Monthly archive for October 2024

Question

I am currently working in the San Francisco Bay Area but want to move to the Philadelphia area (where I was born and raised), but responding to job ads and sending resumes just doesn’t seem to be doing it for me. So, what in your opinion is the best, quickest way to search for a job 3,000 miles away?

Nick’s Reply

Cut the distance down. Go to Philadelphia.

To get a job, pick specific companies

I would select a handful of companies in Philly; companies you would love to work for. Do not use job postings to do this. Pick out your own targets. (See How do I know what jobs I want?)

Research these companies in depth. Find out who’s in charge of the department you’d want to work in. Learn about each company’s problems and the challenges they face. Talk to their vendors. Talk to their customers. (Call their sales reps — sales people love to talk.) Talk to the associations they belong to. Find and study the pertinent industry journals. Learn enough so that you can describe exactly how you could contribute to a company’s bottom line — and be ready to tell it to the boss.

Make it up-close and personal

This isn’t easy — but what good job is easy? Effective job hunting is not very different from tackling a major project in the job you’re doing right now, so use the same common sense and business skills you use every day. Take control and talk directly with the right people. Make it personal.

Parts of this column appear in Redfin’s 8 Tips for Overcoming Procrastination in the New Year. Don’t miss it![/dropshadowbox]Once you’ve identified the right managers and prepared something to discuss with them, call them.

Explain that you’re going to be in Philadelphia on business (you will be, if you use this approach!), that you just read about them in XYZ publication, and that you’d like to stop by briefly to learn more about their operation because you may be considering a job change soon.

Offer something: tell them that you have some ideas about how to [fill in the blank]. Ask for advice: who would they recommend that you talk to? Remember: you’re discussing this with your prospective boss, except they don’t know that yet. (See Get In The Door – way ahead of your competition.)

Make the investment

If you can schedule three or more such casual visits, you should consider making the investment in the trip. Do not ask any of these companies if they’d pick up the tab. That will turn them right off, because then HR has to be dragged into the picture, and your proposed casual meetings — not  job interviews! — are likely to get cancelled. The point is to go around the system by engaging a manager in a discussion about their work and business — in other words, get a job without applying for a job.

Or, attend an industry event in your target city

An Ask The Headhunter subscriber shared how he pulled off a move from Connecticut to Austin, Texas by attending — on his own dime — two professional events in Austin.

Here is the breakdown of how I got this job. Prior to meeting you, I wouldn’t have done any of these things. They are all outside my comfort zone. You gave me the tools to get out there and do it. Thank you so much.

• Attended an industry event in target city.
• Introduced myself to founder of the event.
• He introduced me to a local industry consultant.
• Attended second industry event in target city and had in-depth conversation with industry consultant.
• He introduced me to his friend, the president at the company where I eventually got an offer.

Go there

This is risky, and it will cost you something. But if you prepare properly before calling these managers, and if you have something valuable to offer them in your meetings, it can pay off handsomely. Remember: you must pursue companies you have selected carefully and with purpose. Before calling a manager, know their business. Finally, have something valuable to offer in your meetings.

You’re right: job hunting from 3,000 miles isn’t easy. But the approach that’s necessary quickly reveals the weakness of most job hunting methods: they are impersonal. Resumes and online job postings won’t cut it. You must get close to the people you want to work for — both physically and in terms of your knowledge about their business.

How would you attempt to get a job thousands of miles away? Have you ever pulled this off? What’s the best way this long-distance job seeker could optimize chances of success?

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SPECIAL EDITION: Ghosting

If you’ve had to look for a job recently, you’ve likely wasted time on ghost jobs, and with employers that ghost you. Ghosting is when a company stops communicating even after it solicited you to apply for a job and attend interviews (sometimes many!). Ghost jobs are the ones currently advertised that you apply to, only to learn they’ve already been filled or are not actually open. We need laws that protect job applicants from abusive employer practices like ghosting.

Ghosting

Ghosting is a widespread, irresponsible, cruel practice. It has already done serious damage to many employers’ reputations. Companies that ghost are widely excoriated by their victims online and have drawn the attention of the media. The Employment System — human resources (HR), recruiters, job boards, Applicant Tracking System (ATS) vendors and “video interview” vendors — actively supports these abhorrent practices.

HR technology is supposed to match workers to jobs more accurately, easily and quickly. But judging by the experiences reported by job seekers across industries, ghosting and ghost jobs waste their time and earn their ire. It’s worth considering how the companies that design and operate this technology make more money: when jobs are not filled and employers and job seekers alike keep returning to search again and again. HR technology enables employers to retain all power in the hiring process — and because employers on the whole abuse their power, we need laws to protect job applicants from ghosting.

