28% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days

Ghost jobs! Tremendous dataset. Hospitality and education roles listed near the top are likely strong signal the wages are inadequate and a refusal to raise the wage to a market clearing price. Healthcare is self explanatory, demand is voracious due to a rapidly aging population and wages available and appropriate in many cases. > Hospitality postings sit the longest: 43.9% have been open more than 90 days, median 65 days. Healthcare turns over fastest at 19.7%. (kudos to unlisted for aggregating and reporting, this gives me a data point to offer to jurisdictions and regulators interested in compliance monitoring in this context)

• dofm · 16 hours ago

  Education roles are also an indication of mandatory listing: they have someone internally in mind for a future vacancy but are legally required to list it.

  • toomuchtodo · 16 hours ago

    Any citations are welcome on this for my source of truth knowledge graph. Thank you in advance.

    • mixdup · 16 hours ago

      It's the case for most government jobs (which in the US most education roles are for government institutions--whether it be traditional K-12 schools or universities). The law in most states and at the federal level require opening jobs to the general public to prevent favoritism, encourage diversity, discourage corruption, etc. It usually just results in having a job posting that is filled before it's posted as they will have an internal candidate, and the rest is for show Source of truth from this one is I've worked in public higher ed in two states in the US and gone through this process personally

    • renjimen · 16 hours ago

      My partner is a teacher in rural Canada and this is true here, at least. District admins often design a role with someone in mind, setting very specific requirements to that effect (needs to have shop AND socials training/experience is one that comes to mind). They need to post the job to meet union criteria, but only one person could realistically fit the bill.

There are some browser plugins you can use for job sites like LinkedIn to filter out Ghost Jobs. It's been somewhat helpful, but honestly it feels like 90% of tech jobs right now are Ghost jobs. It's happened so many times. Apply for a job, within an hour get an email that says I am not qualified (not true), and then a week later the same job gets posted again. I'm normally a pretty free-market guy, but it should be illegal. It's clear-cut fraud - they are advertising something that doesn't exist, specifically to game numbers. And what's more, governments report on these numbers as if they are real job opportunities in the economy.

• valgaze · 16 hours ago

  Sounds super annoying sorry it sucks but who exactly are they defrauding in your view? And what numbers are they gaming?

  • dgunay · 16 hours ago

    The job market should be just that, a market, between buyers and sellers, not people who pretend to be buying in order to look like they've got money. I know this analogy breaks down a little bit since this behavior does actually happen, sort of, in real life p2p markets but the point is, it sucks and if you've ever sold anything on fb marketplace you know how obnoxious it is dealing with people who demand a lot of you but do not intend to actually commit to buying what you're selling.

  • legitster · 15 hours ago

    Investors for one. If these are larger companies, they will often inflate their actual hiring numbers to make it look like they are anticipating more growth than they are actually expecting. But I certainly feel ripped off applying for jobs they never intended on filling. If they put up a lot of hoops to jump through to apply (submit a portfolio, set up an account, write a cover letter specific to our company), times that by the 1000 people who have applied, and it's an exorbitant amount of human time getting wasted.

    • chaosharmonic · 8 hours ago

      Also, possibly the government -- depending on where they are and what kinds of tax breaks they could be getting for bringing jobs into the area.

  • HumblyTossed · 15 hours ago

    Investors maybe. Makes your company look better than it is.

• badatnames · 16 hours ago

  The consistent reports I'm getting through friends who have spoken to recruiters is just that standards have increased dramatically. Firms accepting only a single candidate CV from a recruiter instead of 5 or more, and the recruiter downstream working their ass off to ensure it is absolutely the best possible CV, because if it's not then they don't get paid.

  • legitster · 16 hours ago

    > Firms accepting only a single candidate CV from a recruiter instead of 5 or more Why though? I've done hiring before - it takes less than 30 seconds to skim a resume. The recruiters also have no idea what the responsibility is for the jobs they are hiring for - it's a terrible place to bottleneck candidates on. It sounds like everyone, including recruiters, are being sent on a snipe hunt.

    • SoftTalker · 15 hours ago

      I would guess that with bots and AI, a lot of resumes are not even from real candidates, and those that are, are AI slop. I don't envy recruiters or hiring managers these days.

• Aurornis · 16 hours ago

  > Apply for a job, within an hour get an email Hiring has been crazy for years. It's worse with remote jobs because you get a firehose of applicants everywhere. When I was doing a lot of hiring I tried to be as responsive as possible because you don't want to lose the best candidates. I would try to review applicants as fast as they came in. You have to understand that in that hour I might get 40 resumes. 1 or 2 are amazing, another 2-3 could be worth a look, and another 5 might have made the cut if I didn't just read those 2-5 much better resumes ahead of them. If you met the listing qualifications but got rejected as not qualified, I would double check that your resume wasn't unclear about something. You would not believe how many times I've interviewed candidates who had some key experience that they forgot to include on the resume and didn't realize it was missing until it spontaneously came up in talking to them. The simpler explanation is that a tired hiring manager was just clicking buttons to dismiss applicants who didn't make the cut.

  • legitster · 15 hours ago

    > If you met the listing qualifications but got rejected as not qualified, I would double check that your resume wasn't unclear about something. You would not believe how many times I've interviewed candidates who had some key experience that they forgot to include on the resume and didn't realize it was missing until it spontaneously came up in talking to them. That assumes that I am writing my resume for just your job posting. If I am just going to copy and paste the job requirement verbatim on my resume, doesn't that make your job screening applicants for actual experience much harder? Often times the difference is splitting hairs anyway ("we're looking for someone who paints brown houses"). But as a rule I don't customize my resume for every job posting anyway - if I have to apply to 70+ job listings to even hear back from even one of them, I would just frankly not have the time to do so. Regardless, if my application is getting thrown out because my title is not quite right in a subtle way, or I reference Javascript but not Python, and no one is telling me - that's unfair on everybody. The company is going to skip over the best candidates for superficial reasons, because nobody is telling them their resume isn't perfect.

    • shagie · 15 hours ago

      Consider the case... I've got a stack of 100 resumes and 2 hours today to select the top 10 candidates from that stack. I'll be ranking those 10 and give them to HR at the end of the day today. Tomorrow, HR will take the top 5 who are available and schedule interviews for next Tuesday. One of them will be selected from those who interview next Tuesday. What can you do to increase the odds that you're in the top 10 (and preferably top 5)? It's possible that a superficial reason was used to separate number 10 from number 11 ... and maybe number 11 would have been a great candidate and future employee. What I don't have is three weeks to do all day 9-5 1h long interviews for every candidate.

      • legitster · 15 hours ago

        That makes sense for the opportunities that actually close after they are posted. I'm talking about jobs that disqualify you as a candidate same day, then repost the same listing next week. And next month. And next year. These are clearly ghost jobs. Regardless - it would be nothing to show some basic human decency and respect: - Review them more often until you get the 5 quality candidates to interview (there's no way in hell you actually review all 100 resumes fully - quit sitting on them for weeks and weeks) - Take down the posting after resumes are reviewed - Submit a basic and honest response for the people who's resumes didn't make the consideration - A simple human note for the candidates who were considered but didn't make the interview - Timely closer for the interviewed candidates who didn't get the job None of these add any substantial time to the hiring process, but can go a long way to remember the human in a job market that's an absolutely brutal and soulless Leviathan right now.

