Ghost jobs.
They sound like the perfect role for a fun and spooky Halloween. But for job seekers — and recruiters too — they’re usually more trick than treat.
Ghost jobs are postings for roles that either don’t exist or have already been filled. According to MyPerfect Resume, they’re also a common practice. The resume-building platform recently surveyed 753 recruiters and 81% said their employers posted ads for ghost jobs.
“It’s a very shocking number and I think it is actually disheartening,” says Jasmine Escalera, a career expert at MyPerfectResume, “especially when you think about the current market for specific industries and for specific job seekers like in the tech space where layoffs are very prominent.”
Another recent survey of recruiters, by Resume Builder, found that 40% of companies posted a fake job listing this year, and 3 in 10 companies currently have active fake listings.
Because this makes for such attention-grabbing headlines, the media has been abuzz about ghost jobs. But at least one talent industry leader has pushed back on the narrative. Hung Lee, curator of the Recruiting Brainfood newsletter and podcast, says that the stories may be an effort to explain why, at least in the U.S., the government has painted such a rosy picture of “how great the economy” is while the “lived experience” of candidates seems quite different.
In other words, ghost jobs seem like a good explanation for why so many candidates apply to jobs online and never hear back. But is this phenomenon a real thing or simply a ghoulish apparition? Let’s take a closer look.
There are several reasons — from building a talent pool to testing job descriptions — companies post ghost jobs
According to the MyPerfectResume survey, companies post ghost jobs for the following reasons:
- 38% like to maintain a presence on job boards even when they aren’t hiring
- 36% want to assess the effectiveness of their job descriptions
- 26% hope to build a talent pool for the future
- 25% hope to assess how difficult it would be to replace certain employees
Meanwhile, a 2022 survey by Clarify Capital found that:
- 50% of companies post ghost jobs because they’re “always open to new people”
- 43% said that they wanted to “keep current employees motivated” (in other words, to show overworked employees that they’re trying to hire more staff, even if they aren’t)
- 43% said it was because they wanted to “give the impression that the company is growing”
Some ghost jobs may reflect a longer time to hire or how overwhelmed recruiters are right now
But there may be an even simpler reason for this phenomenon. Several media stories have said that job seekers could spot a ghost job if the ad has been up for two months or more. Hung says that this may be jumping to conclusions. “Just because it may take on average 44 days time-to-hire,” he wrote on LinkedIn, “it does not follow that job adverts which go on for longer than 44 days are necessarily fake jobs.”
He added that “any recruiter will know that (real) jobs can take much longer to fill than average.”
When job seekers don’t hear back from companies, they may also be experiencing workplace realities. Like many employees, recruiters are now being asked to do “more with less.” “Overworked recruitment teams operating at max capacity,” Hung says, “have been surprised at the increase in applicant flow and have yet to develop effective strategies to deal with the massively increased flow rate.” He believes that 45% of what seem like “ghost jobs” are simply the result of recruiters being too overwhelmed to handle the number of applications they receive.
Others may be ghost jobs — but for a good reason
Sometimes companies truly do post ads for jobs that are not available — and for reasons that have been around for a long time.
In some cases, a company has already identified the person they want to hire — either an internal candidate or one who needs a green card — but they’re legally required to post the position publicly for a certain amount of time.
Other companies may keep “evergreen” posts open for positions that they find hard to fill, but for which they’re not currently hiring. That’s what Allison Giddens, copresident of Win-Tech, does. Her company manufactures parts for the aerospace industry and Allison recently told NPR that it’s hard to find the highly skilled workers she needs. So, she keeps job listings online year-round, in case one of these workers applies.
Truly fake ads pose risks for companies
Companies that post true ghost jobs — with no intention to hire — put themselves at risk. Ghost jobs can erode trust with job seekers and hurt public perception of a company, which could make it harder to recruit high-quality candidates. The practice can also land poorly with current employees.
“It will definitely hurt your reputation, because I don’t know anyone who wants to work for a company that lies to them,” says Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at Resume Builder.
Final thoughts: Posting ads only for real jobs shows candidates you care
Many job boards, including LinkedIn, require recruiters to post jobs only if they intend to hire a candidate for the specific position in the ad.
But there’s another, more compelling reason to post real ads whenever possible: It demonstrates to candidates that you understand how spooky the job market feels right now and how much stress they’re experiencing. “Talent acquisition,” Jasmine recently told Human Resource Executive, “must lead with a human-first approach to the process and foster more transparency and trust.”
