gregjor
a year 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
a year 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
a year 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
a year 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
a year 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.
voidnap
a year ago
My problem isn't that I am applying through aggregators with old content. I've seen one case of that in recent memory. Most jobs I apply to are listed on the company's website. And most of the jobs I've found on aggregators either take you to the company website or have an identical posting on the company website that you can find with a google search. Its often quite easy to determine if a job is still accepting applications. Thats a very basic thing.
I mean, you could say that just because a job is up on a company's website, it doesn't mean they are hiring for it, so you shouldn't expect a response and being ghosted is reasonable. And given your last paragraph that would not surprise me.
But then why are you here in this thread? This tool isn't for you. If you aren't interested in trying to make things better then you sound like a doofus walking into a thread pointing out obvious grievances we share, contradicting the idea of doing anything about it, and encouraging everyone to join in your apathy.
gregjor
a year ago
> But then why are you here in this thread?
Because presumably most of the people who might look at the site, or read this thread, do so because they want to get a job and have run into ghosting. If they want to "do something about it," great, I think they will waste their time and energy getting distracted from finding a job.
Instead of getting hurt and angry about companies ghosting candidates, or posting jobs they don't intend to fill -- unfortunate realities that almost certainly won't change because of yet another web site calling them out -- I propose a different path. Stop taking these irritations personally. Adopt a better strategy for job hunting than sending in piles of applications and waiting to hear back. Applying to lots of jobs online like everyone else turns the process into a lazy, passive, and ultimately frustrating exercise. A numbers game where both sides race to the bottom with automation, while unreasonably expecting human interaction, or at least a simulation of it. Until you get an interview and an offer you didn't get the job, no reason to sit around fuming because you didn't get an email telling you that.
I'll point out that corporate bureaucracy means a company doesn't do anything. Maybe one person or a department failed to reply, in an organization that might otherwise offer great opportunities and work environment. Job hunters need to get past and around the HR/recruitment bureaucracy and automation, not tilt and windmills trying to change it.
Who do you think will find a job first? The person who concentrates on identifying possible employers, cultivating contacts and referrals, and getting their CV in front of the hiring manager? Or the person scrolling through LinkedIn, waiting, then angrily posting their "I got ghosted" story? Which kind of personality of those two do you think makes for a more appealing candidate?
> ... encouraging everyone to join in your apathy.
Apathy means a lack of concern or interest. Apathy describes the HN readers who didn't click through on this thread, or look at the site, or bother to comment. I have no interest in which companies ghosted some candidates for whatever unknowable reason. I have more interest in people finding jobs, and have posted quite a bit about that already. We all have to choose what we devote our time and energy to. I suggest focusing on the positive goal of finding a job rather than on the negative (and almost certainly futile) goal of shaming companies that I know currently get swamped with thousands of applications for every job posting.
None of us can control what employers post, or how they screen, interview, and maintain their job postings, or whether they reply or ghost candidates. We can control our own reactions and our approach to finding a job.
voidnap
a year ago
> sending in piles of applications and waiting to hear back. Applying to lots of jobs online like everyone else turns the process into a lazy, passive, and ultimately frustrating exercise.
This isn't what I do. I've said as much. And I don't advocate that people do this. I completely agree that candidates shouldn't vomit out low effort applications.
So, again, why are you in this thread? You are replying to me but not what I'm saying.
> Who do you think will find a job first? The person who concentrates on identifying possible employers, cultivating contacts and referrals, and getting their CV in front of the hiring manager?
I've literally done this. It gets me nowhere. I get ghosted. At best, I get interviews where they clearly have no intention to seriously consider me as a candidate.
> Or the person scrolling through LinkedIn, waiting, then angrily posting their "I got ghosted" story?
Your advice is lame and this is a caricature. I agree that people shouldn't do this. Maybe you see that I'm on this forum here on this thread doing this and you think this is LinkedIn? Do you think this is LinkedIn?
Your advice is literally just, don't use your resume as a forum to vent. Like, wow, genius dude, did you figure that out yourself bud? Good job!
> None of us can control what employers post, or how they screen, interview, and maintain their job postings, or whether they reply or ghost candidates.
This is the apathy I refer to. Companies can be considerate of their public image and respond to that.
The culture around hiring is a thing that candidates participate in and do affect. I think you would even agree with this when you talk about a "race to the bottom". If applicants submit AI slop or spam companies then companies don't feel like their time is valued and might not reciprocate. Not only do both parties have the power to affect the culture by how they conduct themselves, they have a responsibility to.
My entire point, from the beginning, is that companies don't value my time regardless of how much time or effort I put in. The advice you give about trying to establish relationships or just not submit AI slop in applications is not helpful, in general, because companies, in general, do not value the effort I put in to an application; they are, in general, indiscriminate.
If you've had different experiences, I'm happy for you. But if your goal is just to disagree on this basic fact or insist that nothing can be done about it then this isn't for you and you have nothing of value to add to it.
A website like this at the very least can help identify what companies do value their candidate's more than others and act responsibly. So that people like me don't overgeneralize their negative experiences with one company to all the others.
And yeah I'd expect that could affect the public image of companies with anti-social behavior. Like every few months when there's another thread and someone posts about how the hiring process at Canonical is absurd for asking them 30 questions about your time in high school, that generally isn't a good look.