        • shagie · 13 hours ago

          I work in the public sector. There's a requirement (i.e. law) that the job posting is available for the public to read for two weeks. No selection may be made before all applications are received. After two weeks, the posting is taken down. > - Submit a basic and honest response for the people who's resumes didn't make the consideration If you have 200 resumes in the pool and 100 of them weren't passed on for additional consideration because they didn't meet the requirements (education, needing visa sponsorship, outside of the country, not following the instructions for the application), how long will that take? Furthermore, in the litigious nation we live in, that information when provided honestly has tended to lead to lawsuits ("I wasn't considered because..."). > - A simple human note for the candidates who were considered but didn't make the interview That's another 100 candidates. Three minutes each to write the email? That's three hours of someone's day. Again, this gets to the litigious situations. It only takes the allegation of bias to lead to a lawsuit - that costs way more than three hours of my day. This is the public sector, we don't pay a lot - that's why it's only 200 applications. In the private sector it wouldn't be hard to multiply that number by 3 or 4. > - Timely closer for the interviewed candidates who didn't get the job This is something that we're good at. The people who were interviewed know by the end of the week. Job posting opening to the selection being made is four weeks.

          • legitster · 13 hours ago

            The simple and honest response can be an automated email that says you didn't meet the requirements - you would be amazed at how many job postings don't even do that. I can understand the justification for all of the other choices. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. The whole process is degrading and dehumanizing, and it's something that has gotten much, much worse in the last decade.

            • johnnyanmac · 12 hours ago

              The GP said the quiet part out loud. They are so worried about lawsuits that they'd rather make the job market worse for everyone (including themselves) than risk a lawsuit over the most basic feedback. The product of a low-trust society.

              • parineum · 8 hours ago

                This isn't really a low trust society, it's a litigious society problem. These lawsuits aren't a myth, if you hire a lot of people it'll eventually happen, even if you're not violating any laws. The lawsuits, even when you win, waste time and money. Giving reasons, especially customized "human" responses is absolutely going to increase your chances of being sued.

                • johnnyanmac · 7 hours ago

                  Low trust means assuming any and all reasons given out will result in lawsuits. It's precisely a symptom of a low trust society. A not-low trust (doesn't have to be high trust) society wouldn't assume legitimate feedback would be litigatable, and likewise candidates wouldn't be in such bad situations that they'd need to sue every rejection. As you said, lawsuits take a lot of time and money. Individuals don't have that and would prefer to settle things privately. But if they don't trust institutions to do that, then the only thing to trust is the contract of a lawyer.

                  • fragmede · 7 hours ago

                    Individuals without jobs have a lot of time since they don't have a job, and can find lawyers willing to work on contingency.

                    • johnnyanmac · 6 hours ago

                      More time than average, less money than average. But these people also need to apply to dozens of jobs, more likely hundreds. They can't sue every place.

              • Aurornis · 5 hours ago

                I thought the threat of lawsuits was a lame excuse, so I tried to give good feedback to rejected candidates who asked. It did not take long for one of them to try to turn it against me with threats. We would have easily won the case, but having a lawsuit hanging over my head and a target on my back as a liability for the company was not a good feeling. I no longer give specific feedback.

                • johnnyanmac · 5 hours ago

                  Yeah, that's the product of a low trust society. It's not any single person perpetuating it, but it affects us all. A higher trust society would write it off as a bad outlier and keep going. A low trust society wonders when's the next time you get another person that causes an undue burden.

      • johnnyanmac · 12 hours ago

        That's why feedback is important. If the reason was "we are looking for X experience and X is not on your resume" I can adjust that for later. If it was even as honest as "we found enough qualified candidates to interview and didn't look at your resume", that's still semi-actionable feedback. I either apply earlier or just accept that I was unlucky and it was not my ability. Generic rejections like "we moved with other candidates" tells me nothing. So noise remains because candidates don't have feedback to improve upon. All because HR wants minimize lawsuits through obscurity.

    • Aurornis · 15 hours ago

      > That assumes that I am writing my resume for just your job posting. If I am just going to copy and paste the job requirement verbatim on my resume, doesn't that make your job screening applicants for actual experience much harder? It doesn't make the hiring manager's job harder if you decline to customize your resume. They press reject and move to the next resume. > Regardless, if my application is getting thrown out because my title is not quite right in a subtle way, or I reference Javascript but not Python, and no one is telling me - that's unfair on everybody. If a job listing asks for Python and someone submits a resume that does not list Python, it's fair to reject that candidate. If there was a hidden requirement to know Python but the job listing didn't ask for it, you get a lot of applicants that don't fit. Smart hiring managers will update the job listing as they review candidates. There are some lazy companies that will have secret requirements that they don't put in the job listing, but that only creates more work for everyone involved. It's not a secret trick they're pulling to be mean. They're just bad at their jobs. > The company is going to skip over the best candidates for superficial reasons, because nobody is telling them their resume isn't perfect. Unpopular opinion around these parts, but there's a high correlation between the best candidates and people who take the time to review the job posting and customize their resume before submitting. I doubt the "best candidate" is also the person who can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to update their resume before pressing submit. > But as a rule I don't customize my resume for every job posting anyway - if I have to apply to 70+ job listings to even hear back from even one of them, Complaining about low response rates and refusing to tailor your resume are highly correlated, in my observation.

      • cryzinger · 15 hours ago

        Probably a dumb question, but when you say "tailor your resume", what kind of tailoring do you mean? I've seen this advice repeated a lot, but I've rarely taken it because I tend to apply to jobs with the same job title and roughly the same responsibilities; in general, I assumed that tailoring is mainly helpful if you have a diverse/generalist skillset. Like, it's obvious to me why a true Jack of all trades would use different resumes for applying to a plumber role vs a carpenter role, but less clear why a career plumber would tailor resumes for applying to two plumber roles at slightly different companies.

        • shagie · 14 hours ago

          If the job is for a backend Java developer position, change the list of languages you know from: Languages: JavaScript, C#, Python, Java to: Languages: Java, C#, JavaScript, Python Many times people order their languages by familiarity or preference for working with that technology. Don't make the person looking at the resume have to hunt for the information. If it's last on the list, that may say something about how much you're interested in that job and how likely you are to stay. > but less clear why a career plumber would tailor resumes for applying to two plumber roles at slightly different companies. If one company is looking for a plumber to do PEX and another is looking for someone who is experienced with natural gas and black pipe, you might want to make sure that your experience in those two different domains of plumbing are at the front of the experience. They're both plumbers, but the heating and air conditioning company hiring a plumber is looking for different things than the residential new construction plumber.

          • legitster · 14 hours ago

            It's so funny to me that a tech company will have no problem hiring a VP from, like, a beverage company - but heaven forbid you put your programming languages in the wrong order on your resume.

            • shagie · 14 hours ago

              Hiring a CEO, you know (of) the person and its more likely a "the board wants to hire {that person}" and it really doesn't matter what the text of their resume says. At most there's a dozen candidates and a several month process for selecting one of them. For developers, if the resumes are largely the same, then you're selecting for the ones that show evidence that they read the job posting and want to work there. This isn't about hiring the best candidate - it's the least risky candidate that is hired. If you're listing the preferred language of the job and the language that is mentioned in the job posting last, you're more likely to be a risky candidate than one who lists it first. You may not know the language as well. You may not enjoy working on it (there's a reason I don't list php in the languages on my resume). In a stack with less risky candidates, the one that has the preferred language last won't be at the top of the list for callbacks.

          • whstl · 14 hours ago

            While this makes absolutely no sense to me, I'm pretty sure unhinged language fanatics would reject some resumes because "Java is not the first on the list". HR people and AIs, as much as I criticise them: would not reject that.

            • shagie · 13 hours ago

              If I have 100 resumes, and 50 of them list Java first, and 50 of them list Java last, which pool of 50 am I most likely to find someone who knows and doesn't hate working in Java? You're going to select 10 people out of that list of 100 because you don't have time to call everyone for three weeks to evaluate their skill. You've also got only two hours to look through all 100 of those resumes today. You're spending about a minute and a half looking at each resume. How are you going to evaluate someone for a Java backend position who's last job was in C# and they list Java last in the list of languages they know?

