Comment by Aurornis
4 days ago
This statistic constantly confuses people who haven't done hiring.
If we decide we're going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don't copy and paste the same job listing 10 times. We leave it open and collect resumes through that. At a large or fast growing company, we might never stop interviewing and hiring senior software engineers. The listing stays open for a year or more.
There are also specialty roles where hiring takes months. I've had niche roles open where we didn't get any applicants with any experience on the topic for over 90 days on multiple occasions.
So you should apply to old job postings? Consensus in LATAM seems to be, they just forgot to take them down and they already have someone or in Latin America if you repost the same opening over and over the consensus seems to be the company is toxic they have a turnover problem, maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people
Some common sense goes a long way. If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring. Submit away.
If the listing is generic like "senior software engineer" and all of the requirements are generic like being able to program or do teamwork, it's probably a generic listing.
Applying anyway is a safe bet, but I wouldn't invest as much energy into tailoring your resume if it's a 6 month old posting from a 50 person company with a website that looks like it's from 2009. That company probably forgot to take the listing down.
> maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people
This wouldn't help because you have no way of knowing if they've already hired 9 people or 1 person.
The target can also change constantly. At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring.
> At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring.
As an analogy it's kinda like hard drives: when one of my hard drives dies, it's An Event which I need to deal with specifically; I need to order a replacement for that specific drive. At Google's server farms, hard drives dying is just a statistic, you continuously buy hard drives just because you know existing drives are gonna die at some semi-predictable rate.
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No this is not common sense. No company in LATAM has 10000 people. Large companies just aren't a thing here. Most companies here are the 50 people companies you mention so the normal thing is to hire occasionally. And LATAM never had an industrial revolution so software positions are just rare unless the company is larger than the local average. If you do find one, it's not a pure one or is service oriented, not to build a product. What I mean is, building a technological product is rare let alone as a product company in LATAM and most technical positions are service or outsourcing oriented. If you find a technical product role like being a mobile developer, it's often not at a company that offers a technological product but a service in another industry like a bank
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> you can assume that they're always hiring.
You can, but you’re probably wrong and are wasting your time and effort going through lord knows how many hoops to submit a simple CV.
Were submissions as simple as “here’s my CV, contact me if you like what you see”, then this wouldn’t be a problem. But when you have to sign up to the millionth HR service with the same 50 “please input the info that’s already on the resume you’re submitting” steps over and over again just to never hear back from the company or get rejected 6 months later, “submit away” is not an acceptable answer.
> This wouldn't help because you have no way of knowing if they've already hired 9 people or 1 person.
Yes, it would. Even if only 1 of the 10 spots is available, it still is a valid listing. Not knowing if the listing is valid at all is way worse.
Asking for “common sense” only works if the situation you are in makes sense to begin with. Job listings are a cesspit of bad behaviour, dark patterns, disrespectful processes and incongruous offers.
What we need is some sort of regulation on how job listings are posted and how candidates can and should apply.
While we’re at it, it should be utterly ILLEGAL and absolutely liable to have a job listing up with no salary range or a salary range that’s too wide to give a sense of what compensation looks like—lying about it should trigger serious legal consequences as well.
It’s about time candidates were treated with some dignity.
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Often you pay to have that posting. For a smaller company they def know that posting is still up. Likely they are just getting poor applications (or need to improve their posting because the right people are not seeing it)
In the age of LLMs every one is "tailoring" their resume to every posting.
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My common sense is that it varies per market. In an employer's market this bad you either need to be highly specialized or you need to get your submissions in early. First 24 hours matters a lot more than your actual skillset when job postings are regularly receiving 1000+ applicants. You know the hiring managers are going to stop after they find a few dozen qualified applicants.
But in a good market, sure. You can throw your hat into a random general application and you still might get a call back. Old postings are worth a shot. Any connection with an internal recruiter at least guarantees you start the process.
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> If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring.
Perhaps true in the most literal sense, but you cannot assume that it's true in the practical sense.
Lots of companies have laid off significant numbers of people, particularly in certain roles. There will always be some turnover that requires hiring at a large company but this does not mean that you should assume there are always open positions for your role.
Submitting to a large company for roles that are in secular decline within that company is mostly a waste of time.
It's also not uncommon for natural turnover to be used as an organic way to downsize, with a role for a person who just left remaining unfilled.
