fake jobs, scam jobs, ghost jobs

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According to some articles, 36% of job listings, fake jobs. Plus, scam jobs and ghost jobs.

Some articles claim that plenty of applicants are looking for jobs right now, and it is extremely difficult to get a job nowadays.

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"You can do anything you set your mind to."

That cliche (while often spoken and well intended), feels like a smack across the face to me.

plenty of factors determine your job prospects: education, skill, personality, health, luck, discrimination, economy, effort

granted, all things equal, the more effort you put toward something, the greater the outcome. however, effort is just one of those factors, not the only one. sometimes other factors are "limiting reagents".

some annoying lil dipshits act like just b/c i am just a Lot Attendant, it proves that i didn't do anything with my "life" or didn't put in effort to school or anything like that.

s**t.

A lot of people rejected me when I dropped out of the elite university I had been pushed into. I've made a good living for myself over the last 40 years as a computer geek, I own a house and have a beautiful wife, and yet those people still consider me a 'failure'.

That's their problem, not mine. It doesn't matter who we are or what we do. Sucky people gonna suck.

What I've been told is that a number of job listings are for real places and positions that exist.... but the position is not actually open, and they're just putting up listings just because?? This fries my brain.

Since entering back into the job market, I have received a number of scams. They primarily come in text messages. I was suspicious of them to begin with so didn't fall for them.

With what's actually on job listing sites - I really don't know what could be fake. D: All I know is that I have a good resume but no one I apply for even gives me a chance. "We're moving forward with other candidates" if I even get a response at all. It's so harsh. Why can't there just be somewhere I can just go get a job and make money without having to go through this nightmare? I want to work, I have a good resume, but that has done nothing for me so far.

Why is it like this? Getting jobs isn't supposed like auditioning for the big marching band at your high school which holds itself to high standards. No, getting a job is a necessity. Instead it's treated like a big privilege that you have to audition for, and 99% of them don't even give you the audition to begin with. And then people judge you for not having a job on top of that, calling you lazy and calling government assistance (which I have yet to even take) "hand-outs for people who don't want to work". Walk in my shoes before you judge people like that.

In the UK, last time I looked, there was a legal requirement to advertise some jobs externally. This means that thousands of people ended up applying for a job which was only ever going to be filled internally.

Sometimes it's worse. I went for a graduate job interview, which was two days of competitive interviews with an overnight stay. You can imagine how stressful that was to start with. But throughout the whole process there was one interviewee who was persistently behaving like an a***hole - messing around, making off-colour jokes, being inappropriate with the interviewers, etc.

I didn't get the job. I asked for feedback from two interviewers, who gave directly conflicting answers - one said that my tech skills were excellent but that they felt I wasn't a good fit with the team; the other said that I'd fit very well into the team but that I lacked the tech skills they wanted.

Some time later I worked out what had happened. There had never been a vacancy to start with. The a***hole candidate was their student intern, and he'd already got the job. But, in order to fulfil legal requirements, particularly to remain on government funding lists for graduate recruitment, they had to not only advertise externally, but conduct an entire interview process. The whole thing had been a sham.

That was one of my very first graduate interviews, and it was a 500-mile round trip. (In England, that's a long way.)

The good news: I am still here. The company ceased to exist a long time ago.

Yes, it is true that agencies advertise jobs that don't exist, to hoik people onto their contact list. Very often they ask you for references before you've even applied for anything. That's a Big Red Flag; they're not interested in you - all they want is the contact details of your previous managers, so they can ask them about vacancies.

How I do job applications in general: I put my CV on job sites, locked to the pulic but open to companies and agencies. I'll scour job listings and apply directly to companies only. I won't apply to agency-advertised jobs. If agencies are interested in me, they have to contact me.

I also won't do phone calls - I politely tell them that I'm too busy, and if they can send me the job description by email. That takes off the pressure, puts me in control, and it's easy (even as an autistic person) to weed out the grifters - look for hyperbolic language, too many exclamation marks, over-emphasis on company culture over substance, unrealistic salaries, etc.