              • whstl · 13 hours ago

                Okay, yeah, now I agree with you. The last paragraph makes a great point: if the person has been out of Java the game for long, they will definitely be second to someone who's fresh out of a Java job. And the reason is exactly as you say: limited time, excessive number of CVs. This completely changes the game.

              • johnnyanmac · 12 hours ago

                >which pool of 50 am I most likely to find someone who knows and doesn't hate working in Java? The one who has actual projects or professional experience in Java? I'm surprised this is such a sticking point. I list my skills last on the resume because it's the least relevant and it was mostly to try and satisfy ATS. But reality is stranger than theory, I suppose. At least, that was my old approach. I found some advice I really liked and ultimately integrate a tech stack sub-bullet in every experience now. Seems to be a good balance of ATS and human(-skimming) readability.

              • rendaw · 5 hours ago

                If I were reviewing 100 resumes, I wouldn't use the language list. I'd use something with actual context, like work experience. But more than that, why do you think someone who is terrible at java wouldn't put it first in the list when applying for a java oriented job? Assuming they were aware of this unwritten rule.

            • johnnyanmac · 12 hours ago

              AI wouldn't. It'll crunch the resume in milliseconds and sort it out itself. HR is a mixed bag, usually without technical context. I'm sure most engineers in the 00's and 10's have some experience of "Java and JavaScript are similar, right?" In a recruiter call.

        • drillsteps5 · 12 hours ago

          Several months ago, having exhausted all other options in fruitless job search, I asked for assistance of a recruiter who I used to work with some time ago. Just to get some pointers on how I could improve my search, with his experience working on the other side. His advice on "tailoring" was very simple. Go to the most popular LLM (ie Claude). Give it the job description. Give it your resume. Ask it for percentage match, it will give you a number. Then ask for advice on improving your resume, you can either ask to rework the resume by itself (if you're in a hurry) or you can work with the thing to modify the sections/entries yourself, one by one, if you have time. With each modification you will get better and better percentage match. Ideally you need to get to high 80% or maybe even 90%. The idea is that automated ranking tools used by recruiters/HR are ultimately use the very same LLM, so you are improving your ranking assigned to your resume by those ranking systems. I have to add that now this advice is mostly useless as everybody's using the same technique so you won't be standing up against others but merely be on the same level. Add to it the fact that many job descriptions are inaccurate and sometimes downright misleading, and hiring managers use their own criteria, and you will understand why connections/referrals is probably the only way to get hired now.

          • Terr_ · 12 hours ago

            > The idea is that automated ranking tools used by recruiters/HR are ultimately use the very same LLM, so you are improving your ranking assigned to your resume by those ranking systems. Working in HR-tech, that is definitely happening, and "self-bias" is a thing with LLMs so if you can guess what the employer/screening-process is using then that's a bonus. That said, we should distinguish between "Hey robot tell me if X matches Y" prompts, versus model-weights comparison. In the second case, the system feeds your resume into a model with no prompt, grabs all the magic math numbers, and statistically compares them to the magic-numbers if the model had been given some "ideal" resumes.

      • legitster · 14 hours ago

        > If a job listing asks for Python and someone submits a resume that does not list Python, it's fair to reject that candidate. The thing though is it's a bad requirement. There are any number of great candidates who could be proficient in Python - the skills are very transferrable. (It's like trying to find a painter and filtering out people who have never painted a brown houses) The thing you're screening for by being so specific is not finding the most qualified person, you're going to end up with the person with the most time and patience to fib or lie on their resume. > I doubt the "best candidate" is also the person who can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to update their resume before pressing submit. That's exactly wrong - the best candidates are going to be busy people who are great at their job - the people jumping through HR hoops to get hired are by nature going to be worse candidates .

        • whstl · 14 hours ago

          So, I recently got about 600 resumes for a senior Python backend position. Out of those about half had no experience in backend or python, plus weren't senior enough for us to consider. Or forgot to include all that in their CV. They get filtered out in the first filter phase. While I'm sure a portion of those could do the job, I can't realistically interview those 300 people when there are other 300 who happen to have at least written that in their CV.

          • legitster · 14 hours ago

            > So, I recently got about 600 resumes for a senior Python backend position. Dear lord the job market is an absolute disaster right now. People are clambering for the last helicopter out of Saigon.

            • whstl · 12 hours ago

              Oh god, I should tell you about the frontend position, then, which got 1000 applicants and then we just closed within a week, despite naturally not having hired anyone yet...

            • yuye · 10 hours ago

              >Dear lord the job market is an absolute disaster right now. Indeed it is, I don't know and would never like to know the levels of desperation one needs to reach to accept writing Python as a career. (I jest, I jest) In all seriousness, Python (and the same goes for with Javascript/Typescript) is a popular language that is taught at many bootcamps. I'm sure that has lots to do with the number of applications for these kinds of roles.

              • whstl · 1 hour ago

                That’s a good theory, but we also get ridiculous numbers for C#, design, product management and, at a previous job, Ruby and devops we also got flooded. Honestly the only language we do that gets a normal amount of candidates is C++, but the team that does it complains about quality too, a lot of exaggerated CVs.

        • Aurornis · 5 hours ago

          > There are any number of great candidates who could be proficient in Python - I don't think you understand. You have to prioritize. You can't interview everyone. There may be someone in the rejection pool who might be able to pick up Python quickly and enjoy it. It does not matter if I have 10 people who can bring 5 years of Python experience to the first day on the job, and 1-2 more people who can bring 10+ years and probably teach us something about Python. > the skills are very transferrable. (It's like trying to find a painter and filtering out people who have never painted a brown houses) I've painted houses. I've done programming. This analogy is not good at all. Some people don't adapt well to new programming languages. Some people try, then decide they hate the new language and start looking for new jobs. You don't have to risk any of this when you already have more Python applicants than interview slots.

      • johnnyanmac · 12 hours ago

        >I doubt the "best candidate" is also the person who can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to update their resume before pressing submit. Do you really think the best candidates are ones who are bothering to cold apply through hiring portals to begin with? The best interviewers, sure. For people who are actively searching, 10 minutes for 100 applications is 15 hours of work. Reply rates can be as bad as 1 in 500. In this kind of market you want to get that application rate down to 2-3 minutes. There's no time nor point to tailoring towards dream jobs; oods are you dreams were crushed 200 applications ago. There's no particular reason your time is more valuable. We're all just trying to survive in these tumultuous times.

        • Aurornis · 5 hours ago

          > Reply rates can be as bad as 1 in 500. I've done volunteer resume review and interview coaching in the past. The only people getting response rates that low either had the most awful resumes you've ever seen, or they were applying for jobs completely out of their league. Like the 23 year old applying for Staff Software Engineer jobs as the next step up from his junior position (which he was laid off from) with 6 typos in his resume and an e-mail address of ninjadude69@hotmail.com at the top of his resume.

      • yesb · 12 hours ago

        >Unpopular opinion around these parts, but there's a high correlation between the best candidates and people who take the time to review the job posting and customize their resume before submitting. There's also a high correlation between matching the job description perfectly and the resume being AI generated and/or dishonest. Doubly so if the requirements are overly specific or contain pure nonsense as some do (saw "Must have 5 years experience with Claude Code" recently). You can filter out people who blatantly don't match the job and those who obviously just copied the job description. Never seen much correlation between the quality of resumes in the middle (ok to great) and how well they do in interviews. Not to mention at many places "requirements" are mere suggestions or a low-effort list of technologies taken from the resume of the person who quit. Everybody has their own filtering rules and hiring managers rarely agree with each other much less the HR people usually doing the first round of filtering. The true requirements come out only at the resume filtering or interview stage. >I doubt the "best candidate" is also the person who can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to update their resume before pressing submit. The "best candidate" a lot of times doesn't mean the best able to do the job. It often means the ones who 1. makes the hiring manager feel good by being enthusiastic about their (statistically) average job for average pay and 2. minimizes their perceived risk of looking bad for their hiring choice. >If a job listing asks for Python and someone submits a resume that does not list Python, it's fair to reject that candidate. If you're not a FAANGMULA type place then sure. But also if your job posting lists something like "Python 3.14" or "7+ years Python" I know the hiring manager probably doesn't know the first thing about python. In that case I think it's fair for any decent programmer to lie because they will likely surpass the hiring managers knowledge by studying python a bit before the interview.

