Nov 10, 2024 09:00:00

What are 'ghost jobs' that attack workers looking for work?

It has been discovered that there are many 'ghost jobs' posted online that are not actually being recruited. According to a survey by a research company, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting inappropriate job listings.

'Lot of demoralized people': Ghost jobs wreaking havoc on tech workers

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/ghost-jobs-california-tech-industry-19871249.php

Ghost jobs, or advertisements for positions that are not actually available, have plagued job seekers, especially in the technology industry, where layoffs have been rampant in recent years due to budget cuts. According to a 2024 survey by MyPerfectResume, which supports job seekers, some of the ghost jobs circulating online are fake job postings by scammers pretending to be legitimate companies, while others are posted by legitimate companies for fraudulent reasons.

In a survey by MyPerfectResume, 38% of recruiters said they posted ghost jobs to maintain their presence on job sites, 26% said they wanted to secure candidates for the future, and 23% said they wanted to make their company look stable even when they stopped hiring. In addition, 25% said they did it to see how difficult it would be to replace a particular employee, revealing that a significant number of recruiters were posting jobs without any intention of hiring at all. Overall, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting ghost jobs.

Another

survey conducted by Resume Builder, a service that allows people to easily create resumes online, found that 66% of people said they did it to make it look like the company is growing, and 63% said they did it to make employees think that new hires will mean less work for them. This shows that some recruiters are trying to deceive not only outside the company but also those inside it.

However, the same survey also found that 68% of respondents said that posting ghost jobs had increased their revenue, and 65% said that it had a positive impact on employee morale. Overall, around 70% of recruiters said that they considered posting ghost jobs morally acceptable, suggesting that there is a difference in perception between recruiters and job seekers.

'Job seekers spend a lot of time researching applications and polishing their resumes, so it's surprising that they then have to spend even more time verifying whether a job posting is genuine. I know a lot of people who applied for jobs only to be disheartened by ghost jobs,' a tech job seeker told SFGATE.

Resume Builder researchers found that orders to post ghost jobs typically come from the HR department, and sometimes even from senior managers or C-suite executives.

'Ghost jobs are a nuisance that plagues people looking for work,' said John Rovig, a recruiter and career coach who hires employees for tech companies across the US. 'People on leave want to move their job search forward, and of course it's very frustrating when the jobs posted aren't real. It can be devastating for people to send out hundreds of resumes and never hear back. Making it appear like you're actively hiring for roles that aren't open is a problem, and it's especially prevalent in the tech industry, where there have been so many layoffs in recent years.' He called the practice 'unacceptable.'