The New Jersey anti-ghosting bill

In the last edition, we discussed a proposed law working its way through the New Jersey legislature, Assembly Bill A-4625, which deals with making job postings more transparent and the interviewing and hiring process more fair to job applicants. It is sponsored by Assemblyman Joe Danielsen. While job seekers applaud this bill for truth in hiring, New Jersey employers oppose it, taking the same tack they did when they opposed the $15 minimum wage (which is now law), claiming it’s impractical and unnecessary, and that it will force employers to stop hiring and move out of state.

This New Jersey bill is seen as a test of the public’s willingness to fight for transparency in hiring. If it is approved as law, it will undoubtedly stoke similar laws elsewhere for truth in recruitment advertising and in hiring practices.

To understand why this law is so important and so necessary, we will look at the mostly spurious objections presented at the bill’s public hearing by the New Jersey Business & Industry Association (NJBIA). The NJBIA represents and advocates for “every industry in the State.”

Read no further: We’re giving employers the answer

The NJBIA could save itself a lot of trouble and legal expense. I’m going to give away the easy way out of A-4625: Tell your member businesses:

• Do the right thing
• Show common courtesy to job applicants
• Treat job applicants with common decency and respect
• Be forthcoming
• Make your hiring process responsible, transparent, and one that reflects good employer values.

If you’d done these simple things already, New Jersey Assemblyman Joe Danielsen wouldn’t have had to codify what’s obvious: common decency. He’s giving employers the answer:

“Having some certainty as to whether you have gotten the job or not is not only the bare minimum a company should be doing in the hiring process: it’s just common courtesy. The fact it is necessary for this bill to force companies to do the right thing is deeply disappointing.” – Assemblyman Joe Danielsen

Any employer that takes Danielsen’s advice probably doesn’t have to worry about violations and fines because job applicants will have no complaints to the job-posting cops. Others should keep reading.

Business: We don’t need more regulation

In 2016, NJBIA President and CEO Michele Siekerka, warned that increasing the minimum wage “will result in unprecedented increases in the cost of doing business” and “cut employees’ hours and jobs.” But the new law was needed because New Jersey businesses refused to pay a living wage. The law passed, and today New Jersey’s economy and its businesses thrive — while workers, who are also consumers and job seekers, are still being hired, but at something closer to a living wage.

In September 2024, NJBIA Vice President of Government Affairs Elissa Frank filed an equally ill-conceived protest to A-4625. Let’s take it apart to learn why it’s really just a feeble attempt to keep power in the hands of business while workers looking for new jobs continue to suffer at the hands of an Employment System gone berserk. To follow along, please refer to NJBIA Opposition A4625, from which I will excerpt key claims below.

Gratuitous protest

The NJBIA launched a protest against protections for job applicants that’s as gratuitous as its protests against the $15 minimum wage.

Our members have shared that it would be extraordinarily difficult to comply with this legislation given its sheer impracticality, vagueness, and costs.

What’s impractical is for job applicants to continue applying for jobs that employers have already filled or that are non-existent, and to invest hours interviewing with robots and HR without getting useful feedback or a timely decision. On what business planet is it okay to vanish like a ghost after asking someone to apply for a job in your company?

Business can’t possibly keep track of job openings

Compliance with this legislation is impractical for most businesses in the State. This legislation requires an employer to remove a job posting when a position has been filled within two weeks. This provision does not account for larger employers proactively hiring for positions with high turnover (i.e., cashiers, cleaning staff, night crew). To hire for these positions, many of which are open indefinitely, our members may have over 1,000 job postings on any given day. Thus, it would not be practical for businesses – or helpful to applicants – to mandate that employers remove each job posting only to replace it with an identical job posting.

Most — especially large — employers use sophisticated ATSes that automate virtually every step of recruiting and hiring. They track every aspect of the process, every job and its status, and every applicant. Employers thereby have the tools to track many thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of applicants they solicited.

These high-priced ATSes deploy yet more software that notifies selected applicants (who are chosen by algorithms) of their candidacy. The ATS automatically schedules and conducts interviews by robots via online video technology, analyzes the results, draws conclusions based on interviewees’ facial expressions and eye movements, assigns personality types, and determines via algorithms whom to reject. (The A.I. involved is highly controversial and questionable.)

The automation is so sophisticated that thousands of applicants can be processed in parallel, rejected or approved for further interviews via Zoom or in person — all without the involvement of a human being from the company. It’s beyond comprehension that an employer can thus use technology to inform its own management about the intricate details of recruiting and hiring, e.g., candidate selection, screening, assessment, but cannot inform job applicants whether an advertised job has been filled or is still open, or whether an applicant is or is not judged a viable candidate.

