CAREERS
Wakey, wakey, job’s a fakey
Some employers are posting ghost jobs with no intent to hire ― and annoying jobseekers along the way
| |
|
TO GET THE job, first there has to be a job, and jobseekers apparently can’t take that for granted these days. A new survey from the folks at Clarify Capital found that a remarkable number of employers and hiring managers are posting what are, effectively, ghost jobs — a job posting that for one reason or another is basically fake, either because it’s been filled already or because it was never real to begin with.
Among 1,000 managers surveyed, 68 per cent had job postings that were active for more than 30 days. Often, the phantom post was intentional — to communicate that the company is always open for applications (50 per cent), to give the impression of growth (43 per cent), or to placate overworked employees (34 per cent).
“Whatever the reason, it definitely looks like many companies are not actively trying to fill the positions they have posted right now,” said Clarify’s Joe Mercurio.
This is, to say the least, an odd finding in an economy that we so frequently hear is bereft of workers. Is that a fake? Experts figure it’s a bit of both. “It seems plausible that the job openings figures overstate the amount of active recruitment going on, and perhaps by more than in the past,” labor economist Andrew Flowers told Business Insider. “But it’s also very clear that there are lots of openings right now.”
But try telling that to a frustrated jobseeker, who might now wonder if they have been writing cover letters to nobody and uploading their resumes into the void. And they have a very good point.
“A lot of businesses don’t understand the impact that a negative hiring process can have on future applicants,” Crawford Thomas Recruiting’s William Stonehouse told BI. “If your listings are a graveyard of old positions…it doesn’t set a good tone. People want to be treated with dignity and respect.” Kieran Delamont
| |
NETWORKING
Shhh, I’m networking over here
Whisper networks of like-minded professionals are becoming more and more popular, and people are using them to land their next role
| |
|
IF YOU THINK of online networking, you probably think of LinkedIn, right? The gold standard of professional social media platforms, love it or hate it.
And for years, that’s been true. But more and more, it’s decentralized private “whisper networks” existing on Discord and Slack groups that are serving as the most powerful networking and job-snagging tools.
One such group profiled by the BBC was a digital marketing Slack with 40,000 members called Online Geniuses. People hang out, bounce ideas off each other, share info, ask questions — and post jobs. On that board, one member said, there are about 40 jobs shared a week, many which haven’t hit the big boards yet. People also share contract work or get hiring recommendations.
The stats bear this approach out if you’re looking to get a new job. “Employers are moving away from the costly process of advertising available positions and managing applicants by utilizing the hidden job market,” writes Kara Dennison. A 2019 survey found that 50 per cent of job applicants found out about it through friends or through networking, compared to just 35 per cent applying through traditional social media methods. (Which might be good news, given the story above…)
Economist Lauren Thomas, who works at Glassdoor, told the BBC that she sees it as a wider shift in how employers use technology.
“From the classified section in newspapers, to websites and now social media to promote opportunities, every time a technological advance in communication has happened, employers have made use of it.”
So, it makes sense that as private chat networks like Discord and Slack grow in popularity as alternatives to social media, that job hiring would go there, too. And, for employers, it’s actually a bit old-fashioned to get referrals, not form submissions. “Personal referrals resulting from networking are often more likely to be hired,” says Thomas. Kieran Delamont
| |
|
|
Terry Talks: Compensation packages that actually drive performance
| In today's competitive hiring environment, it's easy to focus solely on fixed salary. But a successful pay system should communicate organizational priorities and goals and motivate employees to achieve higher performance. | | | |
CONSUMERISM
Mini-size me
Feeling a bit cheated when you check out your plate? It’s not just your imagination ― portions at restaurants are indeed getting smaller
| |
|
THE OTHER DAY, burritos were ordered for dinner at my place, and when it arrived, I couldn’t help but wonder — wasn’t this bigger before
And as it turns out, I’m not alone: the meals at your favourite lunch spot might actually be getting smaller, across the board, according to a new study by Restaurants Canada, titled Reset. Revive. Redefine.
The root cause is simple: the food industry simply hasn’t recovered from the pandemic yet. Foot traffic to restaurants is still 11 per cent below 2019.
“While nominal sales are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels before the end of the year, traffic still remains below what it was before,” said Christian Bulgar, president at Restaurants Canada. “Half of our operators [are] operating at a loss or just breaking even.”
Add to that the inflationary pressures on food costs, and operators have been left with little choice but to join the shrinkflation trend.
The report quotes the corporate chef of High Liner Foods Products, Philman George, who says “the low-hanging fruit for addressing rising food costs is to simply cut back on portion sizes. The catch 22 is the compounding effect of labour shortages. It leaves the customer not only getting less food for their dollar, but also a potential decrease in the service levels they were accustomed to receiving pre-pandemic.”
So, can we expect things to go back in the other direction? Will my burrito ever be unreasonably sized, as opposed to simply large again? That is much harder to say. It is hard to imagine that the restaurant industry will ever totally revert to its pre-2020 ways. Some things, small and large, will be with us for a while, and a downsizing of portions might be one of them.
“Throughout the past two and a half years, the foodservice industry has developed operational calluses,” said Restaurants Canada economist Chris Elliott. “Lessons learned from the pandemic have made food service operators more resilient and innovative.” Kieran Delamont
| |
WORKPLACE
Is anyone happy at work?
While leaders pay close attention to measures like GDP and unemployment, no one seems to be tracking wellbeing
| | |
|
PEOPLE ARE MISERABLE at work!
I know, I know — the sky’s blue, water’s wet, the Pope’s Catholic. But a new book by Gallup CEO Jon Clifton fleshes this out into a full-scale theory about a chronic workplace issue and its professional ramifications.
The book, released last week, is called Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It. It seems to take something we’ve covered in this newsletter before — Gallup’s recent global survey findings that showed a deep lack of engagement among workers — and fits it into the wider trends about what’s going on.
Clifton flashes some interesting and less-discussed stats from Gallup’s work to make the case that there is a growing inequality in workplace happiness, as well as engagement. Using data from over five million interviews and survey conducted by Gallup, Clifton suggests that the focus on income inequality has masked, to an extent, the discussion of wellbeing inequality.
When they first started the survey in 2006, 3.4 per cent of people said their lives were a 10 out of 10, and 1.6 per cent said they were at a zero. In 2021, those numbers have shifted, to 7.4 per cent and 7.6 per cent. Happy people are getting happier, but unhappy people are getting even more unhappy. This, he concludes, is not a healthy state of affairs for society or the global economy.
“They sure pay attention when the economy contracts. If the stock market collapses, it makes headlines everywhere. And all leaders worry when unemployment increases,” Clifton writes. “But what about when anger rises? Or stress? Or sadness? Do they even know it happened?”
When this all centres on the workplace, it starts to go from fuzzy idea to concrete effect. Gallup estimates, for instance, that the world loses $7.8 trillion in productivity every year, and that disengagement means the global economy is running at only about 89 per cent capacity, max.
And they are calling on business leaders not to try to solve this with a quick fix — a four-day workweek or Fridays off isn’t going to cut it; the whole workforce and management class need to work towards a culture of job satisfaction. “It’s not really a pipe dream, either,” said Gallup’s workplace expert Jim Harter. “It’s not just wishful thinking, it’s actually very changeable.” Kieran Delamont
|
| | | | |