        • Aurornis · 5 hours ago

          > There's also a high correlation between matching the job description perfectly and the resume being AI generated and/or dishonest. If the resume is dishonest we find out in the phone screens or first interview rounds, and the candidate is tossed.

  • quadrifoliate · 15 hours ago

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

    • legitster · 15 hours ago

      Especially if the job is posted on LinkedIn. You can already just poll a list of the most qualified candidates and reach out to them with opportunities. The problem is companies would actually have to make compelling offers to qualified people.

    • pixl97 · 15 hours ago

      >via a recruiter While not as bad as applying yourself, they can be pretty damned awful.

    • Aurornis · 15 hours ago

      I do reach out to LinkedIn profiles and some social media accounts, but I'd never use LLM-written text to do so. You have to appear like a real human. The candidates in demand get recruiter spam all week long. If you go LLM slop canon on their inbox they're not going to respond. Cold outreach has a low response rate. It's worth doing, but you can't rely on it. You have to go through all angles. Typically I'd be doing a mix of my own cold outreach, public job postings, an internal company referral program, and for difficult roles a trusted external recruiter who I know is good for candidates.

    • gedy · 14 hours ago

      Yeah, I’ve never understood this - earlier in my career this was the standard to have technically skilled hiring managers look for and contact people. Now people act like they must have this ridiculous firehose of resumes to sort through, then have non-technical HR gals sort and filter out based on whatever random criteria they use, and then by the time it gets to the hiring managers - they still have no idea if this person is a complete idiot or has any skills at all. The qualified people you actually want to hire don’t want to be treated like idiots or liars either. I just don’t feel it has to be this way - there is zero value in a firehose unless you were looking for desperate and cheap people.

      • whstl · 14 hours ago

        I don't think anyone really wants the firehose. It's just something that happens when you advertise on any popular platform. However I'll agree with you, the non-technical people sorting CVs on unknown criteria is something that became very widespread lately, and is certainly part of what's contributing to the problem. Perhaps managers starting to do it by themselves rather than having HR in the middle is the answer to the problem.

    • criddell · 14 hours ago

      AI tools have devalued resumes and cover letters, personal repos, leet code scores, etc... It's always been the case, but now it's more true than ever: your professional network is super important. If somebody on the inside can recommend you, your chances of getting an offer are good compared to throwing your resume on the pile.

      • quadrifoliate · 13 hours ago

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

  • matwood · 15 hours ago

    > You have to understand that in that hour I might get 40 resumes. 1 or 2 are amazing, another 2-3 could be worth a look, and another 5 might have made the cut if I didn't just read those 2-5 much better resumes ahead of them. This sounds like a dream. We posted a job a couple of weeks ago and had 1200 applications in around 2 days. Most are complete garbage. I'm confused why they took the time to apply at all, even if AI did it for them.

    • drillsteps5 · 13 hours ago

      If you go through "Show HN" posts you will see multiple projects that partially or completely automate both search and application process. Just set up a bot that searches for newly posted positions matching whatever criteria, customizes the resume, applies. Probably costs a few cents for the applicant, but increases their chances somewhat. And the rest of us deal with the consequences.

    • moregrist · 13 hours ago

      Some fraction of applications that don’t really fit are submitted by people trying to keep their unemployment benefits. You have to keep applying to continue to qualify, but the jobs don’t have to be a perfect fit. Being unemployed is hard and can be really demoralizing. Try thinking “I’m probably helping someone pay rent until they find a job listing that works for them” when you’re rejecting obviously unsuitable applications. It at least makes the “wtf”-ness of some of them seem a little less weird.

      • Aurornis · 5 hours ago

        > Try thinking “I’m probably helping someone pay rent until they find a job listing that works for them” when you’re rejecting obviously unsuitable applications I could believe this if you were in a population 5,000 town with few employers and the person applying had to work in person. In our industry, where there are 1000 different remote job listings available to anyone at any time, there is no justification for this.

        • brailsafe · 5 hours ago

          > In our industry, where there are 1000 different remote job listings available to anyone at any time, there is no justification for this. Do you mean that there's no reason to send resumes or to wherever or that there's no reason to be unemployed given the theoretically endless number of postings?

    • bluecheese452 · 8 hours ago

      A lot of them are also from hostile foreign powers trying to commit economic sabotage.

  • johnnyanmac · 13 hours ago

    >You would not believe how many times I've interviewed candidates who had some key experience that they forgot to include on the resume and didn't realize it was missing until it spontaneously came up in talking to them. Resumes are only a 1 page summary (2 if you're really experienced) and this kind of market has you doing hundreds of submissions if you lack connections (or your connections are also job searching). You don't have the time to tailor every application for every role. A shame because LLMs should really be perfect at this. Most current tools are too obsessed with writing for you (and creating a blander resume) instead of just taking a master CV and drag and dropping the most applicable roles/projects/experiences in.

• MarleTangible · 15 hours ago

  There are also a lot of reposts coming from recruiting companies. I see a position getting posted for a local company, and within hours the same requirements are showing up for 10 new postings with vague company names like "... is wanted for a local manufacturer" etc.

  • legitster · 15 hours ago

    The way I got my current job is that the company I applied for rejected my application and then hired a recruiter who brought me in with the same application. The company essentially handed the recruiter $10k because they were too bad at reviewing their own applications.

    • mattm · 14 hours ago

      How do hire a recruiter as a candidate?

      • legitster · 14 hours ago

        In this case the company hired the recruiter because "they couldn't find any candidates". Hiring your own recruiter can be kind of a scam - if you do it on your side they'll want ~10% of your first year's salary. But if you're interested in such a thing, all you have to do is so much as wag a finger on LinkedIn and they'll come swarming.

  • destitude · 15 hours ago

    After I scheduled an appointment which I realized was a "recruiter" the zoom link showed the local time zone for the recruiter was from some West African country. I cancelled the appointment.

  • thepryz · 14 hours ago

    This. I can't tell you how many times I've been contacted by a recruiter looking to fill a job that I myself am the hiring manager for or is within my reporting line. When recruiters can't even be bothered to look at the job, company and potentially hiring manager before contacting someone, the system is broken.

• bluecheese452 · 8 hours ago

  A free market requires perfect information. Ghost jobs are the opposite of that.

• chaosharmonic · 8 hours ago

  This kind of stuff wouldn't be happening if we regulated jobs like we regulate banks. Those regulations aren't perfect , but after working at one it became pretty clear that a lot of these things wouldn't fly if a bank did them. Falsely advertise a financial offering? Pretty clearly actionable. Ghost someone after they inquire about one? Deny them for some vague reason? Even just give them an unfavorable rate without specifying as much? None of those things would hold up. You have to send notices of any adverse action you take, not just providing clear communication that you're taking some kind of action against them, but giving a clear and objective reason why . Call around to everyone someone might have worked for or with for references, without their knowledge or consent? See "clear and objective reason why." Also, if you use a third party to do this there are a whole collection of responsibilities under the Fair Credit Reporting Act -- you have to provide people with copies of the information gathered on request, inform them anytime it's used against them, offer some process for disputing incorrect details... And that threshold is from gathering the data, not from scoring it. Never mind equity compensation, which is somehow special in terms of financial disclosures -- whether that's relative to the same company later offering the same stock to the public, or just more generally to any kind of investment offer. None of this is any less unreasonable on the employer side.

