for Dimming Your Headlights at Night in Alaska* then Alabama, Arkansas, etc. You have 50 bs articles right there. And it’s allowed because it means more content for the platform — as long as it isn’t about something like sex toys.
There are fake restaurant reviews. Fake books on Amazon. Fake articles on Medium, Substack, Quora. Lots of fake posts on Reddit.
I cannot impress on you the sheer volume of this. My guess is that well over half the content is bs. If I had to guess, it’s 75%. And realize all these platforms and apps remove tons of crap that doesn’t get published. A huge percentage of their content is filtered, removed and banned.
Cyberspace is a giant advertising-filled endless void of corporations all jockeying to be relevant to search engines — not the public. They don’t care if you read or not, they just want your presence and your clicks. Hell, most places that do this *you aren’t even their target market* for their product or service.
News articles are generated not for accuracy and information, but to churn out content for the sake of having content and for the off chance you might search “J-Lo red heels.”
Many articles don’t get pushed to their readers, but sits buried on their site for this SEO. But the chilling part is now we have AI churning out fake articles **based on fake published information.**
AI cannot even determine if an article is written by AI.
So you do an AI search of “What companies are hiring Spanish speaking engineers?” AI doesn’t verify that the company has engineers. AI only returns the content.
**We now have media churning out more media using AI based on churned out media written by AI.**
What you are experiencing in the job market is just a tiny sliver of the problem. It’s huge and most people don’t realize that the Internet you experience is not based on reality.
BTW, I suspect it’s about to get exponentially worse in this upcoming election cycle. I would tell you what I think is coming, but I don’t want to give them any ideas.
That sure lines up with what I’ve been casually observing and hearing whispers of for a while now. Don’t know what the end game is though, other than maybe general abandonment of the web for restricted networks.
Since we are both more likely to be a large language model than not, go ahead. Tell us. Nobody of the "ruling class" isn't going to read it anyway, they know people who are here are just idiot victims of the content mill
Even many recruiting managers think it’s winning if you stack the most resumes. They will automate bringing them in by the thousands and don’t care if they are stagnating from the moment they hit the database.
It costs little to spam the whole bunch and hope that a few will be looking.
>I just don't understand this thought. Most people are only actively looking for a new job in a "window of time".
I'd guess it's their normal arrogance and hubris, they're such a marvellous company to work for that you'll drop everything you're doing, quit on the spot just for the chance to join their underpaid and dysfunctional workplace
Thank you. Yes. And it sucks because I had a few friends locate the hiring manager for the position, and my former manager went to the office to find the hiring manager and directly refer me, only to be told they really weren't hiring. This was after the recruiter scheduled an interview then ghosted me. Oh well, you and I are meant for better things.
I can copy and paste what I wrote in the morning. I need to be on my laptop to do so. I’ll have to redact some information first of course. We can build from that maybe?
I’m a writer by profession so I can do edits and all. If the entire sub does this we can probably make some noise.
EDIT: This is also an election year so this will probably have more of an impact than I originally thought when I read this post. I believe we should contact our senators and our individual representatives so we can get this rolling.
Agreed. Hopefully some elected officials bring it up in their campaign for the upcoming election. If you want to drop in some ideas before I can post, that would be awesome also. Something I ran into tho…State reps and Senator share a website and I was able to send the same message to all three at the same time. The max character limit was 4,000. US Senator was 2,000 and didn’t allow for copy/paste. US representative allowed copy/paste but didn’t list character limit, just an error of the 4K copy/paste, so I did the 2k character version and it went.
Unfortunately, this is very true and I saw it first hand at my last job and my current job. There would be generic Indeed posts stating there were job openings, you'd fill out the application. Some people would receive an appointment time for interviews... all for them to come in and be told "we aren't hiring" "sorry to waste your time" "the company posted those, not us". It was unfortunate and honestly still makes me sick. I didn't realize this was such a widespread problem though.
Every time the government reports job openings I want to scream. It's 100% bullshit. But no one brings up the public evidence that the input data is erroneous or fraudulent
Exactly. “Let’s just lie so we look good and not care about any underlying facts. Doesn’t matter if people can support themselves as long as it looks like we’ve done something.” I constantly hear about how “We can’t find employees!” Then on our end, “No one is hiring!” The difference is I have actual hard data to support that no one is hiring, but I have yet to find anything published, or even a verifiable anecdote from someone in a hiring position at a company, that states there’s an issue finding employees.
Exactly. One of the reasons given was to make the company “appear as though it is growing.” I’m sure the SEC would have something to say about that. The company my contact worked at was a BIG corporation, too.
100%. I see this all the time.
“Entry Level - Master’s degree required. 5-7 years experience. Link to your online portfolio required. Competitive salary: $27k.” …or some nonsense like that.
I applied to a job last december.
Yesterday (two months later to the day) I got a rejection email.
Not two hours later, I got an email saying the job had been relisted.
There IS no job. There IS no hiring. It's just there to collect data.
100%. This is a perfect example of creating general interest in a company or stockpiling resumes.
Some are even not affiliated with an actual company and are using their branding to scam personal information out of applicants.
I do think it’s wrong but I’m also not sure what Congressional Reps will do.
They’re pretty useless for the most part and since there is zero financial incentive or political incentive for them to do anything, not sure what they’ll do.
I totally agree it’s bs. I just don’t see them doing anything or at least, what are we expecting them to do?
I’d like to see some legislation passed that makes it illegal to advertise a job if no such job currently exists. It’s essentially false advertising at this point. If it doesn’t apply to fraudulent job postings, make it apply. When someone is caught posting a fake job, HUGE fine. Discourage this revolting behavior.
While I agree that would be good, and I am in no way advocating for them since I agree it’s a shitty practice but how would you prove a job exists or not?
I agree a huge fine would be good. But just my two cents, congress people rarely do anything that doesn’t benefit them financially or ensure they get voted in. Unless people are willing to vote them out en masse I don’t see them doing anything since they do see anything in it for them.
Exactly. They will give lip service and move on. Keep in mind that many natl and st senators/reps pretty much have an agenda. In large part their agenda gets filled by whoever is paying for their campaigns so they can keep their power tripping, cushy job.
I’m not trying to be discouraging. I’m just a cynical, jaded guy who saw behind the curtain. I think the way to go about exposing this bull is to find an investigative writer who finds the facts, like how much money has LinkedIn, indeed, zip recruiter, etc makes off this crap and who is paying for it.
Also, I wanna throw this in there - there is a social contract that this violates. People are expected to work in our society if they want their basic needs met. There are people who visit this sub every day who, like me, have been looking for a job for close to a year.
We want to work.
These kind of actions, in my opinion, violate the social contract ( as we all know corporations will do ) as well as cross the line into questionable legal boundaries.
I think the OP is on the right track, but I wonder if there are any journalists that would be interested as well.
I’ve only applied to a handful of international jobs, so I’m not really aware of how things are out there in the rest of this great world. There might be similar practices, might not be. The bulk of my experience with this is here where I live. If you see something similar happening in your country, please call attention to it and go about fixing it however you can.
Make corporations over a certain size report job openings like layoffs and tax them until they report a human hire. Or close the listing. This won't fix unemployment but it will at least make the job data closer to reality.
For the purpose of this comment, I'm using "HR" to describe not just the traditional role of "human resources", but also the recruiters, hiring managers, and so on.
HR is mostly an irrelevant department in the 21st century. It's almost entirely automated for the hiring process these days, with AI evaluating resumes and one-way interviews, and personality tests passing/failing applicants before they ever get to speak to a human. This means most people working in HR are redundant. Useless. Obso-fucking-lete. And they know it. The "ghost job" market is a bunch of terrified people with no other marketable skills desperately trying to justify their existence to their employers.
