EIES — employer inactivity enforcement

Overview

EIES — the Employer Inactivity Enforcement System — is the tension member of the marketplace. It makes silence expensive. An employer who collects applications and never responds loses visibility automatically, without a human having to notice.

Status: Under Beta Testing Phase 1 Database + server-side only

Why this exists

The single most corrosive thing on an internship board is the ghost listing: live, attractive, and attached to an employer who stopped reading applications weeks ago. Students cannot detect it. They apply, wait, and conclude the platform is useless.

EIES converts responsiveness from a courtesy into a condition of visibility. Respond to your applicants and nothing happens. Ignore them and your listing quietly leaves the public surface.

The state machine

normal --overdue application--> warning --grace 3d expired--> paused --14d--> archived
   ^                                |                              |
   +---- all applications resolved -+------------------------------+

The clock

1. A timer is created on application

   A BEFORE INSERT trigger sets eies_due_at = applied_at + 7 dayson every internal application.

2. External applications are exempt

   Anything that is not an internal application getseies_due_at = NULL and never enters EIES. We do not police inboxes we cannot see.

3. A qualifying response stops the clock

   Moving an application to under_review,shortlisted, interview,accepted or rejected writeseies_responded_at once. appliedand pending do not qualify.

4. Responses are never un-recorded

   eies_responded_at is written once and never reset. A later status change cannot restart a timer, so employers cannot game the clock by cycling statuses.

Reactivation

A paused or archived listing returns to normal only when every overdue application has a qualifying response. Applications whose 7-day deadline is still in the future keep their timers but do not block reactivation — they simply matter at the next evaluation.

SELECT public.eies_evaluate_internship('<internship_id>');    -- run the state machine
SELECT public.eies_unresolved_application_ids('<id>');        -- what is blocking
SELECT public.eies_reactivate_internship('<id>', 'reason');   -- raises if still blocked
SELECT public.eies_run_enforcement(500);                      -- batch sweep

Blocking set, precisely

• application is internal, and
• eies_due_at <= now(), and
• eies_responded_at IS NULL

Audit trail

Every transition writes to eies_events, an immutable table with no insert, update or delete policies — rows arrive only throughSECURITY DEFINER functions. Employers read their own history; admins read everything. An enforcement system that can be edited by the party it enforces against is decoration.

Employer's view

Nothing about EIES is a surprise. Each transition enqueues a CTNE notification —EIES_WARNING, EIES_PAUSED,EIES_REACTIVATED, EIES_ARCHIVED — with dedupe keys that prevent repeat sends. The warning email arrives three days before anything is hidden.

Related