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How does claiming to be hiring lead to increased financials that stockholders would see?
I'm a little skeptical myself, but the whole cycle of public awareness/hype to keep the general pool of investors happy is not unheard of.
There is absolutely NO reason for most industrials to advertise or promote themselves or maintain any kind of public awareness - one of those full page ads or short commercials about how much Dow or ConAgra or Merck deeply cares has absolutely zero purpose except public investor feelgood.
So churning the job listings would be cheap "wow, we're all busy and active and growing" fodder at little cost and zero downside (except maybe for job seekers).
I'm a little skeptical myself, but the whole cycle of public awareness/hype to keep the general pool of investors happy is not unheard of.
There is absolutely NO reason for most industrials to advertise or promote themselves or maintain any kind of public awareness - one of those full page ads or short commercials about how much Dow or ConAgra or Merck deeply cares has absolutely zero purpose except public investor feelgood.
So churning the job listings would be cheap "wow, we're all busy and active and growing" fodder at little cost and zero downside (except maybe for job seekers).
Or more realistically, they are real jobs, and HR is slow, or they don't need to hire someone immediately and are being discerning in picking someone.
We like to tell ourselves they are "fake" listings only because that makes us feel better when we aren't hired.
If you look on Indeed regularly you may notice the same jobs disappear and reappear regularly.
I've noticed that. I followed a couple of the jobs, after I applied and didn't Get a call. 6 months later, they were advertising again. The person they hired didn't work out. In one case, I suspect it was that the person didn't like the job and quit. It was a hodgepodge job description of go-fer tasks combined with more professional work. Kind of like, whatever work the department director didn't feel like doing, she assigned to the support staff person.
I read that some firms are hiring even though they have no work for the new hire, just so they have a "bullpen" for when the work comes.
I immediately thought of my first day in the U. S. Army, when I read this. I wonder if these new employees without duties, spend their time doing something like we did. A bunch of us arrived at the barracks of the reception center at an army post, on a Saturday night. There were no activities conducted on Sunday, but it was against the credo of the Army for us to lay around idle.
So some of us were taken to an officer's mess hall and put to work moving all the canned goods in a large storeroom, to a different room. We also dusted off all the cans and separated them by what they contained. We were each allowed to carry only two cans at a time, as our supervisor said there was a chance we'd drop them, if we carried more.
After we had spent about three hours completing this, a sergeant came along and said that he didn't want the cans where we'd put them and so we spent the next three hours moving them back to their original location. That was a good and accurate introduction for us, about how the Army worked. We'd had ideas about vigorous training to become hardened soldiers, but there we were, walking cans of beans and spinach back and forth.
I read that some firms are hiring even though they have no work for the new hire, just so they have a "bullpen" for when the work comes.
I think there may be some truth to this, and I also do not think the job market is as strong as some people claim. I will use the company I work for as an example of why I say that. A year ago, we would post for a position, and maybe 2-3 people would apply. About a month ago, we posted the same positions, and the phones were ringing off the hooks.
Beyond that, daily, there was a steady stream of people coming in for interviews, and then a lot of them were calling back, sounding desperate, asking " Have you made a decision yet, am I still a prospect "? We also are getting people just walking in about every day, asking "Are you doing any hiring?"
This all kind of gives me the vibes that jobs are not as easy to come by as they were just a year or so ago, and a lot more people are pounding the pavement.
I read that some firms are hiring even though they have no work for the new hire, just so they have a "bullpen" for when the work comes.
This really depends on the company and job.
I have a friend who is the VP of sales for an F500. He oversees several hundred salespeople. His department is always hiring, because with that many people there are always people leaving for one reason or another. The specific jobs that may be open at any given time will be in different areas of the country, but with staff interested in 8nternal moves, even the regional opening change weekly.
He always has a job posted for LA and NY, because something will open up between San Diego and Santa Barbara in the next month or three, and the same thing on the east coast, somebody in NY, NJ, Long Island or CT will quit, retire, get promoted, fired, or transfer to Chicago.
On a smaller level, years ago I ran large retail stores. I was always accepting applications, because with dozens of sales people, I would always need somebody, somewhere in the next few weeks.
Look at the military. They are also always recruiting, but it is obvious that they don’t wait for a given driver, rifleman, pilot, diver, etc to quit before advertising the position. They know roughly how many people will leav3 every year, they know how many new people 5hey will need, they set up a pipeline to obtain these new recruits, and they sort out the details along the way.
I read that some firms are hiring even though they have no work for the new hire, just so they have a "bullpen" for when the work comes.
Getting away from all the "fake jobs" discussion, yes firms will do this, esp if they are bidding a large project. Some of those large contracts have tight timelines after the "GO" date and companies want to have sufficient employees on tap to start work on day 1, even if they don't have every position filled. The worst thing these companies can do is show up on day 1 and nobody is there.