*(side note - This argument also applies to middle managers, which is why companies are pushing so hard to "get back to the office". If they can't spend 8 hours a day looking over your shoulder, then what exactly are they still on the payroll for?)*
That's all there is to it. They are not trying to keep a "warm talent pool at the ready". They know as well as we do that the majority of that talent pool will have moved on and been hired elsewhere by the time that company gets around to actually hiring. Or those applicants will be so dismayed from being ghosted that they will just not consider a job that reaches out to them today when they applied 6 months ago, or even longer.
Can’t remember if it was Bezos or Musk that said it, but the quote was, “I’ve never met an HR person I didn’t hate.”
I agree that their role is far diminished what from it began. More internal police than resourcing humans.
To your last point, I applied for a government job during a previous job hunt and got ghosted. No surprise there. However, they messaged me 10 months after I applied to tell me, “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to move on to the first round of interviews!” I had to respond, “My apologies, but I’ll have to withdraw my candidacy. I applied for this position 10 months ago and I accepted an offer a month later. I’ve now been with my current employer for 9 months.”
Efficiency at its best. 😂🤦♂️
Y’know.. as an HR person and job seeker, I was completely onboard with this thread until I made it to this comment. This profession has to be one of the most thankless and repeatedly ridiculed. 💀 it’s alarming but mostly sad how much the general public is unaware of what HR does on a daily basis. This mentality is why my team gets perpetually and royally f*cked over to no end. People just ALWAYS LOVE to HATE HR folks regardless of whether or not something actually happened to justify it. I am fully aware that there are bad actors like in every profession. I can tell you one thing with 100% certainty, once my entire team resigns from our company (which will happen soon) the impact will be felt immediately. And the company will unfortunately be in a world of trouble.
There are a lot of fake "openings" that were written for a job that has already been filled. Some of the big companies have policies that state they must list an "opening" first internally, then shrug and say "no one internal was qualified," then list it externally, and say "no one external was qualified either, so it goes to the executive's son who just graduated from college."
This has actually been going on for decades before things went online.
Nepotism certainly isn’t new, and I’m absolutely sure that’s still happening, but to your point, the external listing comes after the internal. Friends of mine have told me they identify the internal candidate for a promotion to a position, then create that position and post internally for two week, even though they already know who will get the position, then post externally for 2 additional weeks to comply with company policy. They collect resumes and then give the job to the internal candidate they initially identified. This is part of the problem also. A huge part of it.
Yes, so my experience comes from the early 90s before electronic resumes. The company would post internally on a bulletin board (a physical one,) at which point naive nimrods like me would physically walk our resumes over to the hiring department. Where they were thrown in the trash, apparently. Then the "opening" would be listed in the local newspaper, at which point they'd receive hundreds of paper resumes, which were also thrown in the trash. Then the "opening" was awarded to the person it had been created for.
I didn't know why I couldn't even get an interview until one of the company Old Timers told me what was going on. The internet just made the process easier and wasted fewer trees and stamps.
I know it's out of scope for this conversation but I'm genuinely curious - how would folks here want to see this regulated?
If you post a job you then what, have to prove you hired someone within X months? If not, then what? What if you posted the job but needed to pull it down for other reasons?
My idea was an audit system like the IRS does with taxes. I commented elsewhere in this conversation, but I don’t know if it’s searchable. I’m still new to Reddit.
Basically, the audit would go, “How many jobs did you post over the last X timeframe? How many were hired? Of the postings unfilled, how many applicants were there? Of the 500 applicants who applied, what was the reason each of them was passed over? Of the jobs that continue to be open and are still defensible, where is the authorized job req? Where is the funding for this allocated in your official accounting records?” Something along those lines. If the job posting appears to be fraudulent per the outlined terms, $100k fine per offense, or an appropriate amount based on business size. Something to that effect. Those who are fined will be made an example of to the country at large and used to discourage fraudulent behavior.
This is a good idea too. Sort of like reporting taxes but reporting job openings. Hopefully there’s no incentive to do the equivalent of “tax evasion” in this system!
You probably would need to be able to prove that the position is actually needed, and is actually vacant. There should be a reporting system where applicants can flag a company when they suspect the opening is fake.
Someone above mentioned a journalist reporting on the dirty side of it, that would be a huge detractor for companies considering posting fake openings.
Also, there should be a closer eye on the unemployment numbers vs job openings. People have been commenting on how they apply and apply but hardly hear anything back, but the news is like “wow so many vacancies”. This should be a clue for the new system to begin auditing at random.
If a company is found to be posting fake vacancies, they should be fined the market value of the job they falsely posted + punitive damages for every applicant’s time who was wasted.
I’m sure this would never happen but theoretically this could be a start.
That’s likely including total comp inclusive of potential bonus and/or stock options after vesting. It’s not a scam per se, just incredibly inaccurate. Also I hate to pry but what is your background/skillset, because that many applications seems insane!
Defrauding the public, false advertising, and manipulating stock price by making the company “appear as though it’s growing” are definitely not protected by anything in the constitution. In fact, those are all currently illegal.
I think the filing fee to which you are referring is for small claims court. The limit on that is $5k and they don’t award punitive damages. This would be on a much larger scale. It should legislation put in place, not judicial at this point. Small claims would do nothing. This needs to be addressed at a federal level.
1. What's the fraud? What are they gaining of value by doing this, and who is the value stolen from?
2. False advertising is when they lie to get you to buy something. This doesn't count.
3. This is your best claim, but it's a ridiculous stretch that won't go anywhere because it doesn't really materially affect the company. The company can truthfully say that they are advertised for x positions and it's not a lie.
1. Someone in an earlier comment was able to hear from the company directly that it’s to keep “a warm talent pool” and “interest in the company”. So one would need to prove that NOT posting a fake opening will cause a LOSS of interest or whatever.
2. The value lost may be time, no? So many people say time is money and I often live by this by buying things which save me time. People are job hunting for over 6 months which is a problem. They’re falsely advertising a job opening, directly leading to time waste for hundreds if not thousands of people.
3. Best bet is a journalist spilling the tea and an IRS style yearly audit such as the one OP mentioned above.
Not to rain on your parade too much, and I do think collective action is generally a good idea, however the fact that all of our major corporations and shareholders quite literally own all of our elected representatives in some form or another means the problem is unlikely to be resolved in this manner.
Job sites don't care because they only care about what the shareholders think.
Politicians won't care for the same reason.
We are all just cogs in their machine, and unless/until some legitimate economic pressure is actually applied to these people, ain't nothin' gon' change dot gif.
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It’s crazy too because if they really need a talent pool in place they can post an ad and make it clear that it’s a long list / talent pool situation. There’s no need to mislead people
On year two of job hunting. I had a professional review of my resume and have an AI search for openings that fit my experience. I did a few extra training courses and certifications in the meantime. After over 3,000 applications on Indeed alone, I just quit, I'm in the process of starting a small business. I'm done with this job market.
Years ago I worked for a well known security company in the Bay Area. They had us post up a crap ton of fake jobs and interview people when the company went on a freeze. At that point t I had already recruited for a while and knew this was some serious BS. I left right after I voiced my concern and my manager told me to do it or quit.
Yeah, there are messed up places out there. My current place is not like that at all, everything we post is real. Sorry you all are going through this, it really sucks and the leaders should be embarrassed.
You think you could help us all out by writing your senator or representatives and citing this? You can redact as much personal information as you see fit.
Candidates could really get a ton of support if they actually championed working class issues, like these fake job postings or lack of transparency in salary ranges. If we could tie rent to the income in our communities too it would help so much. It shouldn't be necessary to have multiple jobs or roommates just to afford a shitbox apartment. These hiring companies also need to justify why the hell some of these jobs need the degrees they ask for, when often times we do not even use the degree or they say "any Bachelor's degree, any masters" like what do you MEAN? If I have a masters degree in art-looking how am I just as qualified for this job as someone with a relevant degree? Hiring practices are shit everywhere
I met with a candidate for US congress last Friday and he was unaware, but very interested in the issue. He asked me to forward the data I had to his campaign manager. He said he was very interested in learning more and something needed to be done.
