Posted on 09/18/2022 10:19:14 PM PDT by Tired of Taxes
After applying to more than 300 jobs in the last six months without a single bite, Will no longer bothers to read job descriptions or research companies.
It's just a waste of time at this point, said Will, whose real name is withheld but known to Insider.
He spends six to 10 hours a day on LinkedIn churning out applications, but says that he and his peers with similar credentials — master's degrees and MBAs from top schools — are having no luck getting interviews.
"I'm seeing all of these articles about how companies cannot recruit people fast enough and how there's all these job openings," said Will, who aims to land a consulting role. "But I'm also seeing my own personal experience and seeing other highly qualified candidates who can't get interviews or can't get jobs and I'm like, 'Something is wrong with the system.'"
It is a puzzle in this remarkably tight labor market. While many employers can't find enough workers, some qualified candidates are applying to open jobs and aren't hearing anything back.
That applicants are, on occasion, ghosted by employers is nothing new, of course. But lately questions have been raised about whether a company's job postings are reflective of actual open positions, or instead "ghost jobs" — listings that employers are no longer actively hiring or recruiting for.
According to a recent survey of roughly 1,000 hiring managers conducted by Clarify Capital, a boutique lending firm, 40% of managers have had a job posting open for over two to three months; one in five managers said they don't plan to fill their current open job positions until 2023; and half of managers said they keep job postings up because they're "always open to new people," even if they're not actively recruiting.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I discovered that in the 1980s and 1990s.
A company would do a proposal for a major contract, government or big business. Part of the requirement was to determine the ‘pool’ of potential area employees with specified qualification. To do that, the company would run job ads in the local papers.
The jobs did not really exist, but they were potential should the proposing company get the contract.
It was/is a common practice. Deceptive, yes.
I’ve been doing job requests on Zip Recruiter for years. A few phone calls, and an occasional interview , otherwise ZIP. Nada. Nothing. Great for generating the paperwork needed for unemployment insurance but otherwise worthless to me. Since most jobs offered only require one click I pursue it anyways.
No surprise, I see job openings on LinkedIn with 20 or 30 applications and the job is still looking...
Some degree of this has been going on a long time. I remember this from @1991-92, the days of the “peace dividend”.
The best response is not to hold out for the perfect fit, but take a lower level position of any sort and either try for promotion, get hired by a vendor or business partner, or just keep looking all the while.
They do this scam on Craigslist. They would collect resumes and used them to get info about you for marketing purposes. Many years ago, I learned NEVER to put my real address and used a nickname similar to my first name on the resume.
“If he were a welder or a carpenter or a machinist he could get a job. No sweat. MBA? Ha. Not so much. “
Years ago I had a neighbor who had an engineering degree and an MBA. Could not get a job if his life depended on it. Then someone told him to remove the MBA from his resume, and he was immediately hired.
I think recruiters are bad about running ghost ads, so that they maintain a database of people who are looking.
I can see where a company might do that to get a feel for the labor market. A tight market could lead to higher raises. And an oversupply of labor could lead to none.
And of course the ad company themselves might run fake ads for many of the same reasons that twitter and facebook have fake bots.
I remember this from @1991-92, the days of the “peace dividend”.
Yes, those years were rough for me.
Call your friends.
Ask them to try to get you in.
I remember hearing in 1981 a computer industry hiring manager say he had an average of 30 resumes per job.
Perhaps some companies with stock price growth have applicable openings.
Not hearing back became common almost 40 years ago.
If you want a job, follow up with a letter tailored for that job.
In the early 90’s, my boss placed an ad to hire someone to work with me. He received more than 200 resumes, all from people with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, many from Ivy League universities. He had no time to read all of them, so he started weeding them out with a glance and a gut reaction. At one point, he held up a resume and joked, “This looks like a good Irish name.” And that was the applicant who got the interview and the job. Literally, that’s how it happened.
Now, algorithms weed out the resumes.
I've long suspected this also is common practice for lower-paying jobs with a high turnover rate. They keep their job ads posted so that they always have ready applicants whenever an employee inevitably quits.
I have heard that too. Luckily I only got my MBA after I landed my final job (of 28 years).
Good advice. I witnessed what you described happening at that time (post 15 above). More than 200 applicants with college degrees applied for a job I already held without a degree after working my way up.
Very true.
Don’t know how it works in Brandon’s USSA, but in True-dolt’s Canaduh, employers get tax breaks from FedGouvCan for hiring immigrants, be they professionals or be they labourers at Lowe’s or Home Depot. If you are a white, Christian male, you are SOL for employment in PRC (Politically Repressive Canada). IF you have enough equity in your house, you might get a business loan to become self-employed. Again, if you are ‘old stock English Canadian’, expect FedGouvCan to maximize the hurdles you have to vault, just to get your business started.
True-dolt borrowing from Auric Goldfinger, “No, Mr. ‘Old Stock Canadian’, I don’t expect you to succeed, I expect you to die!”
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