"AITA for sharing my neighbour's job posting for a worker?"
So my neighbour is part of a family of four who moved here a few years ago. We’re on friendly terms and talk fairly often. A while back, he mentioned that his family has been struggling to find a domestic home support worker and that it’s been hard to get any “good” responses through the official government Job Bank.
He also told me he was in the middle of applying for permission to hire a foreign worker through one of those federal programmes where you have to show you couldn’t find anyone locally first. He said he was hoping to bring someone over from his home country because it would be easier for his family in terms of language and familiarity.
When I saw his job posting on the government Job Bank, I figured I’d help by sharing it on my Facebook and a couple of local community groups. In my mind, more visibility = better chance of finding someone. If he found someone local, great. If not, at least it would show he genuinely tried.
After I shared it, he started getting way more applications. He complained to me that a lot of them were “bogus,” that people were just applying for the sake of applying, and that now he had to spend a ton of time sorting through them. I didn’t look at any of the applications myself, this is just what he told me.
Fast forward to now: his application to hire a foreign worker was denied. The reason given was that he received domestic applications and therefore didn’t meet the requirement of proving he couldn’t fill the role locally.
He says that before I shared the posting, hardly anyone applied, and now the extra attention made it look like there was local interest in the job, even if he personally felt none of the applicants were suitable. He’s really upset with me and says I interfered with a federal process I don’t understand and basically tanked his chances of getting approval.
He also said that I knew he was hoping to hire someone from his home country and that by boosting the posting, I undermined that. From my perspective, I was just trying to help. The whole point of that system is to try to hire locally first, and the posting was public anyway.
I didn’t think sharing a public job listing could backfire like this, or that more applications (even if he didn’t like them) could actually count against him. Now things are awkward between us, and he’s blaming me for the delay and extra stress. AITA here, or was I just trying to be helpful and it went sideways?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
something-bothersome wrote:
Okay, you misunderstood a few things about processes and goals. Your neighbour had a goal - to hire someone from his home country for language and cultural familiarity. Process - he needed to complete and comply with a government process to do so. His end goal was specific (employee - language plus cultural, can fill the role), and not general (local employee who can fill the role).
You intervened with him navigating the process and therefore derailed his specific goal. He is now upset with you because you have vastly (if not completely) removed his chance of completing his *specific” goal. Keeping that in mind, then absolutely yes, he is going to be pretty upset and it is likely to continue for some time.
Note: it does not matter if you actually agree with his goal or whether you think his goal is “correct”. It doesn’t change how he feels about your actions. It might change whether you care about how he feels about your actions however. NAH - just confusion.
rainydays_monkey wrote:
ESH. Dude was very clearly trying to bring in a foreign person, he flat out told you this. Obviously, bringing more local attention to the posting was a d*ck move that was totally going to screw him over.
So unless you were intentionally trying to do that and are just playing ignorant now, then yeah, you totally did the crap thing there. If it was intentional, then just own it. But also, dude is purposely trying to game the system and get a foreign worker in when obviously there's local people capable and he's just pissed you ruined his game, so he sucks too.
KarmenG45 wrote:
NTA. You shared a public job posting. That’s not interference — that’s literally what public postings are for. If the program requires him to genuinely try to hire locally first, then more local applications actually show that the process worked. The government’s whole point is to see whether there are domestic candidates available.
If there were applicants, even ones he didn’t personally like, that weakens his case — but that’s about the program’s criteria, not about you. It sounds like he wasn’t really hoping to hire locally. He was hoping to meet the minimum requirement so he could bring someone from his home country. That’s his plan, but it’s not your responsibility to protect or manage that strategy.
teamglider wrote:
I'm surprised at the number of people saying you should have asked before sharing a public job posting. You are free to share any public job posting that you wish, whether the person posting it wants you to or not.
I also don't believe he's having great difficulty finding a domestic home support worker locally. I think it was obvious enough that he didn't want local applications, but that doesn't mean you're TA for sharing the posting.
MehX73 wrote:
As someone who has to post ads for employment regularly...most often, Facebook and Craigslist is full of people who apply only to get another signature on their work search history for unemployment. They are not serious candidates.
So you sent a whole bunch of garbage applicants to him causing him to lose his opportunity to hire an actual quality care giver. You weren't asked to help. You didn't even mention you were going to "help." I would be pissed at you as well. YTA
Necessary-Score-4270 wrote:
NTA sounds like he was trying to skirt the law here. And had no intention of actually trying to hire locally.
I'm not anti immigration or anything but people/companies absolutely abuse the crap out of this process to take advantage of foreign workers.