“We have no idea how our hiring works”

Furthermore, this legislation requires an employer to provide a timeframe in the job posting as to when the position is anticipated to be filled. For many vacant positions, the timeframe as to when the position is anticipated to be filled is unpredictable given several factors (i.e., number of qualified applicants, if an offer is accepted, the length of time to get candidates through the hiring process).

This complaint is simply not believable to anyone with knowledge about running a business. Defining, managing and reporting on all these timeframes to management is part and parcel the job of every HR department.

There is no reason an employer cannot report to job applicants what they report to company managers. The information is already in the ATS.

“There are too many applicants to keep track of!”

HR departments deploy ATSes and job boards like LinkedIn, Indeed and ZipRecruiter to solicit tens of thousands of applicants with no filters, then complain they cannot possibly treat all applicants professionally and respectfully.

Given the volume of continuously open positions, it is very difficult to notify each applicant individually as to whether the position is still open and whether the candidate is still under consideration.

It’s a simple matter of notifying each applicant who has invested time, effort and sometimes money whether any specific job is still open — just like notifying them they will be screened or interviewed. And it is of course possible for an employer to ascertain whether a candidate is still under consideration. How can the company and its HR department operate otherwise?

As a reality check, does a business tell its customers it has no idea where the customer’s order is, or for that matter, whether it has adequate inventory to fill an order? In fact, it’s now common for the customer to directly access a business’s inventory database. Why is NJBIA suggesting a company’s ATS database of jobs, applicants, interview results and hiring decisions cannot provide status reports to job applicants? The HR technology certainly exists — or what does the T in ATS stand for?

Medium and larger businesses routinely shell out millions of dollars per year on sophisticated HR technology to track and report on open and filled jobs and on each applicant’s status, as well as on the status of each candidate interviewed. In the Stone Age, HR departments would send a postcard to every applicant thanking them for their time, regretfully rejecting them, and wishing them good luck elsewhere. That’s because every HR manager’s mother (in the Stone Age) taught that it’s important to always wear clean underwear, and to always send a thank-you note.

Surely somewhere in millions of lines of ATS code there’s room for polite communication with applicants that have invested their time to discuss a job. The software is certainly capable of it, but clearly lacks a mother to teach it to behave properly.

There is no excuse for ghosting a guest you invited to discuss a job, and if we’re to take employer associations like the NJBIA seriously, they’d have already fixed this problem. I have zero respect for the NJBIA’s one-sided, take-it-or-leave-it protest.

“Don’t you know it costs money to operate a good business?”

Businesses may have to invest in additional resources to ensure compliance, leading to increased operational costs.

Man, it’s hard to run a business properly. That’s why so many fail — including businesses that are not managed well enough to afford the workers their competitors recruited away.

If a business cannot invest resources to maintain its integrity and reputation with the professional communities from which it needs to recruit, then the business naturally loses to competitors that can. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, known as capitalism, where only the best survive.

If a business can afford HR technology that permits it to easily and quickly (if not accurately) solicit thousands to apply for a job, it cannot complain it lacks the resources “to notify each applicant individually as to whether the position is still open and whether the candidate is still under consideration.”

Give us a break.

“We don’t speak your language so we’re not subject to your laws”

Lastly, this legislation is vague, such that compliance is nearly impossible. For example, this legislation…does not define what constitutes an “employer”…”  does not define what constitutes “awareness”… [or a] “third-party job posting company.” NJBIA respectfully requests clarification of these ambiguities, so that businesses can properly plan… For these reasons, we respectfully request that you vote NO on A-4625.

This is the classic “straw man” argument: a logical fallacy that misrepresents bill A-4625 as unclear and extreme, then argues against the extreme version it concocted, and refuses to offer useful input to improve the bill. Any law, contract or agreement can be criticized, sometimes justifiably, because it does not define its terms clearly. Serious criticism would acknowledge the intent of the law, suggest reasonable definitions and constraints, and provide useful input. The NJBIA does none of this.

Certainly such a wide-ranging job-applicant protection law that’s akin to consumer protection and truth in advertising laws, can be improved upon and shaped to fit the goal of transparency in recruitment advertising and in the hiring process. But the bill’s opponents pretend that thousands of job applicants who’ve been ghosted and abused have no complaint. One protester claimed: “This bill does not solve any legitimate problem out there. This is not an issue.”

How business fights laws that protect job applicants from ghosting

The NJBIA fails to acknowledge the costs job applicants pay in time, effort, money, frustration and emotional and physical distress when they are ghosted. (See comment from LighthouseKeeper1138: “[Ghosting] is one of the primary things that drove me to clinical depression after I lost my 30-year job in 2009.”).

This is how lobbyists like the NJBIA fail to acknowledge that they are defending a deeply broken Employment System, and ignore the obligations of employers to conduct recruitment and hiring with transparency and respect.

This is how business fights laws that protect job applicants from ghosting.