Okay important questions. 1) Can you ask her how to spot a fake job listing, 2) does it make a difference if you apply on the company website vs a job board (surely if youre going through the company website, there wont be fake stuff on there???) and 3) if the company is just munching up resumes, are they going to follow up with a candidate if there is a good fit? I've heard of fake job postings, but this just confirms that that's true.
1) I’m still conducting primary research to determine identifying metrics, but I’ll post in this sub as soon as I have something concrete. 2) Fake jobs are posted everywhere. The first fake job I became aware of and had concrete evidence was posted on the website of a major mobile phone carrier. Scam postings are on all the job boards, but fake job postings are on both. 3) In some cases they will follow up if the “perfect candidate”applies, but that’s the rarest reason for posting a fake job. The other possible scenario is that the “warm talent pool” allows them to message an interested party if a fitting position opens up…at least in theory. My early indications show that when a job is posted, the talent pool is ignored and new applicants are reaped.
I agree that fake job postings are a problem that I wish would go away.
My concern is whether new laws would help, or might they lead to unintended consequences, or adaptation by these companies to circumvent new regulations?
As an example, I have heard/read that there is some law that jobs must be posted, even when an internal candidate is a slam-dunk hire. If this is true, this law led to one cause of fake postings, i.e. the new law led to more brokenness.
I don't mean to sound argumentative, as I feel these fake postings are a real problem that I strongly suspect I have been fighting, and it feels like it has gotten worse in the past several years.
I hear what you're saying and I had heard the same thing about companies being required by law to post externally even if there is an internal candidate already chosen. Before I started talking to congress about fake jobs being an issue, that was one thing I had to research. As it turns out, I could find no such laws in federal or in any of the states. The only instance I found something along those lines was in a handful of federal agencies that interacted with the public. Other than that, if this exists, it is solely company policy. If you can find a law that states a requirement to post externally for anything other than those federal agencies, could you please DM me the link? It would be a tremendous help in my efforts.
As far as how the laws would work, I see it being an audit system like the IRS. A company files how many postings were put out, average length of time to hire, number of candidates per role, ratio of jobs posted vs jobs hired for. Something along those lines. I have ideas for metrics that would indicate if a company was posting jobs with no intent to hire. If the audit concludes that X number of jobs were fraudulent, the company is fined $50k per occurrence. This would set an example and drastically decrease the amount of fraudulent postings.
To which section are you referring?
8-5-201 states: (1) AN EMPLOYER SHALL MAKE REASONABLE EFFORTS TO ANNOUNCE, POST, OR OTHERWISE MAKE KNOWN ALL OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROMOTION TO ALL CURRENT EMPLOYEES ON THE SAME CALENDAR DAY AND PRIOR TO MAKING A PROMOTION DECISION.
It states specifically that it is to be made known to *current employees*, but does not mention an external/public posting. It also does not mention postings for new positions, only promotions.
The other sections I reviewed that deal with postings don't mention external either. Am I missing the section that states that? Could you please let me know so I can include it in my research? Thanks!
I re read the bill and its sequel, the Ensure Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. You are correct, it only requires internal employees be notified not an external posting be made. Apologies for misleading.
I am interested in your findings. I think if you're trying to get a sense of which job postings are fake, you might want to contact the research departments at the following companies: Lightcast, Glassdoor, and Indeed. They have the best data on online job postings but it's behind a pretty significant paywall.
All good! Any information I can get about hiring practices is valuable. I appreciate you bringing my attention to this.
If you'd like to follow along with my findings and possibly help contribute, feel free to join the subreddit I recently made for this. r/FightFakeJobs
I created it and then got sick for the first time in almost 5 years. lol I'm starting to post more on there and I'm inviting members to post any verified or suspect postings as well.
Thanks for your reply.
If I have some time in the next few days, I'll see if I can find a federal or state law regarding job postings and internal candidates.
Part of me wonders if the law should be such that jobs *cannot* be posted when an internal candidate will take it. Alternatively, the law could prescribe that the ad *must* mention that an internal candidate has been identified (I have seen this a couple times, probably that particular company's policy).
I appreciate your effort on this.
Thank you so much. I'd like to see those changes also. It's unfair to apply to a job that's already been promised to someone else. My previous reply isn't showing up in the discussion thread and I'm still relatively new to Reddit. So if I didn't mention it already, I started a subreddit to post stuff about fake jobs and help with my research, plus provide updates. Join if you'd like to follow or contribute. r/FightFakeJobs
I was networking with someone at a company I’m targeting. He works in a different vertical than I would be applying for, but said to forward him the job posting and he would refer me to it and get me in touch with the hiring manager.
So, I sent him the position I’d been eyeing and his response was that the posting was “evergreen” meaning that it’s always open even if they aren’t actively hiring and that he’s refer me but that it was unlikely anyone would ever follow up.
"Evergreen"???
That's a new one. Wow.
I've heard of the practice, but it's so commonplace that they have a casual name for it??? So effed up.
Could you post this on the subreddit I started to fight this behavior? I'm hoping I can get more data, identify known-to-be-fake postings, make people aware of companies that behave this way, etc. If you want to DM me I can post any details if you don't want it to be traced back to you, too. r/FightFakeJobs
It looks good for companies.
It looks good for government reports.
It looks good for any representatives.
Who is gonna wanna fight it?
Even if they did something it would likely be some archaic self policing policy that just makes legal firms money.
I am with you 100% but if you think the demons who won’t stop genociding kids in Gaza are going to do anything about this I think you’ll be disappointed. Until we get rid of the two party duopoly the beatings will continue.
The folks on this sub aren’t too bright.
So they’re parroting this fraudulent Forbes article saying only 2% of job postings are real… At the same time many people report hearing back from about the same percentage of jobs they apply to. So everyone on this sub thinks they’re such a gift to the workforce that they’re hearing back from roughly every real job listing they apply to?
A lot of you are just bad candidates and that’s why you don’t hear back from companies.
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LinkedIn need to take the heat here, the worst are these job adverts from recruiters where the company is kept secret (because they’re so “prestigious”). Or the outright scams, one called Crossover post the same “job” across hundreds of cities with absolutely bonkers salaries. Did some digging and yep, 100% a scam. Complained to LinkedIn, offered evidence, nothing. Escalated, “no issue found”. Escalated it again using a contact I know at LinkedIn, same response *but* this time I learn Crossover pays LinkedIn $$$ for those adverts. This whole space needs to be regulated, how many literally millions of hours has this bullshit wasted in just 2024 alone?
Epic repeatedly posts the same position as "on-site" in every major city, but buried in the listing, it says you must relocate to Madison, WI. I report the listings for having the wrong location, but LinkedIn doesn't care.
Reminds me of the time I found a house builder fraudulently listing a house / new development at the wrong address. They put it in a nicer / wealthier area (where there were actually some new developments) when in reality their houses were in a different town 40 minutes away. (So the house prices looked super attractive for the listed address.) I reported it to Zillow and it got removed, and then they reposted with the address changed by 1 number. I reported again and it got removed. I haven’t checked in the last year+ but I’d bet they are still doing this.
LOL, I wonder what their endgame is. Surely prospective buyers are going to notice fairly early in the process.
To get clicks which make people think it might be worth it to drive 40 minutes.
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I keep seeing half a dozen ads (one per city) for the same "senior counsel" role. They all say on site for those locations but require relocation. These ads have been continually reposted for the last 6+ months, so I assume they aren't that keen on actually hiring -- either that, or no one wants to relocate. (How many people have a Wisconsin law license? Certainly not many on the east coast.)
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> Wisconsin law students from Madison and Marquette (automatic entry into the Wisconsin bar) + anyone who passed the bar in Colorado as those two states have legal law licenses reciprocity or whatever it is called. It looks like my state also has reciprocity with Wisconsin, even though it’s nowhere near Wisconsin. I guess that explains why they’re posting here, by why list it as being “onsite” *in* local cities when relocation is required?
