The job hunt can be a slog. Confusing job portals, dense competition, and time-consuming application processes all conspire to make job hunting one of the most annoying experiences on the planet. After all the work that goes into an application, 99.9 percent of the time you hear nothing back. It’s enough to make you feel like you’re firing applications into the abyss—as if the jobs you’ve applied to never existed in the first place. Well, according to a recent study, that may actually be the case.
Trying to find a new job has never been as easy with a vast array of online postings. But online job boards are making the process even more painful by mixing fake job listings in with the real ones.
The Wall Street Journal cites internal data analyzed by the hiring platform Greenhouse which found that in 2024, one in five online job postings — or between 18% and 22% of jobs advertised — were “ghost jobs”: jobs that were advertised but either never really existed or were simply never filled, despite hopeful applicants sending resumes. That data was culled from Greenhouse’s proprietary information, which the company can access because it sells automated software that helps employers fill out job postings.
Companies revealed several reasons why they are posting jobs they never intend to fill. Projecting success may play some part; companies that appear to be hiring likely also appear to be growing.
In some cases, a company may not be actively hiring for a position, but is keeping the listing up in hopes that their ideal candidate one day finds and applies to the job.
Resume Builder, an online resume and jobs platform, conducted a survey of its clients who list open positions asking if and why they post ghost jobs.
More than 60 percent of those surveyed admitted that the practice was done, in part, to “make employees believe their workload would e alleviated by new workers.”
Even more than that — 62 percent — said they wanted their employees to “feel replaceable.”
According to Greenhouse, at least 70 percent of the companies on its platform posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024, and 15 percent of companies did so regularly. The industries that most frequently posted ghost jobs were construction, the arts, food service and legal services, according to the data.
The “ghost job” phenomenon has been growing for some time—much to the vexation of job-seekers. The Journal story cites the experiences of one unfortunate job-seeker, Serena Dao, who searched for a job for over a year. Dao says that, before landing her current position, she applied to some 260 jobs and frequently wondered whether the positions she was applying to were real or not.
Some onlookers have speculated that the practice of posting such advertisements is actually a corporate strategy designed to make the businesses posting them seem like they’re growing when, in fact, they’re not. Fast Company writes that this practice may help companies “feign active hiring and growth” and helps the “C-suite hit quarterly goals without the negative perception of removing jobs from their career sites.” Another commentator for Forbes notes that ghost jobs can inflate “the true number of jobs in the market and elongates the job search, much to the frustration of many job seekers.”
One frustrated creative, Alexander Rea, shared his experience with ghost jobs and theorized on LinkedIn that the fake listings were companies testing their “bait.”
“So what is the point of these applicant systems? I think it’s a way of interviewing roles to do research only. To find out what type of fish you can catch with a certain type of bait and then throw them back,” he wrote. “Sport fishing.”
Another LinkedIn user, Lance Hemphill, posted about the perils he’s seen with “ghost posts.”
“I feel like it’s not even possible to apply on LinkedIn anymore. Almost every job is some automated post that has a fake job or leads me a secondary site that is a scam. I think LinkedIn really needs to expand their requirements for job postings,” he wrote.
There’s no obvious means of spotting a ghost job on a board, but there are some clues. Jobs that have been listed over and over again could be ghost jobs. Listing that have been up for months with no updates and no application deadline may not be legitimate.
Check a job listing against a company’s hiring page. If a company lists open positions on its website, check there to ensure the job you’re applying for is legitimate.
It may also be helpful to contact someone at the company to ask about the position. If no one here has any information on the role, it may not be real.
The plague of such phantom positions has led some platforms to treat job postings in very much the same way that other online content gets treated: as either A) verified or B) potential misinformation. Both Greenhouse and LinkedIn now supply a job verification service which allows users to know whether a position is legit or not. Both sites reportedly combat fake jobs by tagging “real” jobs with a verification badge, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s kind of a horror show,” Jon Stross, Greenhouse’s president and co-founder, told the Journal. “The job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.”
* This article was automatically syndicated and expanded from The Independent and Gizmodo.
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