Don't Make Job Referrals Public

georgemcbay

People checking in code they've never looked at. People employee-referring other people who they've never worked with, and don't even know at all on a personal level. Ya'll are fucking crazy.

ngruhn

Can't believe this wasn't already a problem pre LLMs.

physicsguy

I wouldn’t personally refer anyone I’ve not worked with. What’s the point? Someone being smart isn’t enough, they have to be actually sane and normal to work with. You can be friends with people you wouldn’t want to work with. Someone I’ve not met would be a totally unknown quantity.

CodesInChaos

A referral program can have two very different purposes: 1. A trusted employee vouches for a potential employee they know personally or worked with before. 2. A way to collect applicants as an alternative or to complement job ads on page. This has the risk as other public referral programs, where it encourages affiliates to advertise the job in spammy and unethical ways, tarnishing the company's reputation. A public referral program like targets the second purpose, while the author and many posters here assume it aims for the first.

Animats

This isn't a consequence of job referrals being public. It's a consequence of them being anonymous. If you saw the same referrer on all the referrals, it would be obvious that something is wrong. It should be obvious to the company that pays the referrals. Same problem as spam - if you can spam anonymously, spam gets out of hand. Anyone seeing this from the hiring side?

OptionOfT

I get a lot of these messages via LinkedIn. They say I'm a good candidate for a job, write something, and tell me if I'm interested to apply via <link>. If a recruiter wants a cut, I expect them to work for it. Me filling out a form isn't that. Unsure if they are real recruiters, or bots. Most of the ones contacted me were based in either Nigeria or Pakistan.