10 ms·

'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them

• b3ing 10mo ago
  Part of me thinks its to see what the competition is doing, see how others are using ai, to train ai, steal ideas/clients (common in the ad/marketing/design) world, train staff to hire, get free consulting. Some say it’s to raise stock value by fake growth indicators or motivate employees that they are replaceable, but I think those 2 are just partially the case.
  • nakedneuron 10mo ago
    Another reason maybe to profile the pool of talent that probably gets hired by your competition.
• bryanrasmussen 10mo ago
  >it’s to raise stock value by fake growth indicators how does that work as a growth indicator, are there any known organizations that track your growth based on how many job postings you do, and then use that data to indicate your growth? I don't doubt that it could happen, but if it did we would have to know about it, I also don't doubt that I don't know about it, but I would like to know.
  • cpa 10mo ago
    Companies don’t have a legal obligation to publicly disclose revenue in many countries, so if you’re selling business insights you’re always on the lookout for indicators that can be used as a proxy to revenue.
    • cammikebrown 10mo ago
      So, they’re just lying to make more money. Got it.
      • intothemild 10mo ago
        Yes, but also to fake how well they are doing to potential, or current investors. IMHO, these aren't smart investors.. because this should be something that comes up in due diligence, the amount of money left, the current burn rate, and what the company is doing about the latter. If the company was on paper fully staffed, but also actively hiring. That would be for me an indicator that either the hiring is fake, so what else are they faking. Or that the hiring is real, and they are fiscally irresponsible. There's another angle to all of this, and that's obviously the company isn't fully staffed, there's still some space in the runway for another hire. It's just that right now its a buyers market from the perspective of the company.. So, well, beggars can be choosers.. They're just holding out until that golden candidate comes along. This obviously sucks, and there SHOULD be a maximum length a company can have a job ad out before they have to explain why it's taking so long. It's not uncommon for countries to require citizens to disclose Who and How many jobs they applied for this week to collect social security.. There should be something similar for companies who have job ads out.
  • rdtsc 10mo ago
    > how does that work as a growth indicator, are there any known organizations that track your growth based on how many job postings you do, and then use that data to indicate your growth? As a wild guess this may be part of the story a company tells itself. Every individual and company needs to tell themselves a nice "story" to feel good about themselves. In case of a company "damn, look how many jobs we're posting, we're growing and doing great" is a nice story to tell. Yeah the owners/manager know it's fake, the people writing the post know it's fake, people receiving applications also know it's fake, yet it still works. On paper officially they can tell each other how great they are doing. This is more likely how a large company would operate. Another, more positive perspective from a small company I worked for is "ABH" (Always be hiring). That means always post jobs, and continue interviewing, because you might find an exceptional engineer for whom you'd make an exception and hire them. But at least in our case it was always an honest effort every time to sit down and evaluate the candidates, pay them to visit and interview face to face and such. It wasn't a game it indeed took quite a bit of effort on our side.
    • wisty 10mo ago
      It must fill some purpose though. I doubt it's entirely just marketing in most legitimate companies. Effectively a/b testing job adds? Or trying to get a range of candidates so they can find a good fit? Let's say you have, like, 10 jobs to do but you're only going to hire two people (either loading them up with more work, or internally reshuffling responsibilities, probably a bit of both). So you advertise for every role in your ideal team, then get the two candidates who plug the most holes, or look like the best fit. I feel dirty suggesting it, but it probably happens.
      • 3eb7988a1663 10mo ago
        I heard an argument that the fake jobs are actually to appease internal employees. "We know you are over-worked, but we are trying to get you some help. Look at these postings -too bad everyone who has applied thus far is a complete dud."
      • fragmede 10mo ago
        I've heard in the sales world, the way to hire two sales people is to hire three, then fire the bottom performer after a month or a quarter.
  • PeterStuer 10mo ago
    Traditionally the 'Carreers' tab on the website had to exist to project the image of a succesfull growing company. It was always a delicate balance between on the one hand projecting success, and on the other not scaring clients you couldn't meet demand.
  • Bombthecat 10mo ago
    Maybe they were, but now? I doubt that every investor or even AI takes job postings with a grain of salt or plainy ignores them and just looks at the numbers of employees.
• rdtsc 10mo ago
  > Dr Escalera adds that she has also heard examples of companies posting jobs to obtain and sell data. How is that not illegal? Pretending to offer jobs just to suck in resumes to some database just seems like it should be illegal. Or just like running scams is illegal but they are in another country "so tough luck, you'll never get us"?
