Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / BBT #15 Snippet | Ghost Jobs Are Stealing Your Time
Transcript
- Thomas: New York, the state of New, yeah I think it's the state of New York. Ghost jobs, you've applied to them, you spend hours tailoring your resume, writing a cover letter, tracking the application, and then nothing. Poof, it's gone. Like a magic trick. Not a rejection, not an acknowledgement, just silence. Because the job was never real. Wow, shocker. Companies post... Malcolm: Whoop-de-doo, man. Thomas: Exactly, yeah, yeah. Companies pose these positions. ⁓ have no intention of failing in the near term, sometimes to build a candidate pipeline, sometimes to gauge the market, sometimes to look ⁓ they're growing when they're not. And sometimes, just because taking down a listing requires more effort than leaving it up, it's a practice that costs job seekers time, money, and morale on a massive scale. And that's why we see on LinkedIn, we have people creating platforms where you can just mass apply to hundreds jobs at once because... Malcolm: Yep. Thomas: Throwing your stuff in the garbage. I mean, I'll be honest. I still have applications I'm one getting denied for that I applied to years ago ⁓ applications that are still open that I applied for years ago. Years. Like, what are we... Man, what are your thoughts on this, bro? Because this is crazy. And to New York for cracking down on this. Malcolm: Yeah, mean, think this is, I really think, well, I hope this is a step in the right direction, right? I hope that everywhere else starts to really kind of pursue this. Because I think ⁓ such a, like corporate greed knows no end, bro. Like you guys already break in billions, hundreds of billion dollars of profits, and you're still like, and ⁓ in the worst labor market ever, the worst job market ever, worst hiring ever. And you're putting out these jobs that you know are just going to waste people's time. This is like. It's just like, bro? So I really do hope that this kind of starts like a, this is kind of like the catalyst, like a domino effect for other states to pursuing this federally. This is crazy, like the amount time that I'm sure people are wasting on these fake openings just for to say, we're hiring, just to use this market research data and stuff like that. mean, that's just unfair to people are really... like desperate and really need like an opportunity for employment. So yeah, it's crazy man. think especially so like, I think it's especially relevant, you know, for ⁓ black who are navigating a job market that already has this type of, you know, structural friction. So applications, and we know this is like, there's tons of research on this. not even going to try to ⁓ argue down, but where applications from names, procedures black perceive fewer callbacks, even with ⁓ identical qualifications. that ghost job problem, it just compounds an already uneven playing field. So it makes it twice as hard to get a job where the posting is already fake and they're already looking across you out based on your name and some of information that you input. So I said, like Hope-a-Sephs kind of sets up the blueprint for everyone else, like New York moving first. It doesn't fix the problem everywhere, but it does set, I think, a... a legislative template for other states to follow. And I would definitely, definitely be interested to see which states follow. Yeah, man, I think, you know, I hope like, you know, they're able to kind of get something out of this and, you know, companies, they're just, that's awful, Just putting out these fake jobs and wasting people time and energy. yeah, like salute to those people that are making those type of ⁓ platforms and and companies. that gets you directly to the application where you can just kind of like mass apply. I've seen a ton of variations with it where people have like the swipe right or left, like it's tender. Same people do like the ones where they email you new job recs every day and you can go straight to the website. Yeah, man. Yeah, this is definitely... Thomas: Okay. Malcolm: Yeah, it's cooked, bro. I ain't gonna lie. It's cooked for sure.