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

30 points · charliebwrites · 71 days ago

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?

29 comments
gregjor · 71 days ago
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.

Show replies

phendrenad2 · 71 days ago
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.

bojo · 71 days ago
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.

Show replies

leros · 69 days ago
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.

bob_theslob646 · 70 days ago