> Some common sense goes a long way. If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring. Submit away.
Common sense would dictate that a company with 10,000 people has a need for a diverse set of roles, and it would be completely stupid to recycle the same template pretending the role was always the same. In fact, repeating a stale advert suggests the company does in fact not have positions opened and either forgot to pull an old advert or some recruiter is trawling for applications to pretend to be productive.
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> So you should apply to old job postings?
Yes. I recently got a job (IT infrastructure engineer with a non-tech company) on a posting that was 6 months old. they had filled it, and at the same time got approval for a second headcount so they never pulled it down
I got a job by applying to an old listing, for the wrong city.
Small companies may look to fill a certain set of skill-sets, and if that is filled by one person or three doesn't matter much; can puzzle around to make the workload fit what is found. large companies may hire 10 people generically, but may stop at 5 if they don't like the candidates, or hire 16 after a good set of resumes.
Forcing companies to be overly specific in the roles is just making it harder to apply.
If it’s a big company, anyway, then yeah. A FAANG type hires thousands of engineers a year. They are not going to have a bespoke ad per position.
You should, but you should always apply as early as possible.
The main reason the jobs are reposted are to get them to the top of the feed
It seems like if you're interested in a role it's ok to apply and be in their system and that much more discoverable.
Being able to reach out and have a chat with the HR manager either way also makes a candidate more human.
Been awhile since I’ve been in the job hunt but doesn’t Indeed at least have an option to display the number of roles open on each posting? Wouldn’t that solve this issue pretty easily?
You pay for job listings so it would be silly to not take them down.
I was recently job searching and roughly 50% of all jobs ghosted me. Just an automated email and then... silence. And when applying via LinkedIn only ~5% of companies even opened my application.
I can believe that your company has a good reason for keeping the job up, but I also know that some job ads are black holes were no one bothers to do the bare minimum including taking the posting down. I have no idea how to differentiate one from the other.
50% is a pretty damn good response rate! I wouldn't complain about that.
It's not surprising about LinkedIn. They've made applying for jobs too easy so there's too much noise. I wouldn't bother applying for jobs there. LinkedIn is great for recruiters though - just put some effort into your profile, set it to "looking for work", and then reply to interesting recruiter spam. That's how I got my last 3 jobs.
extremely good, my stats have been generally 5-10% response rate for just screenings in the course of over 4 times when i was looking for new roles. each time sent anywhere between 200 - 400 applications. and that's just for calls to get to recruiter or hiring manager
You mean “Open to Work”? If yes, did you turn on the green ring around your profile pic?
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As someone with a niche job and title (and comes pretty decorated), I would expect to hear back on my applications more often and yet I get nothing either. There are some prominent companies (cough Figma, Smartsheet, Stripe cough) who literally have had an open role for exactly my job for nearly 3+ years without filling it.
Maybe I'm thinking a bit too much of myself, but it doesn't seem like they are that interested in really filling it.
This is probably too broad a category for anecdata to mean much, but just to balance the scales I've recently started looking in a job category that I thought was niche, but not that niche. I've heard back from something like 11/13 applications, often the same or next day.
That's unusual. Most applicants are sending out dozens or hundreds of applications for a sub-20% response rate.
Then you'd still only have a small number of roles up, not the thousands of positions the article is showing for some companies. They'd be hiring hundreds of thousands a year if they were constantly interviewing for all of them, and I don't believe O'Reilly Auto Parts is recruiting people as quickly as a nation at war.
https://careers.oreillyauto.com/us/en/c/information-technolo...
They've got a few open spots if you're interested in relocating to Springfield, MO (and even some entry level IT positions https://careers.oreillyauto.com/us/en/job/R203370/IT-Support... - that one was posted 09/21/2026)
When I lived in the area about 6 years ago, I had 3rd party recruiters reach out to me about roles that they don't list. The whole region it felt like was 70% contractors (W-2 with the contracting firm), until the company really liked you and bought out your contract and converted you to an actual employee.
Surprisingly I had better benefits at the two contracting firms than what employees were getting.
That is point, these are fake roles.
Another confounder is the opposite. When I've been hiring I'd often open up different public recs for the same role to cast a broader net. Some people self identify with certain terms and may not realize they'd be a fit.