  • lovich 10mo ago
    Because some animals are more equal than others and the government has decided that companies are not only citizens but the more equal group. Half the shit companies do that gets them a fine would land any individual in jail for committing the same action, but we let them get away with just paying it off. Simultaneously we give those organizations the same rights. It’s a system with three classes of citizen where the rich and corporations have a better right to responsibility ratio and the average human has a much worse ratio
    • VerifiedReports 10mo ago
      Citizens United, a monumental betrayal of every citizen.
      • Y_Y 10mo ago
        > The provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 restricting unions, corporations, and profitable organizations from independent political spending and prohibiting the broadcasting of political media funded by them within sixty days of general elections or thirty days of primary elections violate the freedom of speech that is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. United States District Court for the District of Columbia reversed. I'm sure we're on the same side, but I want to point out that that case didn't make a huge difference. By that I mean it removed a ban on political broadcasts near elections, most of the "money is speech, super pacs can do anything at all" stuff was already legal.
        • red-iron-pine 10mo ago
• WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
  I was an employment counselor in the late 1990s. Even then, ½ to ¾ of realistic, worthwhile jobs were phantoms. FF to now and hiring portals silently drop viable applicants for a long list of never disclosed reasons. I know temp agencies that hire, send the employee out on 1 job then never again. I've never know a time when hiring wasn't crap for entire classes of viable applicants.
  • harvey9 10mo ago
    How come temp agencies would only send someone out on one job? They make money based on placements so unless that worker has bad feedback from clients it would make sense to place them again.
    • jagoff 10mo ago
      You seem to underestimate their pool of applicants
    • WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
      > How come temp agencies would only send someone out on one job? There was a clique of employees who were tight with management and got recurring work. This wouldn't have been a problem if the temp agency stopped advertising open jobs when their docket was over-full.
  • diego_moita 10mo ago
    Talking about "ghost jobs" is like talking about "fake news": everyone that does assumes that only others do, not them. Everyone will somehow always pretend to be "the real thing", even to themselves. It is like misleading propaganda, it will always find a way. The biggest irony is that the majority of HN's own "Who's Hiring" are ghost jobs. I won't disappear, it won't even decrease, even with regulation.
• andrewstuart 10mo ago
  I worked in recruiting for a long time and I can tell you I never saw much in the way of any deliberate strategy to create fake job posts. The thing is that whether or not a job exists at a point in time is far less black and white than you might naively think. There are many reasons for it to be somewhat grey and banning the practice doesn’t really mean anything because you would have to quantify precisely under what circumstances a job is allowed to be advertised and as I say, it’s not as clear as you might imagine. There is absolutely not a one to one relationship between a job and a job ad.
  • BoiledCabbage 10mo ago
    > There is absolutely not a one to one relationship between a job and a job ad. Sounds like you've figured out exactly the problem then. If you're advertising for a job and there isn't a job then you've got a problem.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • ben_w 10mo ago
      Some anecdotes, specific ways it can be unclear how many job openings exist: I applied for some jobs, two of them liked me and I reached the point where they were competing with each other for me, and I was in salary negotiations. One of them, suddenly, decided to stop trading. I still don't know why. Another time, I started working(!) and getting paid, but after 6 months the person who everyone (including themselves) was expecting to leave and for me to replace had still not found a new job (presumably due to all the ghost jobs), and there wasn't enough money for both me and them. Last in, first out, bye to me. One place hired an PM about two weeks before the investors decided to shutter the entire company. (For actual ghost jobs: in my own job hunt after that, I found listings on job boards for that company, that were clearly from several years before I'd joined given the advertised wage range; as the company had told everyone to stop coming in for their notice period, there wasn't even anyone left to ask for those to be deleted). Back when my dad was around, one of his anecdotes about interviewing candidates was asking the candidate "Why did you leave your last job?" and getting a reply along the lines of "After 6 months, management found out that our entire floor had been hired to do the same thing as the floor next to us. One of the floors had to go."
• vanviegen 10mo ago
  My guess is that most of these jobs actually exist, in the sense that if a stellar candidate were to present theirselves, the organization would find a way to hire them.
  • avidiax 10mo ago
    The job exists, in the sense that Bob is currently doing it. Unless Bob turns in notice, your application will be in vain.
