This post was originally published on this site.
It should be no surprise that recently, the way people apply for jobs has changed – instead of having to seek out places and tailor resumes, we have entered a world where the differentiator is how fast you can click apply. The advent of application platforms like Ziprecruiter and LinkedIn has entirely changed the speed of the job market. While I obviously wasn’t of working age pre-internet, it seems that the process of applying for jobs used to be a lot more personal. Resumes were expected to be tailored, cover letters were actual letters and walking around Main Street looking for job postings was considered an efficient approach. Now, an application is as easy as the press of a button.
This new market has specifically impacted entry-level positions because of lower barriers of entry. The resulting landscape specifically affects recent grads, which in turn means Gen-Z. As ex-screenagers we have fully adopted the ease of online applications, with recent polling showing that Gen-Z didn’t just apply via application platforms, but that 50% applied on their phones.
Despite Gen-Z’s adoption of the new rules of engagement, we haven’t been nearly as successful at hitting the mark as our predecessors.
In a job market, it’s always true that one of the hardest steps is just getting your foot in the door – which is the purpose of entry level jobs (it’s literally in the name). Even so, these jobs always have more applicants and quickly become competitive, a fact which Gen-Z has unfortunately been learning. However, not only compared to other generations but compared to the success of Gen-Z applicants in the past, it’s clear that things have gotten significantly worse. Post COVID-19, the amount of new hires among Gen-Z has declined by 14%.
This isn’t due to Gen-Z’s inaction in finding work, in reality we put just as much effort into finding work as previous generations – it just isn’t translating well. Gen-Z’s often sisyphean efforts in the job market have recently gotten us labeled “the rejection generation.” Something isn’t clicking, and the problem is not with Gen-Z. We feel like we’re doing the best we can when, on sites like LinkedIn, we send that 100th application, but we don’t realize the true depth of the void our resumes are sent to when we click “apply.”
The “easiness” of platforms like LinkedIn is an incredible misnomer. The reality of quick application services is that they only create the feeling of progress. Emergent technologies and sinister business tactics have left services like LinkedIn binary walls to which few resumes stick … There are multitudes of barriers that arise before any resume ever reaches an actual human.
The first problem an applicant runs into is that the job they are applying for might not actually exist. Termed “ghost jobs,” job sites are permeated by postings that don’t actually exist. A real firm will post a job posting for either a position that is already filled or a position that they don’t plan to fill. This weird practice has ballooned in recent years due to the rise in low investment rapid application software like LinkedIn. A survey done by Greenhouse, an applicant tracking software found that over 20% of job postings were ghost.
So, why do companies post ghost jobs? Well it turns out there are a lot of reasons, none of which seem very ethical. One of the main reasons for ghost jobs is that recruiters acquire “evergreen recs,” which are lists of capable applicants for future job postings. Evergreen recs are a way to hedge against the long time the recruitment process takes. Often recruiters have to create an advertisement/job posting, give a certain amount of time to allow people to apply, then review candidates – often involving multiple interviews that can span weeks. However, the deadlines recruitment staff are given can be wildly unreasonable. By collecting evergreen recs, about half of the process is already accounted for.
As an applicant, you are never informed that the job you are applying for is effectively being used to collect evergreen recs, instead, you are under the assumption that there is a tangible position. If all a recruiter wants is a list of qualified candidates for future positions, then why not just come out and say it? Well, recruiters know that they will get fewer applicants if they are honest. Postings would be a lot less appealing to applicants if it were made clear that they are just collecting qualified applicants for potential future jobs. Evergreen recs dominate the world of ghost postings, but somewhat frequently, ghost postings are used for other, more insidious reasons.
It turns out that there is a lot to be gained by making your employees think you’re hiring. An anonymous survey done by Resume Builder asked recruiters why they posted ghost jobs. Over 60% of those surveyed said they had posted ghost jobs “to make employees believe their workload would be alleviated by new workers.” By advertising that they were hiring, overworked employees were falsely led to believe that their workloads would decrease, making the dream of a healthy, humane work life balance seem within reach. In other instances, ghost jobs were used to manipulate employees in the opposite way. 62% of recruiters said that they posted ghost jobs to make employees feel “more replaceable,” leveraging the fear of layoffs in a volatile job market to retain and overwork employees. As a perverse psychological tactic there is a third reason why companies post fake job openings; if you look like you’re hiring, you look like you’re growing, which can artificially inflate share prices, or falsely indicate growth as another tactic to attract investors.
What’s truly striking is what platforms such as LinkedIn are doing to prevent it, which is nothing. These platforms have no legal (or apparently ethical) responsibility to limit ghost jobs. Thankfully LinkedIn gives helpful tips to applicants on how to avoid ghost jobs. In an article titled How to Spot (and Bust) Ghost Job Posts: 4 Easy Steps, LinkedIn outlines how to avoid fake postings. These steps are check the date, cross reference employer websites/social media and contact them directly. What’s unfortunate is that these steps entirely remove the reason why features like “easy apply” exist, which is to have the whole application process hosted on LinkedIn. If every time you apply it’s incumbent on you to check an employer’s website then applying isn’t so easy anymore.
While the development of an overly arduous process to prevent all ghost jobs seems unreasonable, it remains striking that as of now, LinkedIn has zero measures in place to prevent misleading posts.
While you might expect that – having passed the barrier of ghost postings – when a resume does get sent to an employer looking to fill a real position a human would review your resume, but increasingly, even the final steps have fallen victim to automation.
Everyone’s favorite emerging technology, AI, has been of no assistance in helping the job market. Over the past few years a multitude of services have been created which purport to help candidates find positions using AI tools. This has allowed applicants to quickly and efficiently apply to open positions through the help that AI gives through the entire application process. Similarly to features like “easy apply” that reduce the amount of time per application – firms get significantly more applications than they used to. Naturally firms have adapted to this new paradigm by implementing their own AI tools.
Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS, are AI resume filters that rigidly sort candidates using standards set by an employer. The general criteria of an ATS are both experience and education/certification – and they sort with complete rigidity, either you pass or you don’t. ATS’s binary sorting in many ways devalues the point of a resume, which is supposed to holistically (as much as one sheet of paper can) express why someone is an ideal candidate. These filters remove most applications from the pool, making it rare that your resume is ever seen by a human.
The perforation of these technologies now spans much farther than just the tech sector. A study conducted by Harvard in 2021 found that 75% of U.S. companies use some form of AI resume filter. Harvard also found that the use of AI filters has led to the emergence of a group of job seekers they term “hidden workers.” While in the past job recruiters had clear standards they held candidates to – years of experience, years of education, certifications, etc. – it was also the case that under qualified candidates would be hired because they had the “intangibles” a recruiter found important (i.e. the whole point of an interview). AI filters do not have the same flexibility, so anyone that doesn’t meet the exact parameters the bot is told to enforce is filtered out. As a result, candidates with no experience are unable to find any work because almost all resume filters check for experience. This restriction is insurmountable against the rigidity of filters, thus the candidate becomes “hidden” from ever receiving an interview.
“Getting your foot in the door” has become increasingly arduous because a) the door may not exist, and b) the door may only be opened by a program who has been told to only allow those who (ironically) have already opened the door.