I've seen versions of this where several companies are bidding and they all "hire" the same people. Then the company who wins actually brings them on. I've even known a few people who were on payroll and getting paid by two competitors at the same time.
Or more realistically, they are real jobs, and HR is slow, or they don't need to hire someone immediately and are being discerning in picking someone.
We like to tell ourselves they are "fake" listings only because that makes us feel better when we aren't hired.
I'm not saying they're fake. I don't think such listings are all that big a part of the mix.
To the contrary, as someone who watches specific job listings - specific company, specific job slot, nearly identical job description - repeat and repeat, I suspect other forces at play. It is not hard to find someone good in my field, not in a major boom/tech city; with a little effort, it's not hard to find someone well above average. However, when they fish and fish and fish, over months and months... it's not a matter of actually trying to fill a slot as... I don't know what.
One part is that most companies are kind of stupid about hiring in my field; unless they already have someone senior/supervisory on board to guide the process, they are clueless about real qualifications and job fit and work from checklists someone found on the internet or in a hiring-guru book. So they list, and they interview, and they ask the wrong questions and have the wrong expectations, and sigh, and instead of working down the list of applicants from the three who meta-scored highest, they just list it again.
And, call me egotistical or entitled or whatever, but the fact is I am an excellent match for many of these jobs as listed; I won't say I am the best possible candidate, but I am often a damned good one, with experience and skills and assets to burn. If they list a job two or three times, and can't find their imaginary perfect candidate, and are still not calling me for even a cursory followup or phone interview... there's something very, very wrong with their hiring aims or process.
So if these listings aren't "fake" on some level, they are exercises in unicorn hunting and conducted by companies that are way down a road of BS HR practices, probably at the hands of 30yo recruiters educated by webinars.
I'm not saying they're fake. I don't think such listings are all that big a part of the mix.
To the contrary, as someone who watches specific job listings - specific company, specific job slot, nearly identical job description - repeat and repeat, I suspect other forces at play. It is not hard to find someone good in my field, not in a major boom/tech city; with a little effort, it's not hard to find someone well above average. However, when they fish and fish and fish, over months and months... it's not a matter of actually trying to fill a slot as... I don't know what.
One part is that most companies are kind of stupid about hiring in my field; unless they already have someone senior/supervisory on board to guide the process, they are clueless about real qualifications and job fit and work from checklists someone found on the internet or in a hiring-guru book. So they list, and they interview, and they ask the wrong questions and have the wrong expectations, and sigh, and instead of working down the list of applicants from the three who meta-scored highest, they just list it again.
And, call me egotistical or entitled or whatever, but the fact is I am an excellent match for many of these jobs as listed; I won't say I am the best possible candidate, but I am often a damned good one, with experience and skills and assets to burn. If they list a job two or three times, and can't find their imaginary perfect candidate, and are still not calling me for even a cursory followup or phone interview... there's something very, very wrong with their hiring aims or process.
So if these listings aren't "fake" on some level, they are exercises in unicorn hunting and conducted by companies that are way down a road of BS HR practices, probably at the hands of 30yo recruiters educated by webinars.
The biggest problem is some people job search by ONLY looking at online listings. Online listings are always a secondary way of finding candidates. They aren't a complete afterthought, but around 80% of jobs are found through networking. Very, very few jobs are found through blindly applying.
A company is trying to find the perfect candidate through networking, and list it online just in case the perfect candidate comes along.
The biggest problem is some people job search by ONLY looking at online listings. Online listings are always a secondary way of finding candidates. They aren't a complete afterthought, but around 80% of jobs are found through networking. Very, very few jobs are found through blindly applying.
Which gets into a huge loop of self-cancelling nonsense. (Not that I'm disagreeing.) So they need someone... but if they don't already know someone, they can't search for someone they don't know. So they're searching for someone they already know/have in hand, but if someone tries to be known, they're ignored because no one knows them.
Sounds like an early 19th century English drawing-room farce.
Quote:
A company is trying to find the perfect candidate through networking, and list it online just in case the perfect candidate comes along.
Right, but they ignore the applicants unless it's already someone they know. ("Tea, Parson Everleigh? One lump or two?")
As someone who relocated to a completely new area, "networking" is not one of my stronger tools. I don't think that I'm being unreasonable that some small percentage of applications, given that I am an extremely highly qualified candidate who doesn't happen to know Joe down in Accounting, would result in at least a phone inquiry or followup. Especially over more than a year.
(I have no real illusions about why I rarely get called; I cannot disguise that I am twice the age of most candidates. "Networking" here is the ca-30 crowd down in the dense WeWork/workloft zone, scheduled for the convenience of those who live-work there and all but inaccessible in the immediate after-work hour.)
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