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A tough labor market for white-collar workers has turned recruiting upside down

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/job-hunters-are-so-desperate-that-theyre-paying-to-get-recruited-44891ac2
33•KnuthIsGod•2h ago

Comments

Volundr•2h ago
https://archive.is/OAEU2
pttrn•1h ago
https://archive.li/OAEU2 (archive.is seems down for me)
yesbut•1h ago
coming soon to a town near you: indentured servitude.

hopefully they will at least have nice bunk beds in the corporate dorms.

shiroiuma•1h ago
Nah, they can save money by buying larger beds and making employees share the beds. A single king-size bed can fit 4-5 employees.
georgemcbay•1h ago
> A single king-size bed can fit 4-5 employees.

... at a time.

So if you also run three shifts that's 12-15 employees per bed!

shiroiuma•54m ago
Exactly right.

On top of this, they're going to have mandatory bed position assignments. Just like you currently can't choose which desk you're going to sit at, and have to put up with the most annoying person on the team as your deskmate, in the near future you're going to have to cuddle with him/her at night too, whether you like it or not, and regardless of his/her bad hygiene, just because your manager decided to stick you two together.

emperorxanu•1h ago
Oh. Basically this is the scam they use at Offerzen.

When I saw wsj.com I figured this would be an "article" that's mostly manipulative, fear-mongering and doom and gloom.

If you're paying to maybe get hired, you're not the client - you're basically being sold to yourself.

mono442•1h ago
I wonder how the real estate market will look like in the biggest cities in the coming years. I haven't changed jobs for quite a while so I don't know if this article is accurate but if it's really that bad, then I wouldn't be surprised if we see a big crash. After all, the appeal of biggest cities was always, at least to me, the availability of white collar, highly paid jobs. If these ceased to exist, I don't see reason why people would want to move there anymore.
johnebgd•58m ago
White flight all over again but this time it’d be white collar flight.
smt88•51m ago
> After all, the appeal of biggest cities was always, at least to me, the availability of white collar, highly paid jobs

You are definitely unusual.

Since remote work became more common because of Covid, remote workers have moved within the same city or moved to smaller cities. Only 4% relocated to rural areas[1].

Cities are appealing to most people because they have entertainment, variety, walkability, and many other benefits that rural places don't provide. The urbanization of America isn't only because work has changed, but because people generally prefer urban or suburban living over rural living.

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11551397/

lazide•12m ago
‘Smaller cities’ in the US are what most of the world calls ‘rural’.

Rural in the US is truly remote, not just ‘has farmland’.

berdario•7m ago
I don't think he's arguing for rural, just expressing concern about the *biggest* cities.

> entertainment, variety, walkability, and many other benefits that rural places don't provide

I appreciate all of this as well, but at the end of the day, I moved to a city with 80x the population of my hometown because of a (specific) job. Rent is also significantly higher, and if I had to consume my savings to survive here, I'd surely move out. Entertainment and walkability have secondary importance compared to putting food on the table and saving for retirement.

fock•51m ago
so: where do you go and what do you do? All your land and food is subject to property laws and the way things are going the owners will be allowed violence to enforce their rights. Essentially you'll be a serf again just like 99% of other people and 95% on this site (which sadly has owners very much intent to become our lords)
sph•38m ago
That’s the contract agent, something I wished existed years ago. Some interesting discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32838336

I am working on contract work through a third-party company, and I proposed them such a solution: I employ them, pay them a percentage [1], they keep me busy with work, just like any serious actor has an agent. It is a great business model for everybody, and their workload is small enough they can represent a dozen people with ease.

They actually liked the idea, have spoken of switching to such a model eventually, but the sad reality is that they make much more money the “classic way”: the big client gives them the contract, and they subcontract to me. This way they can skim 30-60% off the amount paid to the sorry bugger that does all the work at the bottom, without lifting a finger.

It is very sad no one seems interested to serve this need, except very few examples (there’s that NY management agency people have been recommending for the past 10 years, which have such a backlog of candidates there’s no real chance of getting in). If I had any interest in being a salesman and recruiter, I’d build such an agency in a heartbeat.

1: I’d pay for an actual agent 10-15% of my daily rate for the duration of the contract, which is much more than the numbers presented in the article.

lazide•13m ago
You said it yourself - they make more money and have more control doing it the other way.

Put differently - why wouldn’t you do it?

fock•3m ago
well, maybe you should own your agent and fund a cooperative for that purpose?
TrackerFF•4m ago
Is this still the result of COVID-era overhiring (caused by free cash)?

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A tough labor market for white-collar workers has turned recruiting upside down

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/job-hunters-are-so-desperate-that-theyre-paying-to-get-recr...
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