I was under the impression a large % of jobs posted on jobs sites are done simply for compliance reasons and because HR has some "bullshit jobs" parts to it and the companies will usually simply hire from within the company itself.

• reticulates · 16 hours ago

  Sometimes that can happen but it is not common, certainly not a large % of job posts.

  • Bratmon · 16 hours ago

    Do you have a source on that? It would be genuinely shocking to me if someone came up with evidence that the majority of jobs on job sites were made by companies that actually intended to hire the best candidate that applied through that site!

    • reticulates · 14 hours ago

      Surely you should be looking for evidence of the opposite. Why would a company create a job listing if they aren’t hiring? You are supposing there’s a global conspiracy to create fake job listings. Every company I’ve worked at, from startups to big tech have had job listings open when they want to hire someone. Sometimes a job post will stay open for months or even years, not because it is fake but because finding the right candidate is far more important than finding a candidate. I empathize with the frustrating experience of seeing job listings that you’re qualified for and not being hired, and certainly a lot of companies half-ass their hiring and do not review every applicant, but fake job listings make very little sense. When they do occur, it’s for obscure reasons, not because that is standard operating procedure. The whoishiring thread here on HN regularly sees candidates accuse regularly posting companies of not actually hiring, even though there’s ample evidence these companies are hiring. Re: the original claim about job posts being created when the company already has an internal candidate, there are very few organizations where that is necessary. A private company rarely has an obligation to consider outside candidates, it is mostly seen in government recruitment and for visa reasons. Job sites charge lots of money to list, a company wouldn’t waste money advertising a job they don’t intend to hire for.

      • Telaneo · 12 hours ago

        https://www.resumebuilder.com/3-in-10-companies-currently-ha... 2024.

      • Bratmon · 11 hours ago

        The evidence for ghost jobs existing is that a majority of hiring managers openly admit to posting ghost jobs: https://clarifycapital.com/job-seekers-beware-of-ghost-jobs-... https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12977 I'm still waiting for they evidence they don't exist, which was conspicuously absent from your post despite its length.

        • reticulates · 10 hours ago

          Did you read the Clarify Capital article? The definition of “ghost job” does not support the point you’re trying to make. The definition of “ghost job” in that article is so broad it includes pretty much every job post. A job post being open for 30 days does not make it a “ghost job” by any reasonable definition. The Congress publication includes no evidence or conclusion and even notes that the issue of ghost jobs is disputed. Did you just google ghost jobs and copy the first 2 links without reading them? Even within this HN post there are people claiming that almost 100% of the whoishiring jobs are fake which is demonstrably untrue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823091

          • Bratmon · 8 hours ago

            A job posting that's open for over a month without hiring someone is absolutely a ghost job!

            • unified101 · 4 hours ago

              I rcently joined a hiring process for a role. I think a majority of the jobs will NOT be filled in 30 days, given how the process and coordination works.

  • justinator · 12 hours ago

    n of 1 and all, but most jobs I've gotten that were worth getting were from personal reference. To the extent that applying through job sites seems like a real waste of time unless I'm really desperate. And to reflect that, the jobs I've gotten were the ones you'd only accept if you were really desperate. (Covid Times, man: Covid Times.)

At least in my country, a job posting that stays up forever isn't a ghost job. It's a company that can't keep people. Either the conditions are brutal or the pay is garbage.

• alightsoul · 16 hours ago

  What country is it?

  • mgaldys4 · 16 hours ago

    China

• pixl97 · 15 hours ago

  Heh, this sounds like the more human case where if you see a person that is single you don't want to go out with them as there's a rather serious reason why they are single.

  • aqfamnzc · 14 hours ago

    I would never date someone with standards low enough to date a person like me . Huge red flag.

How do we know if this is normal or not? You really need a historical time series to know if it has always been like this or not

• blitzar · 16 hours ago

  Historically the ad was in a newspaper and you would sit and circle them with your breakfast while listening to the wireless. Companies didnt pay to put the ad in the paper every day once the vacancy was filled.

  • jrochkind1 · 15 hours ago

    Hey, historically your "employer" would flog you if you tried to change "jobs".

    • blitzar · 15 hours ago

      HR was much better at "employee retention" historically.

• pixl97 · 15 hours ago

  Job postings in the past were made in places with relatively limited space hence higher costs. The internet has turned the cost of the vast majority of job postings to almost nothing. Based on that information you tell me how you think the incentives will work?

This statistic constantly confuses people who haven't done hiring. If we decide we're going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don't copy and paste the same job listing 10 times. We leave it open and collect resumes through that. At a large or fast growing company, we might never stop interviewing and hiring senior software engineers. The listing stays open for a year or more. There are also specialty roles where hiring takes months. I've had niche roles open where we didn't get any applicants with any experience on the topic for over 90 days on multiple occasions.

• prerok · 16 hours ago

  That's fair but still indicates shortage, no?

  • flockonus · 16 hours ago

    Not necessarily indicates any 1 thing; it can be fake job posts to signal growth, could be an extra picky hiring manager, even a decrepit company that forgot to close it.

    • prerok · 16 hours ago

      I agree with that, just responding to the parent who wrote that their company keeps the hiring listed. So, in their case it's true but in other cases it is not. I agree, I should have written a bit more, apologies.

  • firesteelrain · 16 hours ago

    It’s a pipeline requisition or feeder requisition. Sometimes companies will close and refresh it. Can’t rely on job listings alone

  • Bratmon · 16 hours ago

    No, the exact opposite! A high percentage of ghost jobs indicates that there are very few actual jobs open in the field, which suggests an oversupply of workers.

    • vanuatu · 15 hours ago

      if the listings are open for the reasons OP stated, then yes it does indicate a shortage. if companies hired all the SWEs they wanted they wouldn't still have the listings

      • pixl97 · 15 hours ago

        100% untrue. Let's say I have 50 employees working for $100,000 each. Why would I not want to replace 25 of them that are willing to work for $50,000 each if they are producing anywhere close to the same quality. In a case like this always open job listings are a warning to others. Also there is something called market sampling. Where you put up these job openings and look at the quality of applicants in relation to the employees you already have to ensure you're on the right track internally.

        • jameshart · 14 hours ago

          > In a case like this always open job listings are a warning to others ‘Warning this company has management practices oriented around remaining solvent for the long term, rather than providing a sinecure for workers’?

          • pixl97 · 14 hours ago

            Warning: This company will replace your ass so far without regard to your actual abilities or their current profitability. Companies do not have human rights. They are a pleasant fiction the population allows because it's more effective than not having said rules. We the people can revoke those rules the moment the meta-idea of corporations no longer serve the public good. In the US at least we seemingly have come to believe the corporation is the ultimate organism and all rights should be sacrificed for its eternal cancerous growth.

          • johnnyanmac · 14 hours ago

            Not every company is a hungry startup trying to hustle their way to a billion dollars. Businesses also value stability, and stable labor is a big factor in pretty much every other field. You don't get stability by laying off workers every 2 years .

        • smcg · 14 hours ago

          What if your $100,000 worker is actually more than twice as productive as your $50,000 worker?

      • rsynnott · 14 hours ago

        Big companies never hire all the SWEs they want, because there is always attrition. At a certain scale, there will always be people leaving and a constant need to backfill.

      • Bratmon · 11 hours ago

        > if companies hired all the SWEs they wanted they wouldn't still have the listings I honestly can't tell if this a troll or not, but in case it isn't: Because "number job openings" are used as a signal of company health, Ghost Jobs are far far more common than job listings which companies intend to hire from!

    • johnnyanmac · 14 hours ago

      Or a lack of demand for workers in that particular region.