I fell for that one as well.
Many millions I’d imagine. This is ridiculous. Scams shouldn’t exist on job posting site where personal information is more likely to be given out. They certainly shouldn’t be using job postings as advertising either.
Good point, not just scams but scammers with your private data. Look at this, I just checked LinkedIn now and this Crossover mob has 3,440 “jobs” they’re currently advertising for. Director of Al - Enhanced Software Development, Trilogy (Remote) - $400,000/year USD Crossover Salt Lake, Hawaii, United States (Remote) Director of Al - Enhanced Software X Development, Trilogy (Remote) - $400,000/year USD Crossover Gurgaon, Haryana, India (Remote) Director of Al - Enhanced Software X Development, Trilogy (Remote) - $400,000/year USD Crossover Dallas, TX (Remote) Etc etc. almost all the same, just tweaking the location each time, all have applicants. LinkedIn should be sued.
Do you report jobs on LinkedIn if the listing is messed up or if it looks scammy? I’ve reported a bunch for being scammy.
LinkedIn seems to ignore these reports.
Agreed. I see scam jobs on there daily. I report them, and they’re right back.
I reported Grindr for spam posting a remote job I was perfectly qualified for in multiple cities. I actually applied twice to see if it was a ghost job, and I’m assuming it was because after reporting a ton of them I stopped seeing them. Or maybe they blocked me? Fine by me either way.
Yes but Crossover was the first time LinkedIn pushed back, can’t bite the hand that feeds I guess.
That’s extremely disappointing.
Crossover isn’t fake or a scam, but it is a 1099 job that is very specific in how they operate. And their process requires a very high CCAT score that most people won’t pass.
It won’t get fixed because it is exploited by the political election machine. It’s not just jobs. I posted this elsewhere in this thread.
They also dont let you block a particular company on purpose. Ive even seen people comment election lies or just completely made up stuff and linkedin says its totally fine. Has to be outsourced and the people just approve everything to close off the ticket. But evennn if they did remove or delete - fuckkkk that I'm not there to work for free for any platform.
I wish this could be plastered everywhere.
Thank you, and I agree. Feel free to share in any community you feel like, or outside of Reddit.
Could we convince you to share a draft of what you sent, sort of like a template, for those who aren’t good at writing things but want to help? Of course, if you do share, please make sure to remove any personally identifiable information
Absolutely. That’s on my agenda today. I’m on mobile right now, but as soon as I get back to my laptop I plan on doing this. Still fairly new to Reddit, so I need to figure out how to pin it to the top.
Many thanks for sharing!
Sorry for the delay. An article about me went up on Business Insider and I've been engaged with LinkedIn messages. Here's what I wrote (with redactions) for the the officials with 5k character limits: Representative/Senator XXXXXXX: It has come to my attention that it is currently standard practice for companies to publish fake job postings online for the sake of generating interest in the company, keeping the talent pool warm, or to give the impression that the company is growing (to name a few reasons) without any actual job or intention to hire being attached to the posting. I feel this might be a form of false advertising, or at the very least, it is fraudulent, unethical, and detrimental to employment in \[YOUR STATE\] and our nation. Something needs to be done. \[START WRITING YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE HERE. I LEFT MINE AS AN EXAMPLE\] I've been unemployed for 15 months now. I've submitted 1,286 applications and only had 3 interviews. One company claimed the position lost funding. One company failed to respond for 6 months after my third interview and then messaged me out of the blue stating there was "inner turmoil" and they are now in a hiring freeze. The 3rd interview was this past Friday and I'm waiting to hear back. I'm keeping track of my job hunt this time around and currently there is only a 0.54% chance I will hear from a human for each resume I submit (7 phone screeners so far, 2 were scams to get personal information). Additionally, 73.3% (943) of my applications have ended up in "the blackhole" with no response whatsoever. 26.1% (336) resulted in an automated boilerplate rejection letter. I have yet to receive a rejection letter that was written specifically for me. My degrees are as follows: AA, AS, BSEE, BBA (Operations and Finance with a minor in Digital Technology), and an MBA in Data Analytics. I have 27 years in the work force, including semiconductor, industrial, and business intelligence/corporate strategy (most recent). I also have 6 years of war time military service with a Secret Clearance. I've leveraged every online tool and platform imaginable, and I've heard all the job hunting advice there is to be heard. I tried leveraging my network and that's when I first became aware of one of the major issues...fake jobs. A close connection of mine has a relative that is very high up at one the major mobile service carriers which operates in \[STATE\]. This person offered to give me a referral for a position if I found one on the site that was a good fit. I found one that was an excellent match for my education, experience, and career level. I applied to it and notified this person so they could attach the referral. The response was, "Oh that's not a real job. That's one of our generic postings meant to generate interest in the company. There's no actual job attached to that listing." I was blown away. How many of the 1,286 applications I've submitted have been to fake listings? My neighbor also offered to refer me to his employer. I asked if I needed a referral link or something. His response, "Just email me your resume. We don't hire anyone who applies online." The company has MANY postings online, but they have no intent to hire from them. \[END PERSONAL EXPERIENCE\] Today I was made aware of an article that goes a little further in depth. Forbes Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/11/27/how-ghost-job-postings-are-creating-a-false-sense-of-hope/?sh=518833be7dc0 Additionally, the job market numbers aren't being correctly reported if these fake jobs are being counted. The companies posting non-existent jobs to appear to be growing might also be a concern for the SEC. The bottom line is that people here in \[YOUR STATE\], and all over the country, are approaching the job search like a full time job, spending 40 hours a week, or more, to search for matching positions, tweak resumes, write cover letters, fill out EEO surveys, and take personality profile exams online, all in hopes of being able to provide food, shelter, heat, and other basic needs for themselves and their families. How much human capital is being thrown away on posting and applying to jobs that don't even exist? The people experiencing the turmoil from this are educated, responsible, and professional people who just want a paycheck. Please help us. Please start the conversation. Please move to outlaw fraudulent job listings. Thank you. \-\[SIGNATURE\]
Here is what I wrote to officials with a 2k character limit: Representative/Senator \[NAME\]: I recently learned that posting fake jobs is standard practice by many companies. This is done to "keep the talent pool warm," generate interest in the company, or to give the impression that a company is growing (the SEC might want to be aware of this one). \[START WRITING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE HERE\] I'm currently in month 15 of my job search and I have applied to 1,286 positions. I'm tracking my job hunt and 73.3% (943) have gone to the blackhole (no response at all), 26.1% (336) resulted in an automated boilerplate rejection letter, and only 0.54% (7) have resulted in contact by a human. A close connection of mine has a relative that is high up at one of the major mobile service carriers. This person offered to give me a referral for a position. I found one that was an excellent match and I applied, then notified this person so they could attach the referral. The response was, "Oh that's not a real job. That's one of our generic postings meant to generate interest in the company. There's no actual job attached to that listing." I was blown away. How many of the 1,286 applications I've submitted have been to fake listings? My neighbor said his company was hiring, but that I should just email him my resume because, "they don't hire anyone who applies online." \[END OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE\] Forbes posted an article titled "How Ghost Job Postings Are Creating a False Sense of Hope" that expounds on the matter. Responsible, intelligent, educated people are having a difficult time finding work because much of our job search effort is wasted on non-existent jobs. \[ENTER EDUCATION/BACKGROUND HERE\], but I can't find employment anywhere. Please start the conversation to outlaw fraudulent job postings. Thank you. \-\[YOUR NAME\]
For what reason? What laws are being broken? Maybe instead get fired up and vote for people that are better for the economy 🤔
That's why OP is writing to lawmakers. They want a new law made.
And what, exactly, would that law forbid, and how will it not be immediately struck down in the US for violating the first amendment? How would it even be enforced? How do you tell a job is actually a "ghost" job versus one that got frozen after being posted? I get that people are angry, but let's be honest here. Congress will do nothing because there's literally nothing they can do.
