
Jobseekers face exploitation as online recruitment is riddled with fake news - elsewhen
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2020/08/jobseekers-face-exploitation-online-recruitment-riddled-fake-news
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tehwebguy
This stuff is so much worse than the article lets on.

The worst fake jobs are money mule scams, meaning that these poor job seeking
individuals will likely run around town "doing work" and end up $2k - $20k in
the hole, depending on how eager they are.

Manager sends them a check to deposit, then asks them to take care of some
payments. This can be standard ("you'll be running payroll, we are a small
company so you can just do it from your account"), or they can try to make it
seem small ("I need to send some iTunes gift cards to these top customers as a
thank you, you can take the leftovers as a bonus because you've been doing
great").

The checks don't bounce for a few days, even a few weeks sometimes, so the
confidence grows and they keep doing more. Then like clockwork the money they
deposited into their account disappears but at this point they've spent
thousands and have no recourse to get it back (and now they are effectively
burned from using banking)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Oh is this the source of the "make thousands from home" ads?

I am still not clear how this works - and would it not be in the interests of
police etc to loudly proclaim how this works so people can spot it?

~~~
notahacker
A lot of the 'make money from home' ads are MLM too, with a similar effect on
the unlucky recruits' bank balances.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
All MLM s come with a sell the idiots the tools scam, in addition to the
regular MLM scam.

------
TeaDude
For those of you currently looking for a job: you have my sincerest pity. A
few months ago, I too was job searching and it was an absolute nightmare.

Just one example from many: A while back, one of the few people who responded
to my application was a "sales" job. The more experienced among you will
already know where I'm going with this.

I looked at their website and the warning lights were going off in my head.
What I was actually supposed to be doing there was never really described.
Luckily, whoever designed the website and related marketing materials was kind
enough to fill all the unused space with politician grade word salad non-
information. This was all peppered with appeals to greed and images of high
ranking executives enjoying themselves (THIS COULD BE YOU!!!).

I then checked their reviews from previous employees and it was universally
panned. One previous employee described it as a cult.

For once, my cowardice and willingness to abort paid off. I cancelled by phone
ON THE MORNING OF MY INTERVIEW while in bed. I later read a forum thread on
"multilevel marketing" schemes and instantly felt the life being breathed back
into me. I had just dodged a major bullet.

The moral of the story is: If something seems off, trust your gut! There's
plenty of large power structures designed solely to fuck with you. This goes
double for if you're young and inexperienced and don't really know the lay of
the land.

~~~
sumtechguy
On the higher end of the job spectrum MLM is not common. They usually just
ghost you totally because it never was a real job on the other end. The number
of jobs I have seen that are obvious 'by our policy we put this on the
internet' is astounding. Tell tales of that is large amount of very specific
requirements for a job and very low pay, basically a copy pasta of someones
resume. I also see a lot of what I call reflection scams. Basically some
recruiter copying some other job listing to try to become the middle man. You
are usually better off searching for unique phrases in the description and
finding the original posting.

On the lower end MLM is rampant. Most of the ones doing it do not understand
the math behind what they are trying to do. They are in the 'cult'. They
honestly think they are 'growing their business' by recruiting and honestly
wasting peoples time. Once you show them they need a large city sized group of
people in their tree to make anything they usually drop out. Easy things to
look for are 'be your own boss' 'work to your own rules' some crazy amount of
money per week for no exp etc etc etc. Another common one I see is package
laundering. Which is a scam where you pick up what is essentially stolen
packages and re-mail them to someone else. Usually associated to some stolen
credit card. At some point you will be left holding the bag when they fold up
shop.

------
torusenthusiast
One thing I've noticed in my more recent job searches before starting my
company was that this kind of spam exists at all job search levels.

I'm really getting the feeling that online applications to jobs are rapidly
becoming next to useless, it really feels like this market is ripe for
disruption, and I've been thinking for a while about how this could be done.

~~~
save_ferris
A lot of people have tried.

The biggest problem in this space IMO is that there’s so much more money on
the recruiting side than the job-seeker side of this exchange, which means
that recruiters are ultimately going to play a much bigger role in the product
development than the job-seekers.

Job-seekers don’t want to pay to look for work, but recruiters are more than
happy to. Until that imbalance is figured out, job posting spam is gonna reign
supreme.

~~~
castratikron
Recruiters impacting product development seems so obvious of a link but I've
never thought of it that way.

Makes me wonder what effect referral bonuses have on an org. People might be
more likely to refer people who are similar to themselves, so you might end up
with more of the same. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on
who's already in...

~~~
save_ferris
Yeah, ultimately the users of your product define how it’s built and what
features it needs. And if your goal is to build something profitable, you’re
gonna go after users that are willing to pay over those that aren’t.

It’s hard to say what impact referral bonuses have. I know that most of my
network does not appreciate being solicited for new opportunities, but I don’t
know how often referral bonuses are actually paid out.

------
Nacdor
This sort of 'perseverance porn' has been a problem for a while now:

[https://fair.org/home/medias-grim-addiction-to-
perseverance-...](https://fair.org/home/medias-grim-addiction-to-perseverance-
porn/)

[https://fair.org/home/media-just-cant-stop-presenting-
horrif...](https://fair.org/home/media-just-cant-stop-presenting-horrifying-
stories-as-uplifting-perseverance-porn/)

~~~
slezyr
> ideological ___agitprop_ __meant to obscure and decontextualize the harsh
> reality of dog-eat-dog capitalism.

