Ask HN: Recruiters, why do you repost jobs with 1000 applications a month later?

The majority of jobs on LinkedIn right now seem to be reposts of jobs from a month or two ago.

You can see from the application data that each role that's been reposted already has hundreds of applicants, which implies that it did last month as well.

Why would you repost a role vs just going through the 1000 applications you received last time?

What is the reasoning there?

Companies and the recruiters who work for them post ghost jobs for various reasons. You can find plenty of writing and discussion about it on HN, Reddit, YouTube, even mainstream media. Look at the Wikipedia entry for "ghost job."

Not really a new practice, but having job postings and job searching online makes it more obvious. Running ads for jobs the employer may not fill has few downsides and doesn't cost much.

Digging through job postings and applying to them has turned into a numbers game, and an arms race of automation and now AI tools. I suggest a more effective job hunting strategy, because worrying about ghost job postings just wastes your time if you intend to find a job.

3 days agoby gregjor

I think these are ghost jobs based on institutional optimism. The toxic positivity culture in modern corporations ensures that companies always want to be hiring, but the purse-string-holders and bean-counters block the hire when it comes to actually signing on the dotted line.

This is why I don't look for jobs on LinkedIn, it's the garbage heap of false optimism.

3 days agoby phendrenad2

Many recruiters don't use jobs the way you expect. They're posting jobs as lead generation to fill up their ATS with candidates. They don't even necessarily care what job you applied to. However, they also primarily want active candidates, so they prefer to look at candidates that recently applies as it shows active intent. They repost jobs to get a new batch of active candidates to sort through.

Is this messed up and totally broken? Yes. Is it how many recruiters operate? Unfortunately, yes.

1 day agoby leros

I asked that same question here a while back.

One of the answers was (paraphrased), "because we're constantly recruiting for that title, but maybe not the same team." I'm not sure if that was a good or bad sign. Growth? Or constant turnover? Really makes you wonder.

I manage a highly stable tier 2 software team embedded in enterprise, and only recruit maybe once every ~2 years, if that. Hard to relate to what is going on these days.

3 days agoby bojo

Not a recruiter but it may have to do with state laws.

> "It is possible that state laws have posting requirements for employers awarded state government contracts. "

https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/hr-answers/regulatio...

3 days agoby bob_theslob646

Lately this is the way companies are marketing and collecting resumes with no job to offer

21 hours agoby cryptozeus

Aside: ATS systems will reject, say, 75% of the 1000 for not having the requried skills listed.

23 hours agoby Malidir

To see if you repost it with a lower salary if you get the same amount or fewer applicants and if there is a difference in applicant quality. It provides some insight into labor market.

3 days agoby angmarsbane

What is worse is the fake job interviews. If they don't call you back at least you didn't have an assignment no one will look at.

2 days agoby ipaddr

The odds in job search market and in line with Tinder right now or even worse. There is no hiring. Don't waste time and energy, use your emergency supplies.

3 days agoby lifestyleguru

1 out of 200 people on the job market can't pass FizzBuzz back then. Today the odds are much better because they teach FizzBuzz on week 1 of bootcamp, but 1 out of 200 still won't meet some absurdly low bar you set for them.

Note that this is out of the people on the job market applying for these jobs. Most of those people will never be hired for a coding job and so they'll be applying to every job they see on LinkedIn for a year or so.

This is worse for low barrier job portals. 1 out of 2 may be able to pass FizzBuzz out of applicants from HN. There are a lot of people on HN who hate tech and are burnt out. A lot of these guys hate Next.js but will learn it for money. Half your applicants on LinkedIn don't know the difference between Node.js and Next.js and will go into the interviews without checking.

2 days agoby muzani

Perhaps they need more data to fine-tune resume readers.

3 days agoby scinadier

Posting a nonsense job to accrue CVs and a call-list of details is a common tactic used by the people tasked with building the internal candidate database.

3 days agoby hcrean