• alightsoul · 16 hours ago

  So you should apply to old job postings? Consensus in LATAM seems to be, they just forgot to take them down and they already have someone or in Latin America if you repost the same opening over and over the consensus seems to be the company is toxic they have a turnover problem, maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people

  • mixdup · 16 hours ago

    > So you should apply to old job postings? Yes. I recently got a job (IT infrastructure engineer with a non-tech company) on a posting that was 6 months old. they had filled it, and at the same time got approval for a second headcount so they never pulled it down

  • Aurornis · 16 hours ago

    Some common sense goes a long way. If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring. Submit away. If the listing is generic like "senior software engineer" and all of the requirements are generic like being able to program or do teamwork, it's probably a generic listing. Applying anyway is a safe bet, but I wouldn't invest as much energy into tailoring your resume if it's a 6 month old posting from a 50 person company with a website that looks like it's from 2009. That company probably forgot to take the listing down. > maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people This wouldn't help because you have no way of knowing if they've already hired 9 people or 1 person. The target can also change constantly. At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring.

    • tempest_ · 16 hours ago

      Often you pay to have that posting. For a smaller company they def know that posting is still up. Likely they are just getting poor applications (or need to improve their posting because the right people are not seeing it) In the age of LLMs every one is "tailoring" their resume to every posting.

      • mort96 · 16 hours ago

        This depends a ton on if we're talking about a company's own website's job listings or if it's on some dedicated job listing site.

        • CharlieDigital · 15 hours ago

          Company's own website job listings are likely actually in an applicant tracking system (ATS) like Greenhouse or Ashby because they need to manage the pipeline, not just list the job.

    • mort96 · 16 hours ago

      > At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring. As an analogy it's kinda like hard drives: when one of my hard drives dies, it's An Event which I need to deal with specifically; I need to order a replacement for that specific drive. At Google's server farms, hard drives dying is just a statistic, you continuously buy hard drives just because you know existing drives are gonna die at some semi-predictable rate.

      • Sharlin · 15 hours ago

        Or a more morbid analogy: military casualties in a war.

        • evilduck · 15 hours ago

          It's not really an analogy, it's just facts of life. In a large enough company or over a long enough time period at a job or in your career, realistically people actually will eventually die and cause vacancies. I've had two coworkers die, one because of illness, the other because of an auto accident. I stopped using the "bus factor of one" phrase as a result even and use "redundancy or succession planning" since it's not outside the realm of possibility that someone might get hit by a vehicle.

          • Sharlin · 13 hours ago

            Sure, but in one many more people leave the workforce by being killed and maimed than in the other.

          • gchamonlive · 12 hours ago

            "Lottery factor" works, though it's more of a mouthful

            • arcanemachiner · 11 hours ago

              That, and nobody knows what you're talking about.

              • gchamonlive · 9 hours ago

                Just the first time

        • vkou · 14 hours ago

          More morbidly, military casualties in what the military insists isn't war.

          • HeyLaughingBoy · 14 hours ago

            Even in peacetime, training accidents kill an expected number of military personnel each year.

            • vkou · 13 hours ago

              I'm not talking about training accidents.

    • alightsoul · 16 hours ago

      No this is not common sense. No company in LATAM has 10000 people. Large companies just aren't a thing here. Most companies here are the 50 people companies you mention so the normal thing is to hire occasionally. And LATAM never had an industrial revolution so software positions are just rare unless the company is larger than the local average. If you do find one, it's not a pure one or is service oriented, not to build a product. What I mean is, building a technological product is rare let alone as a product company in LATAM and most technical positions are service or outsourcing oriented. If you find a technical product role like being a mobile developer, it's often not at a company that offers a technological product but a service in another industry like a bank

      • alt227 · 15 hours ago

        I googled and literally the first result was LATAM Airlines who have 44,000 employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LATAM_Airlines

        • alightsoul · 15 hours ago

          Airlines and state owned companies seem to be the exception

          • alt227 · 15 hours ago

            ok, that statement seems a bit different than your previous one of "No company in LATAM has 10000 people."

            • rsynnott · 14 hours ago

              Except for the companies who have 10000 people, no companies in LATAM have 10000 people.

              • alt227 · 14 hours ago

                Love the logic, have an upvote.

              • zormino · 14 hours ago

                So América Móvil doesn't have nearly 200k? There are plenty of LATAM companies with more than 10k people.

                • hatsix · 6 hours ago

                  This was an intentional fallacy for comedic effect, specifically "No True Scotsman"

              • bonesss · 14 hours ago

                I think we can all agree No True LATAM company would have 10,000 employees.

        • mamcx · 12 hours ago

          I think he means "software companies". Large companies exist, but pure software companies or with heavy side of it?

      • benjojo12 · 15 hours ago

        Petrobras?

      • mort96 · 15 hours ago

        You don't think MercadoLibre has job postings open all the time just to replace the people who are leaving? They're around 120 000 people, is each of those people hand-picked for a particular position and not just hired because they know they need to replace some percentage of workers who'll leave?

      • shagie · 15 hours ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Brazilian_comp... While the 9th largest is 7,777 people reported... all the others are at least 40,000 people and the largest two are over 100,000. Itaú Unibanco https://www.itau.com.br/download-file/v2/d/42787847-4cf6-446... shows 80,657 employees in Brazil in Q2 of 2026. And for tech jobs... https://carreiras.itau.com.br/busca-de-vagas/software/35299/... Is it a big list? No. Is it a bank? Yep... but then Capital One is a large employer of tech in the US. Estimates put Walmart (certainly not a "tech" company) at having 20,000 technical roles. Discriminating between technology product and technology role at a "regular" industry or service seems a bit biased. I (software developer) haven't worked at a tech company for the past two decades (and frankly, while wages are lower than the tech company jobs my job stability is much higher).

      • xtracto · 11 hours ago

        Lol Bimbo Femsa Grupo Salinas There's plenty more: https://es.tradingeconomics.com/bimboa:mm:employees

    • oejxiwjxjwjd · 15 hours ago

      > you can assume that they're always hiring. You can, but you’re probably wrong and are wasting your time and effort going through lord knows how many hoops to submit a simple CV. Were submissions as simple as “here’s my CV, contact me if you like what you see”, then this wouldn’t be a problem. But when you have to sign up to the millionth HR service with the same 50 “please input the info that’s already on the resume you’re submitting” steps over and over again just to never hear back from the company or get rejected 6 months later, “submit away” is not an acceptable answer. > This wouldn't help because you have no way of knowing if they've already hired 9 people or 1 person. Yes, it would. Even if only 1 of the 10 spots is available, it still is a valid listing. Not knowing if the listing is valid at all is way worse. Asking for “common sense” only works if the situation you are in makes sense to begin with. Job listings are a cesspit of bad behaviour, dark patterns, disrespectful processes and incongruous offers. What we need is some sort of regulation on how job listings are posted and how candidates can and should apply. While we’re at it, it should be utterly ILLEGAL and absolutely liable to have a job listing up with no salary range or a salary range that’s too wide to give a sense of what compensation looks like—lying about it should trigger serious legal consequences as well. It’s about time candidates were treated with some dignity.

      • alt227 · 15 hours ago

        This kind of attitude is why some people cant find jobs. Meanwhile the ones who just emailed their cv and didnt overthink it are happily working.

        • oejxiwjxjwjd · 15 hours ago

          What kind of attitude? Wanting employers to respect my goddamned time? Wanting to know how much employers are willing to pay for my services? Yeah. I want a job listing to actively tell me how much I stand to gain in exchange for my time and skills. How absolutely entitled of me. Imagine that? A potential employee wanting to know upfront how much their time is worth in the eyes of a potential employer? Nonsense! You get what you get and you don’t get upset. If that’s your line of reasoning then I can only assume you’re exactly the type of employer that indulges in such practices.

          • SoftTalker · 15 hours ago

            Good luck on your job hunt.

            • oejxiwjxjwjd · 15 hours ago

              Very kind of you good stranger. I’m not job hunting at the moment but I appreciate the support!