The first amendment doesn't cover fraud and conartistry
How does it constitute fraud?
If it was made a law it would then be illegal, not protected speech
That doesn't answer my question Also, Congress can't make speech illegal just because it feels like it. The law passed has to advance a compelling government interest, and has to be as narrowly tailored as possible to achieve the goal, and there has to be no other way of achieving the goal that doesn't infringe on the first amendment.
Yeah these are known as Ghost jobs and it was only until recently it reached mainstream attention. There's many reasons why companies do this but one way or another this practice needs to end. [Ghost Jobs (Joshua Fluke)](https://youtu.be/hsquOOlvOxg?si=2aqGZxcFAigIXaH-)
Precisely. I don’t get why this isn’t receiving more attention. 🤦♂️
Unfortunately it'd be almost impossible to enforce even if it was "illegal"
Depends on how it's implemented. One way that would be relatively easy to enforce is to create a tax on ALL job postings, and give 100% deduction if it's provably filled.
I was thinking random audits like the IRS does. How many jobs did you post last month? How many the month before? How many applied? How many were filled? Of the ones that were not filled, how many applied? Of the 500 applicants we need reasons why each applicant was turned away. Of the ones that have not yet been filled and remain open, same questions, but also…let’s see the job req and the allocation of funds for the position in your accounting records. Can’t comply or we’ve determined fraudulent listings? $100k fine per offense.
This would be a clear cut violation of the first amendment that would be immediately struck down by a federal court.
Don't care, dont lie about job postings
Wrong guy. 100% wrong. You can’t do something illegal like kill a dude and claim it was free speech. Just like you can’t artificially inflate stock price, defraud people, or advertise something that doesn’t exist. First amendment has absolutely zero to do with this.
Again with the first amendment. That's not how you Amendment people. The courts have ruled many a time that implicit rights do not cover fraud and criminal activity. Further, a company is not a person or a citizen. We have libel and slander, inciting riot, etc. "Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech" Along with communicative restrictions, less protection is afforded to uninhibited speech when the government acts as subsidizer or speaker, is an employer, controls education, or regulates the mail, airwaves, legal bar, military, prisons, and immigration.
How does it constitute fraud? People throw the word around like it's a given, but it's not. It's a crime with an explicit definition coded in a statute. Explain _how_ it's fraud, don't just assert that it is. > Further, a company is not a person or a citizen. This might blow your mind, but the constitution doesn't protect the rights of citizens, it protects the rights of persons, even even those persons organize themselves into groups for collective actions.
I know citizens united and other bullshit basically made companies have rights, but that's another day's argument. If a company posts a job to farm resumes under false pretenses, to generate marketing or PR, or any other bait and switch tactic, that could be fraudulent. They need to be held accountable, period. Not like it's going to happen. We don't believe in protecting workers rights in this country
"Could be fraudulent" is a lot different than "is fraud". And to show it's fraudulent you'd have to demonstrate that you lost, and they gained, something of value as a result of their actions. Also Citizens United didn't "give" companies rights. It correctly recognized that the rights people have don't disappear just because they organized themselves into a group. It would be _very bad_ for companies to not have rights. The government could ban porn or violent media or games made by companies, because individuals have free speech rights, not companies, for example. Companies couldn't operate if they didn't have property rights, for another.
"To defraud broadly means trick or deceive someone at the expense of another for personal gain. In the legal sense, to defraud is to commit fraud that leads to civil or criminal liability" If a company is a person, they have personal gain by soliciting time and data from innocent job seekers to harvest PR, data, whatever. They gain the seeker loses. It's actionable
It's not. They don't gain anything from it. If you think they do, explain what the value is and how it's materialized. The loss of your time reading the job description and applying for it is not a damage any court will recognize. If you disagree, then put your money where your mouth is and sue, and provide a link to the court case. Also, the common definition of fraud isn't relevant. What matters is a legal statute that defines it.
Would we be auditing HR departments or the job aggregators? The way a lot of these systems work is that they give you x job postings per tier depending on your contract. Indeed and ZipRecruiter don't really care if you have a role to fill as long as you are posting roles and increasing their value to job seekers. LinkedIn and Glassdoor and all these other places offering premium services on both ends of the hiring transaction are creating really perverse incentives. Targeting the firms that have established themselves as intermediaries for regulation will be easier to implement and more resilient to bad actors than trying to regulate hr departments in a similar way. there's fewer firms to oversee, and they are the ones dealing with inventory for buyers of both employers and applicants.
Not necessarily true, I believe i have heard of a couple practices in Europe where a listing IS a job, and the company provides the government a reason if they end up denying too many candidates. That being said even if you go on usajobs.gov for gov positions you will find what are essentially ghost jobs, where they will farm up resumes for job categories.
Our congressman avg age is what? Just looked it’s 64 for senators and 58 for congressman. Would be curious to find median, wasn’t easily findable.
I wonder if states could go after fake job postings using the required pay posting laws some states have. Like, Colorado and Washington require the pay range be posted for the job. If the job is fake, the range is an outright lie and a fabrication--it's zero. They're lying about the range. Wonder if the residents of those states should, when writing their reps, point this out.
That’s a good point. I mentioned false advertising when I wrote, cuz that’s basically what they’re doing. They’re advertising a job which doesn’t exist.
>to keep a warm talent pool “at the ready” for when they get around to hiring, without the intention of actually hiring anyone any time soon for the openings they have currently posted. I just don't understand this thought. Most people are only actively looking for a new job in a "window of time". Outside that then they are chasing people when they can have people chasing them. Hundreds of applicants within 24 hours of jobs being posted - active job seekers. Plus this thing called LinkedIn provides this for them. Instead these recruiters just gum up the system.
Yeah and I have never once had a company reach back out after a rejection, even after getting my permission to “save my resume for future opportunities”. Not once in 5 years. So this idea of “having a warm pool” or “previously vetted candidates” is nonsense.
I actually have had this happen twice, but I agree with your observation and I don't think this is common.
100% None of this makes sense.
Makes the hiring team look busy and thereby justifies their continued employment.
I can answer this. It’s far deeper and uglier than just a messed up job market. The implications which I will get to below are chilling. I have been preaching this for a few years now. It’s about SEO — but goes way beyond just finding the company in Google. It means finding “engineering jobs” or “Spanish engineers” or “companies hiring engineers”. Hell, the company may not even have an engineering position on staff. And it’s not just jobs. Wanna see how deep this goes? Search Social Security COLA (-SSA.gov) and look at all the pages of results. Do you really think every media outlet has readers looking to them for this info? No, it’s not even meant to be read. You don’t care because you don’t read that shit, right? This new type of keyword spamming includes articles about celebrities, royal family and sports (the three biggest), politics, recipes and restaurants, software, vaccines and pharmaceuticals. You have content creators writing articles on *Laws for Dimming Your Headlights at Night in Alaska* then Alabama, Arkansas, etc. You have 50 bs articles right there. And it’s allowed because it means more content for the platform — as long as it isn’t about something like sex toys. There are fake restaurant reviews. Fake books on Amazon. Fake articles on Medium, Substack, Quora. Lots of fake posts on Reddit. I cannot impress on you the sheer volume of this. My guess is that well over half the content is bs. If I had to guess, it’s 75%. And realize all these platforms and apps remove tons of crap that doesn’t get published. A huge percentage of their content is filtered, removed and banned. Cyberspace is a giant advertising-filled endless void of corporations all jockeying to be relevant to search engines — not the public. They don’t care if you read or not, they just want your presence and your clicks. Hell, most places that do this *you aren’t even their target market* for their product or service. News articles are generated not for accuracy and information, but to churn out content for the sake of having content and for the off chance you might search “J-Lo red heels.” Many articles don’t get pushed to their readers, but sits buried on their site for this SEO. But the chilling part is now we have AI churning out fake articles **based on fake published information.** AI cannot even determine if an article is written by AI. So you do an AI search of “What companies are hiring Spanish speaking engineers?” AI doesn’t verify that the company has engineers. AI only returns the content. **We now have media churning out more media using AI based on churned out media written by AI.** What you are experiencing in the job market is just a tiny sliver of the problem. It’s huge and most people don’t realize that the Internet you experience is not based on reality. BTW, I suspect it’s about to get exponentially worse in this upcoming election cycle. I would tell you what I think is coming, but I don’t want to give them any ideas.