Bill A-4625 can be negotiated to make it better. But because businesses don’t take it upon themselves to protect the very people they need to recruit, now we need a law.

A challenge to the NJBIA

Does the NJBIA have the balls to tell its member companies to do what Assemblyman Danielsen asks? Show common courtesy.

A challenge to all readers

Whether you’re in New Jersey or in another state, send a link to this column to your state and federal legislators, and to employers that have ghosted you or a friend. Demand they bring back common courtesy to job applicants — or legislate it.

How would you address the claims and arguments the NJBIA uses to reject a new law to protect job applicants from ghosting?

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Question

I thought the job posting was legit, so I applied online. Then I had to submit my resume and did a grueling 45 minute “robo”-interview with no real interviewer. Then I filled out more online forms, took a skills test (also online), submitted my list of references and waited. And waited. Yup — they ghosted me. Throughout all this, no human ever spoke to me. And that job? I learned from a company insider there was never any such job open to begin with! Just how widespread are ghost jobs and ghosting? How can we avoid having our time wasted by unethical employers?

Nick’s Reply

Well, you could move to New Jersey and cross your fingers. The state’s legislature is considering a “no ghosting” bill (A4625) that sets forth requirements for publicly advertised job postings. For example, you would never have the experience you described because the job posting would have to state whether it is for an existing position.

The measure, which was approved by the N.J. State Assembly Labor Committee, also requires an employer to provide a time frame in which the employer anticipates filling the position, and to remove a job posting when the job has been filled. The bill is still in the legislative process.

Ghost jobs & ghosting of job seekers

It gets better. (Maybe in response to the “tricks” of ghosting this is the “treat” part of Halloween?)

The bill also would also stop employers from ghosting job candidates after interviewing them. The bill provides that,

“If the employer interviews an applicant for the position, the employer is required, within the time frame provided in the job advertisement, to provide the applicant with an affirmative response as to whether the position has been filled, or if the position has not been filled, [and] whether the employer is still considering the applicant for the position.”

Could it get any better?

This legislation also targets recruiters and job boards.

“Third-party job posting entities [are required] to remove positions that have been filled, and it provides the Department of Labor and Workforce Development with the authority to audit employers and third-party job posting entities for ongoing violations. Any person who violates the provisions of the bill will be subject to civil penalties.”

The trouble with New Jersey is that virtually no news outlets picked up this story.

Ghost jobs & ghosting of job seekers: It’s Halloween every day

Needless to say, business groups protested at a Labor Committee hearing — just as they protested the $15/hour minimum wage. A local radio station reported that Assemblyman Brian Bergen, who voted against the bill, complained, “We always attack the employer and it’s not right. This bill does not solve any legitimate problem out there. This is not an issue.”

Ghosting? There’s no ghosting by employers going on in this fair state!

Assemblyman Joe Danielsen, a sponsor of the bill, was having none of that. “These practices harm job seekers by wasting their valuable time and effort on non-existent opportunities.”

Yes, it’s that simple. For job seekers, ghosting has made everyday Halloween and has turned employers, recruiters and the job-board industry into shameless tricksters. The N.J. Assembly should see what our community has to say: Ghosting: Hard lessons about recruiters & employers.

Penalties

Employers with 10 or more employees would be affected. Violators would be issued a warning and scofflaws would be fined no less than $1,000 but no more than $5,000 for each ghosting incident. (How many expired or fake job postings can you count?) If the violation continues past a month, it will be considered a new violation exacting another fine. For example, if an employer or job board fails to remove an offending posting, the fine is assessed anew.

Of particular interest is references in the bill to “third-party job-posting entities,” which presumably includes headhunters, recruiters and job boards. It will be interesting to watch the progress of this bill — but people in New Jersey and across the nation need to be aware of it.

To the N.J. legislator who voted against the bill because “This bill does not solve any legitimate problem out there,” I say BUNK! This is a problem of epic proportions that affects every job seeker in the nation. Mouthpieces for business groups that cry it’s not right to “attack” employers should try to find a new job — if they can find a legitimate job posting! And political ideologues who argue “there’s too much government regulation” — well, you probably haven’t had to look for a job in a very long time!

What you can do

To answer your two questions, ghost jobs and ghosting of job seekers is prevalent enough of a problem that legislators — at least in N.J. — felt it was time to start regulating the public recruiting process.

What you can do is send a copy of N.J.’s bill A4625 to legislators in your state — and in the U.S. Congress and the Senate — and urge them to enact laws to stop employers from posting ghost jobs and from ghosting job seekers after recruiting them.

Do we need regulation of job advertisements and the job interview protocol? How would you make N.J.’s bill more effective? Do you think it would pass into law in your state? What else can we do to fix this epidemic of job fakery and associated trouble it causes job applicants?

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