          • alt227 · 15 hours ago

            The UK is currently passing laws to make every job listing include salary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg7gg2zdexo

            • oejxiwjxjwjd · 15 hours ago

              That’s a good start.

            • jambalaya8 · 6 hours ago

              It would be nice if they passed a law to also make every job listing represent an actual job opening at the actual company (or their representative). There are too many postings that are all about "collecting people", forming candidate algorithms, tracking applicants, and mining. It is really grotesque.

        • Avicebron · 15 hours ago

          This is not helpful and untrue, if you've tried to apply for jobs within the laat ~6+ years you will know it's screaming into the void. New accounts for the N+ glassdoor/indeed/bamboo/handshake/yougettheidea clones. Poorly pulling information from an uploaded resume, requiring manually editing or adding the info _every_ time. If your dilligent/dumb you writing a cover letter for each one (no AI the signal is too bad), then you submit it and wait an arbitrary amount of time for the rejection. There is a good reason people are complaining, it's asinine to put this on jpb seekers.

          • alt227 · 15 hours ago

            > if you've tried to apply for jobs within the laat ~6+ years you will know it's screaming into the void I have applied for, and got, 3 jobs in the last 8 years. So yeah I think I am allowed an opinion on it without people telling me Im wrong.

            • oejxiwjxjwjd · 15 hours ago

              Two things can be true. I’ve applied to a few jobs in the last few years and got a few of them as well. Does not mean that the hoops I had to jump through were any less demeaning, disrespectful or downright stupid.

              • legitster · 14 hours ago

                If OP is a hiring manager, they're on the other side of the job market right now. It can be true that managers have no problems getting jobs and the rest of us do.

              • pacija · 13 hours ago

                It is even weirder in my case. I am not applying for any jobs, recruiters reach out to me. After exchanging plesantries with HR ladies at video calls they ask me what are my salary expectations. I explain them there are two options. For full time employment I expect them to give me their best offer for me to consider. For consulting I expect them to give me exact goals so I can give them exact quote. I mostly never hear back from them, in rare cases they say their technical colleagues reviewed my resume and decided I am not appropriate candidate. I suspect most of them are just mining data about salary expectations.

            • platevoltage · 13 hours ago

              Nobody is allowed to do anything without someone telling them they're wrong.

            • ghostly_s · 11 hours ago

              Three jobs in 8 years? Seems like a red flag, we want to hire someone who will stick around.[1] 1. (Actual feedback I got in an interview two weeks ago, for a position no sane person would want to stay in for longer than two years.)

          • tayo42 · 13 hours ago

            Greenhouse saves your info and auto fills it. Companied that use Ashby are pretty much upload your resume. Only workday sucks or other random small ones that show up.

            • ghostly_s · 11 hours ago

              Workday is the only one of these I’ve heard of or encountered in the US.

              • tayo42 · 11 hours ago

                Probably because workday sucks so much that you notice it.

          • yuye · 12 hours ago

            >then you submit it and wait an arbitrary amount of time for the rejection You get rejections? When I was jobhunting, half of the companies I applied to never replied to me.

        • LoganDark · 14 hours ago

          Two times I posted in the "Who wants to be hired?" HN thread in the past few years, I had a job within the month. Both times, I did not even have any resume or CV at all. But this year, I've been posting there for over 6 months and nothing. Not sure if attitude is such a big factor -- the job market kinda does what it does. You do make a mistake by not putting yourself out there though, because then there's basically no chance that an opportunity will come your way. One comment in an HN thread could be your ticket, or you could be applying to thousands of listings for months and getting nothing but the occasional rejection (though of course, never nearly as many as you made applications).

        • johnnyanmac · 14 hours ago

          >the ones who just emailed their cv and didnt overthink it are happily working. Tell that to the last 3 years of new grads.

        • ghostly_s · 12 hours ago

          "Just email your cv" is literally impossible at many employers today. the app process is absolutely far more onerous for the applicant than it was a generation ago. For a bit of silver lining, I have noticed the "auto-populate from my resume" feature actually works reasonably well on some sites, which was not the case just a couple years ago when I was last looking.

          • ikr678 · 9 hours ago

            Also, in some orgs you physically cannot send the cv. I can't send or recieve documents as email attachments anymore to external stakeholders, everything must be via sharepoint link. That, plus a decade of compulsory anti phishing training means no half competent HR person should be blind opening an attachment that says 'CV'.

        • Telaneo · 12 hours ago

          I don't know a single person who's got a job by just emailing their CV. In fact, it reads as asinine as the idea that you can get a job by just showing up in person with a good handshake.

        • ikr678 · 9 hours ago

          Taking time off your existing role to do multiple interviews for something that turns out to pay 10-15% less than you are currently on is insulting.

      • bee_rider · 13 hours ago

        It is required to post a salary range in some states. Sometimes they are quite wide, but realistically in the posting I see the posters seem to be taking the rule in good faith. Signing up for another page is a bit annoying (especially for places that are all using the same platform, like Workday—I understand these are probably self-hosted or kept disconnected on purpose, but still it could be nice if there was a separate global space for applicants, then we could just be imported in). To some extent it would be nice if it was harder to apply. Like I used to be happy to see a cover letter required, as that’d filter out some of the competition. Now people can just AI generate their cover letters I guess, so I mostly avoid postings that require them unless I’m really excited. (I think LLMs mostly review the applicants these days as well, and I’m pretty sure LLMs prefer LLM-speak, so it’s a losing proposition).

    • locknitpicker · 15 hours ago

      > Some common sense goes a long way. If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring. Submit away. Common sense would dictate that a company with 10,000 people has a need for a diverse set of roles, and it would be completely stupid to recycle the same template pretending the role was always the same. In fact, repeating a stale advert suggests the company does in fact not have positions opened and either forgot to pull an old advert or some recruiter is trawling for applications to pretend to be productive.

      • Sharlin · 15 hours ago

        I don’t think common sense suggests that at all. It’s like saying that the US armed forces requires soldiers with many specialized skillsets (which is true) so clearly it should recruit to every individual role and post separately. A large company may have a handful of actually-very-special-role positions open for every hundred generic "our tech stack is this and isn’t going to change" developer roles.

        • platevoltage · 13 hours ago

          Perhaps the armed forces are doing something right, and the tech industry is not.

          • shagie · 13 hours ago

            The armed forces have a service commitment of several years (if I read this correctly, US Army is 8 years). People will sometimes change jobs within months. They have the time to train someone into a role and typically don't have to worry about going to work for a competitor after they get out of AIT or A school.

            • platevoltage · 12 hours ago

              People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn't worker attitude.

              • shagie · 12 hours ago

                One of the biggest changes since then is that there are companies that a different scale of revenue per employee ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28google%2C+meta%29+re... ) and pay accordingly. While there's nothing wrong with those companies paying such, it drastically changes the incentives for the regular employee. Going to work in Big Tech can be like winning the lottery (in the dot com boom, I had about 6 million on paper... that I didn't sell before the crash). That there is drastically different industries with correspondingly different levels of compensation has incentivized the person who can change jobs to move from a $60k job to a $120k job to a $250k job to do so. In the 90s I was making $50k/year ($50k '95 -> $109k '26 https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm ). The companies where people used to work a decade or two or three are still there and in many cases, largely unchanged.

                • bluecheese452 · 9 hours ago

                  This is so out of touch

                  • shagie · 8 hours ago

                    There are companies out there where managers, mechanical engineers, marketing, and all the other non-technology roles work at for a decade or two. It's the software developers and IT people who switch jobs after two years working there. What's the difference between those job types? It's that software development and IT have a multimodal salary with much greater discrepancy between the companies that fall into the distribution around the lowest mode and the highest mode. https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal If you switch from working at a local area company to Big Tech, you significantly increase your salary. For other careers, going from the local job to the national big company will likely give a much smaller boost. Here are the stats for tenure: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/tenure.pdf Table 6 (last page) shows the median tenure by job classification. Computer and mathematical occupations are the ones that were going down between 2014 and 2020. The others were holding fairly constant. Table 2 shows 21% of people 35 and older have 10 years or more of tenure at their employer. At 45 years old, it's 45%. I still hold that software development is the outlier for shorter tenure and the largest factor driving that is that you can quit your job and get a new one that pays twice as much. Do you have an alternate explanation for this data or published data that contradicts this?