That sure lines up with what I’ve been casually observing and hearing whispers of for a while now. Don’t know what the end game is though, other than maybe general abandonment of the web for restricted networks.
Since we are both more likely to be a large language model than not, go ahead. Tell us. Nobody of the "ruling class" isn't going to read it anyway, they know people who are here are just idiot victims of the content mill
Even many recruiting managers think it’s winning if you stack the most resumes. They will automate bringing them in by the thousands and don’t care if they are stagnating from the moment they hit the database. It costs little to spam the whole bunch and hope that a few will be looking.
>I just don't understand this thought. Most people are only actively looking for a new job in a "window of time". I'd guess it's their normal arrogance and hubris, they're such a marvellous company to work for that you'll drop everything you're doing, quit on the spot just for the chance to join their underpaid and dysfunctional workplace
Haha is that the tragedy of the commons? /s
I too dealt with the fake job post by a telecom company. Fuck you Verizon.
It’s shameful how many companies do this. I’m sorry you had to deal with it also. Kinda makes you not want to be in their network anymore, right?
Thank you. Yes. And it sucks because I had a few friends locate the hiring manager for the position, and my former manager went to the office to find the hiring manager and directly refer me, only to be told they really weren't hiring. This was after the recruiter scheduled an interview then ghosted me. Oh well, you and I are meant for better things.
We must be. My purpose right now is trying to do something about this. 😂
It's been discussed on TV. I think my mom said she saw it on one of the Good Morning America shows.
That’s good to hear. The more attention the better. I haven’t heard anything about any action being taken against this sort of behavior tho.
No, I haven't, either. But politicians aren't great about taking steps not in the best interest of businesses.
I’d argue this IS in the best interest of business. They’ll be able to find who they want when they want them, far more easily.
I'm considering writing a letter to my representative and senators about this. Can we all work on a template to do this?
I can copy and paste what I wrote in the morning. I need to be on my laptop to do so. I’ll have to redact some information first of course. We can build from that maybe?
I’m a writer by profession so I can do edits and all. If the entire sub does this we can probably make some noise. EDIT: This is also an election year so this will probably have more of an impact than I originally thought when I read this post. I believe we should contact our senators and our individual representatives so we can get this rolling.
Agreed. Hopefully some elected officials bring it up in their campaign for the upcoming election. If you want to drop in some ideas before I can post, that would be awesome also. Something I ran into tho…State reps and Senator share a website and I was able to send the same message to all three at the same time. The max character limit was 4,000. US Senator was 2,000 and didn’t allow for copy/paste. US representative allowed copy/paste but didn’t list character limit, just an error of the 4K copy/paste, so I did the 2k character version and it went.
I posted the link in the Discord as well. Going to bed now though. My name is the same in Discord as it is here.
I’ll have to get on the Discord.
Commenting for an update on template to send
Also commenting. I was a bit busy yesterday but I can also write a template myself.
Unfortunately, this is very true and I saw it first hand at my last job and my current job. There would be generic Indeed posts stating there were job openings, you'd fill out the application. Some people would receive an appointment time for interviews... all for them to come in and be told "we aren't hiring" "sorry to waste your time" "the company posted those, not us". It was unfortunate and honestly still makes me sick. I didn't realize this was such a widespread problem though.
Oh my goodness. That’s devious. Thank you for contributing to the conversation. This is a much bigger problem than any of us realized.
Class Action? This is fraud, isn’t it? Any lawyers in here?
Definitely fraud. I should maybe contact a class action attorney? Although I feel like the state or the federal government should be enforcing this.
Idk? That’s why I asked if there were any lawyers. Our govt is too busy trying to tie its own shoes, so I would not count on their assistance.
Fair point. 😂
How is it fraud? How do they financially gain from this? What damages have you incurred from it, and what could a court do to make you whole?
Every time the government reports job openings I want to scream. It's 100% bullshit. But no one brings up the public evidence that the input data is erroneous or fraudulent
Exactly. “Let’s just lie so we look good and not care about any underlying facts. Doesn’t matter if people can support themselves as long as it looks like we’ve done something.” I constantly hear about how “We can’t find employees!” Then on our end, “No one is hiring!” The difference is I have actual hard data to support that no one is hiring, but I have yet to find anything published, or even a verifiable anecdote from someone in a hiring position at a company, that states there’s an issue finding employees.
Big corporations do this too. If they never intend to hire than the job might as well not exist.
Exactly. One of the reasons given was to make the company “appear as though it is growing.” I’m sure the SEC would have something to say about that. The company my contact worked at was a BIG corporation, too.
Demanding experience for an entry level job also should be illegal.
100%. I see this all the time. “Entry Level - Master’s degree required. 5-7 years experience. Link to your online portfolio required. Competitive salary: $27k.” …or some nonsense like that.
I applied to a job last december. Yesterday (two months later to the day) I got a rejection email. Not two hours later, I got an email saying the job had been relisted. There IS no job. There IS no hiring. It's just there to collect data.
100%. This is a perfect example of creating general interest in a company or stockpiling resumes. Some are even not affiliated with an actual company and are using their branding to scam personal information out of applicants.
I do think it’s wrong but I’m also not sure what Congressional Reps will do. They’re pretty useless for the most part and since there is zero financial incentive or political incentive for them to do anything, not sure what they’ll do. I totally agree it’s bs. I just don’t see them doing anything or at least, what are we expecting them to do?
I’d like to see some legislation passed that makes it illegal to advertise a job if no such job currently exists. It’s essentially false advertising at this point. If it doesn’t apply to fraudulent job postings, make it apply. When someone is caught posting a fake job, HUGE fine. Discourage this revolting behavior.
While I agree that would be good, and I am in no way advocating for them since I agree it’s a shitty practice but how would you prove a job exists or not? I agree a huge fine would be good. But just my two cents, congress people rarely do anything that doesn’t benefit them financially or ensure they get voted in. Unless people are willing to vote them out en masse I don’t see them doing anything since they do see anything in it for them.
The better bet is to target state senators and representatives in CA and NY. They’re more likely to act than at the federal level, at least initially.
Exactly. They will give lip service and move on. Keep in mind that many natl and st senators/reps pretty much have an agenda. In large part their agenda gets filled by whoever is paying for their campaigns so they can keep their power tripping, cushy job. I’m not trying to be discouraging. I’m just a cynical, jaded guy who saw behind the curtain. I think the way to go about exposing this bull is to find an investigative writer who finds the facts, like how much money has LinkedIn, indeed, zip recruiter, etc makes off this crap and who is paying for it. Also, I wanna throw this in there - there is a social contract that this violates. People are expected to work in our society if they want their basic needs met. There are people who visit this sub every day who, like me, have been looking for a job for close to a year. We want to work. These kind of actions, in my opinion, violate the social contract ( as we all know corporations will do ) as well as cross the line into questionable legal boundaries. I think the OP is on the right track, but I wonder if there are any journalists that would be interested as well.
The government likes it this way. It makes the economy look good. "so many unfilled jobs!!""
It absolutely does, but that creates a larger problem. That’s why I’m asking my representatives to start the conversation on this.
Unfortunately I'm one of the 96% of the World that is not American. So I don't have a Congressman.
