gregjor
13 hours ago
How will this hold companies accountable or change their screening process? Do you want your name on a site that “calls out” companies that didn’t respond to you?
If you have the goal to get a job I don’t see how this helps. If you have the goal to try to shame employers, maybe they will care, but you get no closer to your goal.
The site has the obvious problem that only “ghosting” reports get counted, but not successful interactions. I can think of a few reasons employers might post jobs they don’t intend to fill, but I can’t think of a reason an employer would spend any time interviewing if they don’t intend to hire someone. Much more likely they found a better candidate and have sloppy follow-up than something nefarious happened.
With so many people applying for jobs, and using bots and AI to do that, and then using employers for practice interviews, it seems inevitable that employers will put less effort into follow-up.
kaliades
13 hours ago
My goal is not to get a job but to create a sort of listing that people can use to see how much the company they have applied to has been flagged over time.
In terms of successful interactions glassdoor and such do a much better job of keeping the positive feedback in place.
I also never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or incompetence. That being said, I've seen more and more reports on nefarious reasons on why they do post jobs they never intend to fill out. I've seen job postings that have been open for years and people never hear back even with a rejection letter. Or even if they do get a rejection letter that says they've just hired somebody or closed the position, the job post is still up and reposted over and over.
gregjor
12 hours ago
The stock market and need to maintain shareholder value and the illusion of growth — or at least relevance — creates the perverse incentives for posting jobs that won’t get filled. That has gone on for a long time.
If companies cared about their reputation in the job market they would act differently. But even a company at the top of your list will get plenty of applicants when they get around to actually hiring. Right now they hold the cards.
Disconnecting hiring managers from the screening process, usually turned over to HR or recruitment firms, adequately explains a lot of the reported ghosting. Incompetence probably explains the rest.
Good luck.
voidnap
10 hours ago
The goal of a website like this isn't to get a job. I don't like being ghosted and if companies stop ghosting, that would be great. That's it.
For me, personally, part of the value a site like this comes from knowing how much time to invest into an application. I currently put a lot of time into my applications. I write cover letters. I'll do pre-interview assignments they ask of candidates. It would be nice to know how serious a company is about hiring before I spend my time with someone who has no interest in hiring me. That would be nice.
> The site has the obvious problem that only “ghosting” reports get counted, but not successful interactions.
I do think this is a really good point. Right now, just reporting on the number of bad interactions will bias against companies with a lot of interactions.
> With so many people applying for jobs, and using bots and AI to do that, and then using employers for practice interviews, it seems inevitable that employers will put less effort into follow-up.
This is just stupid. It's your job. Do your job. Ghosting people is indecent. Just because _some_ applicants are awful people isn't a free pass to be indecent to every applicant. Do better.
gregjor
5 hours ago
I think you misunderstand the screening to hiring pipeline. Companies have automated the process for their efficiency. When they get hundreds or thousands of applicants for every job they don’t need to bother acknowledging every applicant.
To make it worse people frequently find job postings through aggregators such as LinkedIn, or the many sites that scrape other sites. Job postings don’t get updated in real-time so you have to expect you will often see stale job postings — filled or closed already but still cached across the internet. Since job boards look better if they have lots of listings you can guess how diligently they curate.
I think taking “ghosting” personally and reading some kind of ethical breach into it wastes time and energy. If you submit applications online — perhaps the least effective job hunting strategy — you should expect a low hit rate, similar to sending bulk email. Use a better job hunting strategy rather than getting upset about the automated pipeline you feed.
I keep my own stress and frustration down by accepting that things work the way they work, not the way I think they should work. Interpreting impersonal annoyances such as ghosting as “indecent” or something to get upset about will just drain me without changing the reality.