I remember seeing this done regularly when my company submitted the immigration forms for workers. The purpose of the form was to prove that me (the immigrant) is necessary to the company and no American can be hired instead of importing a filthy foreigner. Obviously, since the company has been employing me for years already, they wanted me to keep working for them, only in the US (and same for other people they were relocating). So they made a job description matching our jobs and skills exactly, so the chance there would be a person with the same skills and experience (who also would see the ad and want to apply) is negligible. Of course, it worked - they published the ads, waited the appropriate time, nobody applied, and they honestly wrote in the immigration forms that people they want to relocate are unique and irreplaceable.
Another common practice is adding qualifiers - you've got Engineer, then Senior Engineer, then Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineering Fellow, and you can go on with it forever, and obviously each of these is a totally different job.
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
Yes, but also no. It's definitely practice to over-specify it towards a specific person and that gives the person a giant edge. But if a super-star scientist (relatively speaking) comes around and applies for the job, they will often be hard-pressed to turn them down. This is quite rare however, and generally benefits the institutions (either they get exactly the person they want, or some kind of super-star).
I think it's a good thing (probably being an immigrant skews my perspective, but still I think it's an objectively good thing). I understand the fears about importing cheap labor worsening conditions of current workers, and maybe sometimes it is true. But I don't think academia is the place where it is true. I didn't spend much time in academia to have relevant experience but in general that seems to be the case.
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Notes -
I remember seeing this done regularly when my company submitted the immigration forms for workers. The purpose of the form was to prove that me (the immigrant) is necessary to the company and no American can be hired instead of importing a filthy foreigner. Obviously, since the company has been employing me for years already, they wanted me to keep working for them, only in the US (and same for other people they were relocating). So they made a job description matching our jobs and skills exactly, so the chance there would be a person with the same skills and experience (who also would see the ad and want to apply) is negligible. Of course, it worked - they published the ads, waited the appropriate time, nobody applied, and they honestly wrote in the immigration forms that people they want to relocate are unique and irreplaceable.
Another common practice is adding qualifiers - you've got Engineer, then Senior Engineer, then Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineering Fellow, and you can go on with it forever, and obviously each of these is a totally different job.
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
Yes, but also no. It's definitely practice to over-specify it towards a specific person and that gives the person a giant edge. But if a super-star scientist (relatively speaking) comes around and applies for the job, they will often be hard-pressed to turn them down. This is quite rare however, and generally benefits the institutions (either they get exactly the person they want, or some kind of super-star).
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I think it's a good thing (probably being an immigrant skews my perspective, but still I think it's an objectively good thing). I understand the fears about importing cheap labor worsening conditions of current workers, and maybe sometimes it is true. But I don't think academia is the place where it is true. I didn't spend much time in academia to have relevant experience but in general that seems to be the case.
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