So what would happen is I'd have say 10 real openings, I may have 5 different job postings, and all of them would stay open until I filled all 10 openings.
The article is a content marketing piece. The goal is to attract attention, not necessarily to be precise or accurate
I dispute this. I have done hiring, and each listing was one-to-one tied to a role inside the CRM and talent trackers.
But to find the actual candidate who fills the role? yeah potentially months.
Entry to mid level was exploding -- 800+ applicants each time -- but for mid-to-high or manager roles we'd get 40 apps and maybe 2 were fits.
I'm curious, for the niche or senior roles, have you personally read through the resumes or do you depend on the recruiter? I hear you on the entry and early-career jobs, but I see Director and VP roles also open for months. With all the layoffs, it's hard to belief there is not SOME talent in there worth hiring or at least training up.
This is not done everywhere. I've never hired in the US, but worked for companies in Europe and JP, from <100 people companies to FAANG, and all of them opened dedicated listing for every position we had to fill.
We do a hybrid of both. Internally, we have a specific job/position code, and externally we have job descriptions posted.
If we’re hiring 10 senior software engineers, I’ll have 10 position IDs at the start, but we’ll only have one job posting for Senior Software Engineer (assuming there is no difference in the JD).
I can’t imagine going onto a company site that’s hiring 10 Senior SWEs and seeing 10 identical listings. That would make me doubt their competence.
Then post a disclaimer that this is a generic position post to gather resumes. Don't publish lies to people that a role is open.
You also have to deal with delusional hiring managers. A few months ago I remember seeing a comment on here from someone who had kept job listings up for years while hiring because he couldn't find anyone with the "right experience". Clearly there was no actual imminent need to fill the role and he was just hoping that some superstar would stumble across it, but he kept insisting that this counted as "really hiring for the role".
aka the person willing to work for a fraction of their worth.
Yeah my hiring into current job (bank) took 6 months. I even quit the previous job, and date of start kept pushing. Job post was still there.
At one point I flatly threatened to hiring agency I am quitting the process if this goes on further, and all was finished within a week or two.
Corporations work in mysterious (aka chaotic) ways. Even though it usually boils down to specific manager being lazy ass.
> If we decide we're going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don't copy and paste the same job listing 10 times. We leave it open and collect resumes through that. At a large or fast growing company, we might never stop interviewing and hiring senior software engineers. The listing stays open for a year or more.
How on earth am I, a potential job seeker, supposed to be able to figure out if your year-old job posting is still up because you: couldn't find anyone after a year, are constantly hiring and never take it down, actually hired your quota six months ago and HR forgot to take the listing down, the job listing isn't for a real job and is just a trap to collect resumes, the listing is for a ghost job to placate the overworked current staff, some other reason?
I mean, in 26 years in the industry I’ve never worked anywhere that kept ads up for jobs that had already been filled. Not even on their own websites where hosting those ads is effectively free (as opposed to LinkedIn et al where you have to pay).
I’m not saying there are no companies that keep non-live job ads up purely for fishing purposes but, in my experience, it’s not the norm. It would really piss jobseekers off and that’s the kind of word that tends to get around and make it harder to hire in future. Maybe not if you’re a FAANG, because so many people want to work for you anyway, but it’s going to cause problems for “normal” companies.
Anecdotes are not data, etc, but several years ago I worked for a mom & pop company that conducted interviews with people for a job that didn't exist 'just to see what was out there', so stuff like that definitely does happen. (That place eventually went out of business for unrelated reasons)
I think the more common case is listings that are technically "open" but due to slow internal processes, repositioning, etc etc, no work is being done towards filling them that is visible to candidates.
For example, I've personally witnessed situations where the funding for a role gets postponed to next quarter, but my manager just kept it open anyway, either out of fear of missing out on the perfect candidate if they stopped accepting apps, or because it's simply easier than going through the HR process to re-post it in a month.
https://www.resumebuilder.com/3-in-10-companies-currently-ha...
2024.
I worked at several FAANG and similar companies for 20 years. We were always hiring from new grad up to principal. Just a handful of generic position descriptions.
That seems like something you could pretty easily solve for by just specifying that it's for multiple hires, or that the post is evergreen.
I don't think anyone reasonable is saying that you can't or shouldn't be able to do that -- just that there should be good faith disclosures.