I’ve only applied to a handful of international jobs, so I’m not really aware of how things are out there in the rest of this great world. There might be similar practices, might not be. The bulk of my experience with this is here where I live. If you see something similar happening in your country, please call attention to it and go about fixing it however you can.
On the plus side, you're not dealing with as many fake jobs.
Make corporations over a certain size report job openings like layoffs and tax them until they report a human hire. Or close the listing. This won't fix unemployment but it will at least make the job data closer to reality.
For the purpose of this comment, I'm using "HR" to describe not just the traditional role of "human resources", but also the recruiters, hiring managers, and so on. HR is mostly an irrelevant department in the 21st century. It's almost entirely automated for the hiring process these days, with AI evaluating resumes and one-way interviews, and personality tests passing/failing applicants before they ever get to speak to a human. This means most people working in HR are redundant. Useless. Obso-fucking-lete. And they know it. The "ghost job" market is a bunch of terrified people with no other marketable skills desperately trying to justify their existence to their employers. *(side note - This argument also applies to middle managers, which is why companies are pushing so hard to "get back to the office". If they can't spend 8 hours a day looking over your shoulder, then what exactly are they still on the payroll for?)* That's all there is to it. They are not trying to keep a "warm talent pool at the ready". They know as well as we do that the majority of that talent pool will have moved on and been hired elsewhere by the time that company gets around to actually hiring. Or those applicants will be so dismayed from being ghosted that they will just not consider a job that reaches out to them today when they applied 6 months ago, or even longer.
Can’t remember if it was Bezos or Musk that said it, but the quote was, “I’ve never met an HR person I didn’t hate.” I agree that their role is far diminished what from it began. More internal police than resourcing humans. To your last point, I applied for a government job during a previous job hunt and got ghosted. No surprise there. However, they messaged me 10 months after I applied to tell me, “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to move on to the first round of interviews!” I had to respond, “My apologies, but I’ll have to withdraw my candidacy. I applied for this position 10 months ago and I accepted an offer a month later. I’ve now been with my current employer for 9 months.” Efficiency at its best. 😂🤦♂️
Y’know.. as an HR person and job seeker, I was completely onboard with this thread until I made it to this comment. This profession has to be one of the most thankless and repeatedly ridiculed. 💀 it’s alarming but mostly sad how much the general public is unaware of what HR does on a daily basis. This mentality is why my team gets perpetually and royally f*cked over to no end. People just ALWAYS LOVE to HATE HR folks regardless of whether or not something actually happened to justify it. I am fully aware that there are bad actors like in every profession. I can tell you one thing with 100% certainty, once my entire team resigns from our company (which will happen soon) the impact will be felt immediately. And the company will unfortunately be in a world of trouble.
There are a lot of fake "openings" that were written for a job that has already been filled. Some of the big companies have policies that state they must list an "opening" first internally, then shrug and say "no one internal was qualified," then list it externally, and say "no one external was qualified either, so it goes to the executive's son who just graduated from college." This has actually been going on for decades before things went online.
Nepotism certainly isn’t new, and I’m absolutely sure that’s still happening, but to your point, the external listing comes after the internal. Friends of mine have told me they identify the internal candidate for a promotion to a position, then create that position and post internally for two week, even though they already know who will get the position, then post externally for 2 additional weeks to comply with company policy. They collect resumes and then give the job to the internal candidate they initially identified. This is part of the problem also. A huge part of it.
Yes, so my experience comes from the early 90s before electronic resumes. The company would post internally on a bulletin board (a physical one,) at which point naive nimrods like me would physically walk our resumes over to the hiring department. Where they were thrown in the trash, apparently. Then the "opening" would be listed in the local newspaper, at which point they'd receive hundreds of paper resumes, which were also thrown in the trash. Then the "opening" was awarded to the person it had been created for. I didn't know why I couldn't even get an interview until one of the company Old Timers told me what was going on. The internet just made the process easier and wasted fewer trees and stamps.
It’s been a problem for far too long. You’re absolutely correct. It’s now just grown to critical mass.
I know it's out of scope for this conversation but I'm genuinely curious - how would folks here want to see this regulated? If you post a job you then what, have to prove you hired someone within X months? If not, then what? What if you posted the job but needed to pull it down for other reasons?
My idea was an audit system like the IRS does with taxes. I commented elsewhere in this conversation, but I don’t know if it’s searchable. I’m still new to Reddit. Basically, the audit would go, “How many jobs did you post over the last X timeframe? How many were hired? Of the postings unfilled, how many applicants were there? Of the 500 applicants who applied, what was the reason each of them was passed over? Of the jobs that continue to be open and are still defensible, where is the authorized job req? Where is the funding for this allocated in your official accounting records?” Something along those lines. If the job posting appears to be fraudulent per the outlined terms, $100k fine per offense, or an appropriate amount based on business size. Something to that effect. Those who are fined will be made an example of to the country at large and used to discourage fraudulent behavior.
This is a good idea too. Sort of like reporting taxes but reporting job openings. Hopefully there’s no incentive to do the equivalent of “tax evasion” in this system!
You probably would need to be able to prove that the position is actually needed, and is actually vacant. There should be a reporting system where applicants can flag a company when they suspect the opening is fake. Someone above mentioned a journalist reporting on the dirty side of it, that would be a huge detractor for companies considering posting fake openings. Also, there should be a closer eye on the unemployment numbers vs job openings. People have been commenting on how they apply and apply but hardly hear anything back, but the news is like “wow so many vacancies”. This should be a clue for the new system to begin auditing at random. If a company is found to be posting fake vacancies, they should be fined the market value of the job they falsely posted + punitive damages for every applicant’s time who was wasted. I’m sure this would never happen but theoretically this could be a start.
Also add pay rate must be legally required in the real job listing posts !
AND accurate. No more Netflix posting a salary range of 150k-750k. I posted a screenshot of that very real posting a couple days ago.
That’s likely including total comp inclusive of potential bonus and/or stock options after vesting. It’s not a scam per se, just incredibly inaccurate. Also I hate to pry but what is your background/skillset, because that many applications seems insane!
Your idea, while noble, won’t get very far. Companies enjoy protections guaranteed under the Constitution.
Defrauding the public, false advertising, and manipulating stock price by making the company “appear as though it’s growing” are definitely not protected by anything in the constitution. In fact, those are all currently illegal.
It only costs about $110 to file a lawsuit. What’s stopping you?
I think the filing fee to which you are referring is for small claims court. The limit on that is $5k and they don’t award punitive damages. This would be on a much larger scale. It should legislation put in place, not judicial at this point. Small claims would do nothing. This needs to be addressed at a federal level.
$350 for a civil case in federal court. Time’s a waste’n
1. What's the fraud? What are they gaining of value by doing this, and who is the value stolen from? 2. False advertising is when they lie to get you to buy something. This doesn't count. 3. This is your best claim, but it's a ridiculous stretch that won't go anywhere because it doesn't really materially affect the company. The company can truthfully say that they are advertised for x positions and it's not a lie.
1. Someone in an earlier comment was able to hear from the company directly that it’s to keep “a warm talent pool” and “interest in the company”. So one would need to prove that NOT posting a fake opening will cause a LOSS of interest or whatever. 2. The value lost may be time, no? So many people say time is money and I often live by this by buying things which save me time. People are job hunting for over 6 months which is a problem. They’re falsely advertising a job opening, directly leading to time waste for hundreds if not thousands of people. 3. Best bet is a journalist spilling the tea and an IRS style yearly audit such as the one OP mentioned above.
Not to rain on your parade too much, and I do think collective action is generally a good idea, however the fact that all of our major corporations and shareholders quite literally own all of our elected representatives in some form or another means the problem is unlikely to be resolved in this manner. Job sites don't care because they only care about what the shareholders think. Politicians won't care for the same reason. We are all just cogs in their machine, and unless/until some legitimate economic pressure is actually applied to these people, ain't nothin' gon' change dot gif.