That's a strange word for them to use. How often English speakers use it?

> Agitprop (/ˈædʒɪtprɒp/;[1][2][3] from Russian: агитпроп, tr. Agitpróp,
> portmanteau of agitatsiya, "agitation" and propaganda, "propaganda")[4] is
> political propaganda, especially the communist propaganda used in Soviet
> Russia, that is spread to the general public through popular media such as
> literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms with an explicitly
> political message.[5]

~~~
evan_
it's not an uncommon word to use. I see it informally on twitter a lot but
it's used in media as well.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+agitprop](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+agitprop)

~~~
evan_
Fun coincidence, I’m reading “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
and I just picked it back up and read:

“... young students like me who confused agitprop with hard study.”

------
thrownaway954
another thing i noticed is that every job posting will have a slew of fake
applicants apply to it as to discourage people from applying. had a friend who
wanted to apply for a job, however it said that 100 people or so already
applied on indeed. i told her to apply anyways. she got a call that day from
the manager and when she asked them how many other applicants there were, they
told her 3. manager even confirmed that most applications they were getting
were blatantly fake.

~~~
noitsnot
What is the end game of someone flooding in fake resumes?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
If you are working with a service that promises you applicants for that hard-
to-fill position, well, the end game is money and a promise delivered. They
can't really help the quality of applicants, after all, since they don't
discriminate and aren't actually doing the hiring.

------
djdkjdjejej
When I was job hunting in Seattle a few months ago, fake copies of job
postings on LinkedIn outnumbered real postings two or three to one. For every
real Facebook or Amazon posting there were several copies with no logo that
redirected to data collecting websites. I flagged dozens as fake, and days
later they were all still there.

~~~
damerms1
I have been going back and forth with Linkedin the on this very topic. So help
me out. Here is the list I have of 3rd parties.

[https://www.jobleads.com](https://www.jobleads.com)
[https://www.jooble.org/](https://www.jooble.org/)
[https://www.ihireadvertising.com/](https://www.ihireadvertising.com/)
[https://www.neuvoo.com](https://www.neuvoo.com) is part of
[https://www.recruiter.com/](https://www.recruiter.com/)
[http://www.jobsflag.com](http://www.jobsflag.com)
[https://adzoona.com/](https://adzoona.com/)
[https://www.startwire.com/](https://www.startwire.com/)
[https://eu.experteer.com/](https://eu.experteer.com/)
[https://us.experteer.com/](https://us.experteer.com/)
[https://www.executiveplacements.com/](https://www.executiveplacements.com/)
[https://www.resume-library.com/](https://www.resume-library.com/)
[https://www.joveo.com/](https://www.joveo.com/)

------
moltar
Everyone complains about LinkedIn and recruiters. But I get zero spam these
days. I think it’s a combo of a setting adjustment (there’s a toggle you can
turn off if you are not available for hire) and the fact that I’m clearly
using a pitch for my gig/business in the tag line. So if you are inundated
with recruiters, but still find LinkedIn useful for networking - try those two
things. I literally don’t even remember when a recruiter reached out to me the
last time.

~~~
nicbou
The line next to my name, and the first line on my profile are "Not looking
for work". I still get spam.

------
darth_avocado
Aha! I always knew Brigitte Hyacinth didn't hire that person who was 50 mins
late just because of his sheer determination to be able to make it to the
interview after being stuck in traffic, instead of leaving an hour earlier
like other candidates.

~~~
JanisL
I was stuck in traffic for hours and had to abandon my car but I was on a
mission to like your post so I managed to crawl all the way to my keyboard one
suburb over to give this comment a like!

I have to say its not often that someone I don't know in person is annoying
enough for me to actually remember their name from social media spamming but
this is an example.

------
vanusa
Most job ads - especially in the tech industry - are already basically fake
news, aren't they?

~~~
ipnon
I've ditched everything except for Real Talk. I'm not throwing my resume into
a form hole, I'm not responding to recruiters. I email someone I would be
working with directly until they start the hiring process. This precludes me
from working at any large company, in my experience they just beat me around
the algorithm and HR bushes for 1 to 6 hours then send me a canned rejection
from their no-reply address. It's a complete waste of my time.

~~~
vanusa
Same here, pretty much. It's like their basic strategy has come to be:

"It's all about the funnel! Got to get more people in our hiring funnel! But
wait, we don't actualy know how to evaluate them effectively and efficiently
(or even how to communicate with them decently). So... let's just get a bunch
of people "engaged" and see who washes up at the end. That way, we can at
least tell the higher-ups that thanks to our diligent hiring process, we can
go online and brag about how we only hire the top 2 percent of incoming
candidates."

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anigbrowl
Spam is a big social problem and capital aggregators have a perverse incentive
to go along with it because it creates the appearance of demand. Education and
filtering just shoves the problem back on good faith participants. We've been
dealing with this problem for 26 years now; maybe it's time to stop handing
out bandaids and look at the underlying structural issue.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel)

------
AzzieElbab
LinkedIn is website designed to make us hostages to recruiters, and Brazil has
always been huge on kidnappings. Match made in heaven

------
kiba
Maybe platforms should put in anti-viral measures, like only randomly
promoting stories to the top? Fuzzing the number of likes and dislikes,
reducing the importance of influencer?