I see this for experienced roles too, especially where pay isn't super competitive. If you need a lead software engineer in a certain city for a certain salary, that often means waiting months for them to come across it. 10 junior engineers may apply but ultimately they just can't perform the role required
Nobody is confused. It’s propaganda to justify further immigration to flood the labor market and, these days, additionally to quell fears about AI-related job losses.
having experienced the UK & US markets - I can tell you within the startup cohort those using lever / Ashby etc - it's not that they have multiple positions - but they're tryna pull an illusion of growth specially in the UK market.
because luckily in the UK market - companies books are open to the public.
Can’t be bothered to update a job ad on your own websites. Can’t be bothered to respond to applicants.
WTF do these people doing hiring actually do?
I mean, naïvely you’d think encouraging more higher quality applicants would be important somehow, but no.
This doesn't make any sense. You try to explain a 28% by arguing based on edge cases.
agree. am working somewhere that does the same. we can't find enough of the right engineers to join and it's been a long/slow journey. hiring can be tough for both sides (speaking of those looking for the other side).
I think people just latch onto ideas that try to simplify and make sense of frustrating situations where they dont have control. "Ghost jobs" are thing to blame now, for a while is was that taxcode thing for software engineers.
Well, no one else is making sense of it (or rather, the real answer is something we can't say), so people will do their own data gatherings and report their findings.
The only issue is that it's never one factor. Rising interest rates, s174, ghost jobs, outsourcing: them and many more factors all add up.
>If we decide we're going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don't copy and paste the same job listing 10 times.
I'm not confused that's just a red flag not to work for your company.
Umm...why? Consider the alternate approach. What if I listed 10 Sr Software Eng roles. What would job seekers do? If you said 'apply to all of them', you'd be right. In general, the same recruiter will be responsible for all applications for the same role (e.g. all sr software engineers). There is no benefit to anyone in having the same resume in there 10 times.
If you are, for a year, constantly hiring senior software engineers? That tells me you're just throwing engineers at problems, which is not how problems are solved elegantly. That's sliding into Brook's Law.
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That's fair but still indicates shortage, no?
No, the exact opposite! A high percentage of ghost jobs indicates that there are very few actual jobs open in the field, which suggests an oversupply of workers.
if the listings are open for the reasons OP stated, then yes it does indicate a shortage. if companies hired all the SWEs they wanted they wouldn't still have the listings
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Or a lack of demand for workers in that particular region.
Not necessarily indicates any 1 thing; it can be fake job posts to signal growth, could be an extra picky hiring manager, even a decrepit company that forgot to close it.
I agree with that, just responding to the parent who wrote that their company keeps the hiring listed. So, in their case it's true but in other cases it is not.
I agree, I should have written a bit more, apologies.
It’s a pipeline requisition or feeder requisition. Sometimes companies will close and refresh it. Can’t rely on job listings alone
As a hiring manager, I approve this message.
> We leave it open and collect resumes through that.
This is really shitty behavior. If you aren't hiring, remove the posting.
How is it shitty behaviour. "I are hiring 10 people, we won't remove the job listing until 10 people are hired."
If I apply to a job, I expect you to get back to me within the week. Anything else is just disrespectful to me and wasting my time.
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I've done hiring at AWS and many other companies and the OP is 100% accurate, so I don't know why you speak with such confidence
You could argue that AWS doesn't know what they're doing but they also hire way more software developers than all but a handful of other companies
This is exactly why hiring is such a mess, lazy managers who don't want to repost job listings or put any effort into hiring. Job seekers need to apply to thousands of jobs because they have no way of knowing if a company is actually hiring. Which means hiring managers (who we have already established are lazy) now are incentivised to find ways to not look at resumes.
I don't think you've actually done any hiring.
Companies don't need a "software engineer" x100.
Large companies have teams, and every team puts out a different job description based on their particular requirements, stack, desired experience, etc.
I've never encountered a scenario where someone wants engineers in bulk and then they'll decide where to place them within the organization.
Multiple big tech companies have historically done exactly this. I got hired at a public tech company as an iOS engineer in 2020 and they made an offer, I accepted, and then I got to meet with the managers of several teams and pick the one I wanted to work with. Single job posting.
Almost every place when I’ve done campus recruiting treats it like bulk hiring of good raw talent. I hated it when I first saw it on the employer side, but it’s pretty practical.