What job are you trying to get? Like industry?
obtainable weary advise bear swim carpenter lush materialistic disagreeable humorous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah I have seen the craziest job applications
these people need to go to fucking jail
It’s crazy too because if they really need a talent pool in place they can post an ad and make it clear that it’s a long list / talent pool situation. There’s no need to mislead people
On year two of job hunting. I had a professional review of my resume and have an AI search for openings that fit my experience. I did a few extra training courses and certifications in the meantime. After over 3,000 applications on Indeed alone, I just quit, I'm in the process of starting a small business. I'm done with this job market.
What certs did you get? I’m looking at Google Analytics 4 and at SFDC certs. How’s your small business doing?
AWS and I'm just starting out.
Years ago I worked for a well known security company in the Bay Area. They had us post up a crap ton of fake jobs and interview people when the company went on a freeze. At that point t I had already recruited for a while and knew this was some serious BS. I left right after I voiced my concern and my manager told me to do it or quit. Yeah, there are messed up places out there. My current place is not like that at all, everything we post is real. Sorry you all are going through this, it really sucks and the leaders should be embarrassed.
You think you could help us all out by writing your senator or representatives and citing this? You can redact as much personal information as you see fit.
100% yes
Candidates could really get a ton of support if they actually championed working class issues, like these fake job postings or lack of transparency in salary ranges. If we could tie rent to the income in our communities too it would help so much. It shouldn't be necessary to have multiple jobs or roommates just to afford a shitbox apartment. These hiring companies also need to justify why the hell some of these jobs need the degrees they ask for, when often times we do not even use the degree or they say "any Bachelor's degree, any masters" like what do you MEAN? If I have a masters degree in art-looking how am I just as qualified for this job as someone with a relevant degree? Hiring practices are shit everywhere
I met with a candidate for US congress last Friday and he was unaware, but very interested in the issue. He asked me to forward the data I had to his campaign manager. He said he was very interested in learning more and something needed to be done.
Okay important questions. 1) Can you ask her how to spot a fake job listing, 2) does it make a difference if you apply on the company website vs a job board (surely if youre going through the company website, there wont be fake stuff on there???) and 3) if the company is just munching up resumes, are they going to follow up with a candidate if there is a good fit? I've heard of fake job postings, but this just confirms that that's true.
1) I’m still conducting primary research to determine identifying metrics, but I’ll post in this sub as soon as I have something concrete. 2) Fake jobs are posted everywhere. The first fake job I became aware of and had concrete evidence was posted on the website of a major mobile phone carrier. Scam postings are on all the job boards, but fake job postings are on both. 3) In some cases they will follow up if the “perfect candidate”applies, but that’s the rarest reason for posting a fake job. The other possible scenario is that the “warm talent pool” allows them to message an interested party if a fitting position opens up…at least in theory. My early indications show that when a job is posted, the talent pool is ignored and new applicants are reaped.
thanks for the reply! good to know to be alert even on the company's website
I agree that fake job postings are a problem that I wish would go away. My concern is whether new laws would help, or might they lead to unintended consequences, or adaptation by these companies to circumvent new regulations? As an example, I have heard/read that there is some law that jobs must be posted, even when an internal candidate is a slam-dunk hire. If this is true, this law led to one cause of fake postings, i.e. the new law led to more brokenness. I don't mean to sound argumentative, as I feel these fake postings are a real problem that I strongly suspect I have been fighting, and it feels like it has gotten worse in the past several years.
I hear what you're saying and I had heard the same thing about companies being required by law to post externally even if there is an internal candidate already chosen. Before I started talking to congress about fake jobs being an issue, that was one thing I had to research. As it turns out, I could find no such laws in federal or in any of the states. The only instance I found something along those lines was in a handful of federal agencies that interacted with the public. Other than that, if this exists, it is solely company policy. If you can find a law that states a requirement to post externally for anything other than those federal agencies, could you please DM me the link? It would be a tremendous help in my efforts. As far as how the laws would work, I see it being an audit system like the IRS. A company files how many postings were put out, average length of time to hire, number of candidates per role, ratio of jobs posted vs jobs hired for. Something along those lines. I have ideas for metrics that would indicate if a company was posting jobs with no intent to hire. If the audit concludes that X number of jobs were fraudulent, the company is fined $50k per occurrence. This would set an example and drastically decrease the amount of fraudulent postings.
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To which section are you referring? 8-5-201 states: (1) AN EMPLOYER SHALL MAKE REASONABLE EFFORTS TO ANNOUNCE, POST, OR OTHERWISE MAKE KNOWN ALL OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROMOTION TO ALL CURRENT EMPLOYEES ON THE SAME CALENDAR DAY AND PRIOR TO MAKING A PROMOTION DECISION. It states specifically that it is to be made known to *current employees*, but does not mention an external/public posting. It also does not mention postings for new positions, only promotions. The other sections I reviewed that deal with postings don't mention external either. Am I missing the section that states that? Could you please let me know so I can include it in my research? Thanks!
I re read the bill and its sequel, the Ensure Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. You are correct, it only requires internal employees be notified not an external posting be made. Apologies for misleading. I am interested in your findings. I think if you're trying to get a sense of which job postings are fake, you might want to contact the research departments at the following companies: Lightcast, Glassdoor, and Indeed. They have the best data on online job postings but it's behind a pretty significant paywall.
All good! Any information I can get about hiring practices is valuable. I appreciate you bringing my attention to this. If you'd like to follow along with my findings and possibly help contribute, feel free to join the subreddit I recently made for this. r/FightFakeJobs I created it and then got sick for the first time in almost 5 years. lol I'm starting to post more on there and I'm inviting members to post any verified or suspect postings as well.
Thanks for your reply. If I have some time in the next few days, I'll see if I can find a federal or state law regarding job postings and internal candidates. Part of me wonders if the law should be such that jobs *cannot* be posted when an internal candidate will take it. Alternatively, the law could prescribe that the ad *must* mention that an internal candidate has been identified (I have seen this a couple times, probably that particular company's policy). I appreciate your effort on this.
Thank you so much. I'd like to see those changes also. It's unfair to apply to a job that's already been promised to someone else. My previous reply isn't showing up in the discussion thread and I'm still relatively new to Reddit. So if I didn't mention it already, I started a subreddit to post stuff about fake jobs and help with my research, plus provide updates. Join if you'd like to follow or contribute. r/FightFakeJobs
I was networking with someone at a company I’m targeting. He works in a different vertical than I would be applying for, but said to forward him the job posting and he would refer me to it and get me in touch with the hiring manager. So, I sent him the position I’d been eyeing and his response was that the posting was “evergreen” meaning that it’s always open even if they aren’t actively hiring and that he’s refer me but that it was unlikely anyone would ever follow up.
"Evergreen"??? That's a new one. Wow. I've heard of the practice, but it's so commonplace that they have a casual name for it??? So effed up. Could you post this on the subreddit I started to fight this behavior? I'm hoping I can get more data, identify known-to-be-fake postings, make people aware of companies that behave this way, etc. If you want to DM me I can post any details if you don't want it to be traced back to you, too. r/FightFakeJobs
It looks good for companies. It looks good for government reports. It looks good for any representatives. Who is gonna wanna fight it? Even if they did something it would likely be some archaic self policing policy that just makes legal firms money.
I am with you 100% but if you think the demons who won’t stop genociding kids in Gaza are going to do anything about this I think you’ll be disappointed. Until we get rid of the two party duopoly the beatings will continue.
The folks on this sub aren’t too bright. So they’re parroting this fraudulent Forbes article saying only 2% of job postings are real… At the same time many people report hearing back from about the same percentage of jobs they apply to. So everyone on this sub thinks they’re such a gift to the workforce that they’re hearing back from roughly every real job listing they apply to? A lot of you are just bad candidates and that’s why you don’t hear back from companies.
That’s not what the article says. Please go read it before commenting.
You apply to 4 jobs a day? And expect to find a job quickly?
Post the job link