Apple Looks For Exceptional Engineer With a Secret Job Posting (9to5mac.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A hidden Apple website that hosts a job description and invitation to apply for an important position has recently been discovered. The posting describes a role that should be filled by a "talented engineer" who will develop a critical infrastructure component for the company's ecosystem. Discovered late yesterday by ZDNet's Zach Whittaker, the secret posting was found at us-west-1.blobstore.apple.com (now pulled). The posting stated how critical the role is, the scale of the work, key qualifications, and a description of the type of employee Apple is looking for. In the "How Critical?" section Apple says that the engineer will be working on developing infrastructure that will deal with millions of drives, tens of thousands of servers, and Exabytes of data.

Comments

Of course it's pulled already

[andyring]

Because I just applied and was accepted, so none of the rest of you need apply!

Oh, and possibly Frist Psot!

I'm qualified...

[__aaclcg7560]

So many IT storage closets to clean, so little time between Slashdot comments.

"Secret postings" are becoming more common

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I think this is at least the third "secret posting" I've heard about recently. I'm also thinking about the:
- "Searches for Python leads to Google job application" thing (https://thehustle.co/the-secret-google-interview-that-landed-me-a-job)
- "IT job postings for Hillary Clinton's campaign in campaign site source code" thing (http://cybertical.com/assets/docs/Hack_All_The_Candidates_Thotcon_2016_Jonathan_Lampe_InfoSec_Institute.pdf)

I worry that these kind of "secret postings" might violate some "equal opportunity" regulations, but they do seem like a clever idea.

Re:"Secret postings" are becoming more common

[tlhIngan]

I think this is at least the third "secret posting" I've heard about recently. I'm also thinking about the:
- "Searches for Python leads to Google job application" thing (https://thehustle.co/the-secret-google-interview-that-landed-me-a-job)
- "IT job postings for Hillary Clinton's campaign in campaign site source code" thing (http://cybertical.com/assets/docs/Hack_All_The_Candidates_Thotcon_2016_Jonathan_Lampe_InfoSec_Institute.pdf)

I worry that these kind of "secret postings" might violate some "equal opportunity" regulations, but they do seem like a clever idea.

No, the reason you have these "secret opportunity" postings is because the job's already been filled. Yes, filled.

This is one of those "hidden job market" things everyone talks about - where there are jobs that aren't posted on any job site, but you have to know people in order to find out about them. The group wanting the person doesn't actually have a job opening posted, but they want to hire the guy. Company policy usually restricts such off-the-record hiring so the group simply posts a narrowly-targeted job posting for the minimum amount of time to fulfill HR requirements of "open competition", where the only intent is to hire that one guy, but as a formality, they have to do an open contest.

The other reason is simple - it gets around anti-poaching agreements. Suppose you want to poach someone but you have an anti-poaching agreement with the company. What you do instead is you post a job opportunity and then notify the person to it on an off-the-record way (e.g., phone call from personal phone, meeting in the park, etc). This way you can hire the guy and if the other company comes calling saying you poached them, you show them the job posting and that the employee voluntarily applied for the job.

(It's why people who believe anti-poaching laws keep employees down are wrong - if you were wanted by some other company, they'd have hired you already. The only thing an anti-poach does is keep the company from directly contacting you - but if they wanted you, they'd make you apply for the job "through the normal channels". And yes, I've been "poached" before despite anti-poaching agreements. If someone wants you, there's always a way around it. Basically, it's not poaching if you approach them for a job and not they approach you, hence the use of off-the-record notification mechanisms).

Not a job "YOU" can get

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks they didn't already have someone lined up for this position and were just semi-posting it for legal reasons has no idea how the job market really works.

H1B1 visa application

[lkcl]

if it's a "secret" and highly specialist skillset it's likely to be for an H1B1 visa application "conform with the advertising in the USA so you can prove there were no applicants suitable" compliance. of course that is now completely messed up as they would be deluged with applicants by now...

Re:H1B1 visa application

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I have handled H1B labor certification postings. Rules requires us to post in the local news paper, in web sites and job search portals from which we have recruited in the past, to all head hunters and "talent acquisition partners" we have used in the recent past etc.

Must respond to all applications. We need to show the Government why each application was rejected.

But I can't rule out some hanky panky on the part of Apple. Its Apple after all.

I get why.

[aussersterne]

We've been hiring for some engineering roles having to do with large-scale data and related systems and we started out by posting on our website, on some major job search databases, and on LinkedIn. We got tons of interest. Tons. And we are not a particularly well-known company and the positions were run of the mill mid-senior level. There was nothing too remarkable about the postings.

We did get a decent group of very good applications, but there was a huge amount of nonsense to go through. Everyone from "right field but low quality and poor qualifications/experience" to "WTF? Why are you even applying for this job? Your degree is in history and your experience is in HR?" ended up in the pile. And we were very specific. A lot of cover letters expressed a great deal of aspiration, rather than a great deal of qualification.

This has always been a thing with candidate seeking, but it seemed significantly worse this time for some reason. The volume was higher, but the ratio was far worse.

I can see why a very well-known, aspirational company might flip the script and make a posting that is discoverable by invitation only for a role that is company-critical.

secret posting can be used to hire 1HB's and get a

[Joe_Dragon]

secret posting can be used to hire 1HB's and get around rules about having to post the job.

We posted the job and got very few USC's and the ones that we did got failed at X stage. (we all ready had an H1B ready to go and just needed make it look like we tried for an USC)

Re:ACJ?

[gweihir]

Nobody qualified for something like this is interested in doing childish challenges.