              • locknitpicker · 2 hours ago

                > People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn't worker attitude. The US-style neoliberal attitude towards decimating the workforce at a drop of a hat for PR purposes does have a chilling effect on any employee's trust. But don't fool yourself: one of the most important tools anyone has to improve their life and wellbeing is the ability to switch jobs. It can create career opportunities you would otherwise not have, and even unblock career progression by sidestepping your current job's corporate constraints.

          • locknitpicker · 3 hours ago

            > Perhaps the armed forces are doing something right, and the tech industry is not. This shows some ignorance on the history of work relations. The bad old days of industrial guilds and company towns are not renowned for quality of life and independence. Your life was tied to the company, and all you could aspire to do in your life would be to toil in the same low paying job while mixing up your corporate structure with your life's social structure. If god forbid you lost your job, you and your family would lose your whole life. Tell me how this is doing things right. For those in the US to understand, see how your access to healthcare is tied to your employer, and the impact this have on your life of you are forced out of your job. Now extrapolate this to every single aspect of your life.

    • johnnyanmac · 14 hours ago

      My common sense is that it varies per market. In an employer's market this bad you either need to be highly specialized or you need to get your submissions in early. First 24 hours matters a lot more than your actual skillset when job postings are regularly receiving 1000+ applicants. You know the hiring managers are going to stop after they find a few dozen qualified applicants. But in a good market, sure. You can throw your hat into a random general application and you still might get a call back. Old postings are worth a shot. Any connection with an internal recruiter at least guarantees you start the process.

    • ElProlactin · 4 hours ago

      > If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring. Perhaps true in the most literal sense, but you cannot assume that it's true in the practical sense. Lots of companies have laid off significant numbers of people, particularly in certain roles. There will always be some turnover that requires hiring at a large company but this does not mean that you should assume there are always open positions for your role. Submitting to a large company for roles that are in secular decline within that company is mostly a waste of time. It's also not uncommon for natural turnover to be used as an organic way to downsize, with a role for a person who just left remaining unfilled.

  • maccard · 15 hours ago

    You should, but you should always apply as early as possible. The main reason the jobs are reposted are to get them to the top of the feed

  • CharlieDigital · 15 hours ago

    You pay for job listings so it would be silly to not take them down.

  • rsynnott · 15 hours ago

    If it’s a big company, anyway, then yeah. A FAANG type hires thousands of engineers a year. They are not going to have a bespoke ad per position.

  • aDyslecticCrow · 13 hours ago

    I got a job by applying to an old listing, for the wrong city. Small companies may look to fill a certain set of skill-sets, and if that is filled by one person or three doesn't matter much; can puzzle around to make the workload fit what is found. large companies may hire 10 people generically, but may stop at 5 if they don't like the candidates, or hire 16 after a good set of resumes. Forcing companies to be overly specific in the roles is just making it harder to apply.

  • jimbob45 · 13 hours ago

    Been awhile since I’ve been in the job hunt but doesn’t Indeed at least have an option to display the number of roles open on each posting? Wouldn’t that solve this issue pretty easily?

  • j45 · 12 hours ago

    It seems like if you're interested in a role it's ok to apply and be in their system and that much more discoverable. Being able to reach out and have a chat with the HR manager either way also makes a candidate more human.

• tayo42 · 16 hours ago

  I think people just latch onto ideas that try to simplify and make sense of frustrating situations where they dont have control. "Ghost jobs" are thing to blame now, for a while is was that taxcode thing for software engineers.

  • johnnyanmac · 14 hours ago

    Well, no one else is making sense of it (or rather, the real answer is something we can't say), so people will do their own data gatherings and report their findings. The only issue is that it's never one factor. Rising interest rates, s174, ghost jobs, outsourcing: them and many more factors all add up.

• guywithahat · 16 hours ago

  I see this for experienced roles too, especially where pay isn't super competitive. If you need a lead software engineer in a certain city for a certain salary, that often means waiting months for them to come across it. 10 junior engineers may apply but ultimately they just can't perform the role required

• nitwit005 · 15 hours ago

  Then you'd still only have a small number of roles up, not the thousands of positions the article is showing for some companies. They'd be hiring hundreds of thousands a year if they were constantly interviewing for all of them, and I don't believe O'Reilly Auto Parts is recruiting people as quickly as a nation at war.

  • shagie · 15 hours ago

    https://careers.oreillyauto.com/us/en/c/information-technolo... They've got a few open spots if you're interested in relocating to Springfield, MO (and even some entry level IT positions https://careers.oreillyauto.com/us/en/job/R203370/IT-Support... - that one was posted 09/21/2026)

    • georgel · 13 hours ago

      When I lived in the area about 6 years ago, I had 3rd party recruiters reach out to me about roles that they don't list. The whole region it felt like was 70% contractors (W-2 with the contracting firm), until the company really liked you and bought out your contract and converted you to an actual employee. Surprisingly I had better benefits at the two contracting firms than what employees were getting.

    • bluecheese452 · 9 hours ago

      That is point, these are fake roles.

• mindtricks · 15 hours ago

  I'm curious, for the niche or senior roles, have you personally read through the resumes or do you depend on the recruiter? I hear you on the entry and early-career jobs, but I see Director and VP roles also open for months. With all the layoffs, it's hard to belief there is not SOME talent in there worth hiring or at least training up.

• legitster · 15 hours ago

  As someone with a niche job and title (and comes pretty decorated), I would expect to hear back on my applications more often and yet I get nothing either. There are some prominent companies ( cough Figma, Smartsheet, Stripe cough ) who literally have had an open role for exactly my job for nearly 3+ years without filling it. Maybe I'm thinking a bit too much of myself, but it doesn't seem like they are that interested in really filling it.

  • ak6te · 14 hours ago

    This is probably too broad a category for anecdata to mean much, but just to balance the scales I've recently started looking in a job category that I thought was niche, but not that niche. I've heard back from something like 11/13 applications, often the same or next day.

    • smcg · 14 hours ago

      That's unusual. Most applicants are sending out dozens or hundreds of applications for a sub-20% response rate.

• thesuitonym · 15 hours ago

  This is exactly why hiring is such a mess, lazy managers who don't want to repost job listings or put any effort into hiring. Job seekers need to apply to thousands of jobs because they have no way of knowing if a company is actually hiring. Which means hiring managers (who we have already established are lazy) now are incentivised to find ways to not look at resumes.

• ndiddy · 15 hours ago

  You also have to deal with delusional hiring managers. A few months ago I remember seeing a comment on here from someone who had kept job listings up for years while hiring because he couldn't find anyone with the "right experience". Clearly there was no actual imminent need to fill the role and he was just hoping that some superstar would stumble across it, but he kept insisting that this counted as "really hiring for the role".

  • ghostly_s · 11 hours ago

    aka the person willing to work for a fraction of their worth.

• juneyi · 14 hours ago

  agree. am working somewhere that does the same. we can't find enough of the right engineers to join and it's been a long/slow journey. hiring can be tough for both sides (speaking of those looking for the other side).

• jghn · 14 hours ago

  Another confounder is the opposite. When I've been hiring I'd often open up different public recs for the same role to cast a broader net. Some people self identify with certain terms and may not realize they'd be a fit. So what would happen is I'd have say 10 real openings, I may have 5 different job postings, and all of them would stay open until I filled all 10 openings.