    • vanviegen 10mo ago
      In larger organisations I think they'll usually be able to find work for an additional SuperBob. Perhaps not in smaller organisations, but I'd also expect them to be less likely to put up spurious vacancies.
      • 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 10mo ago
        I want to meet this 'SuperBob', he made me lol.
  • taffronaut 10mo ago
    I worked at a company where managers would endlessly push this argument to open a job posting. Of course there was no budget to hire, but they would delude themselves that the perfect candidate was out there and they'd 'be able to make a case' for the budget with the stellar application in hand. Of course they had no idea what that actually entailed otherwise they would do it in advance. To HR's credit at that company their policy was never to advertise a post unless the budget was signed off. They would patiently explain this each time some deluded optimist showed up at their door. I can easily believe in companies where the rules are less explicit that the delusion would manifest as an endless procession of advertised postings that could never be actually hired because there is no money to fund them.
    • vanviegen 10mo ago
• malikolivier 10mo ago
  I know companies that are posting vacancies that currently don't exist in order to keep good candidates on the hook. They tell the candidate that we should keep in touch for when the company is ready to hire them. I am not sure if it's bad or not. It's true that it kinda wastes the candidate's time. In some cases though, the candidate is so good that the company will create a position just for them.
  • colechristensen 10mo ago
    Fraud. The word you're looking for is fraud.
  • VerifiedReports 10mo ago
    Let's resolve this right now: It's bad. No... it's worse than that; it's THEFT, and monumentally offensive. It's time that everyone, EVERYONE stop giving entities a free pass on stealing from us by deliberately wasting our time. In every aspect of life, every hour of our day, we're being ripped off. From the assholes blocking the passing lane, to "ghost jobs," to non-functioning subscription-cancellation phone numbers and Web forms... people should be going apeshit about the despicable and unpunished theft of our time.
    • jagoff 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      • VerifiedReports 10mo ago
        Some are; I'm not. I should say way too many are; and they act shocked when you take issue with being stolen from... as if YOU'RE the one with the problem. Pathetic.
  • josefrichter 10mo ago
    Oh I am pretty sure it’s bad. I am actually quite shocked someone would ruminate wherever or not it’s bad.
  • 10mo ago
• bsder 10mo ago
  Can we please get back to using job fairs already? Why are companies so irritatingly resistant to getting back to doing things in-person and real-time?
  • renewiltord 10mo ago
    > Why are companies so irritatingly resistant to getting back to doing things in-person and real-time? RTO for the recruiters, eh?
  • rando001111 10mo ago
    Having gone to job fairs recently I found them to be pretty useless. I got one lead where the guy gave me the link for good candidates and all the others were useless.
  • PeterStuer 10mo ago
    Job fairs? You meen those gigs for meeting the junior HR promo girls that hands you a flyer with the company's carreers url, some branded post-it's and a mini pouch of gummi bears?
    • nticompass 10mo ago
      Exactly! I love getting free stuff. I don't care if it's a crappy company-branded pen, give me all the free swag!
  • fractallyte 10mo ago
    Silicon Milkroundabout – in London, UK – is the Real Thing: https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ Not just HR, but actual team leads and members who you can talk to and mutually evaluate each other, face to face. It's a superb event, highly recommended! (Looks like they've introduced a new digital system too. Intriguing...)
  • PoorRustDev 10mo ago
    Even job fairs are useless now. I'm a current student and when I show up a lot of companies seem to just send an intern or 3rd party recruiter out with a bunch of generic company fliers. You can't ask any questions about the job because the recruiter won't know the answer, they don't work in the department or even worse they don't work for the company, and when you find a company you want to join they tell you to apply online anyway. Sometimes you get a special link for applying, which I think is how they differentiate between job fair applications and the others. At least the few smaller companies that show up seem more immune to this, but they have the problem of wanting to pay an electrical engineer about $50,000-$60,000 for starting pay, which just isn't worth it. So everyone still puts up with the recruiters that know nothing because at least then you have a shot of earning a market rate salary.
• wickedsight 10mo ago
  I was applying for a while last year. Spending hours to write a cover letter and then either hearing nothing or getting a canned rejection letter is super frustrating. I've come to the conclusion that putting effort into an application is time wasted, so from now on AI is writing pretty much every single one of my cover letters. Doing that allows me to send out 5 applications in the time it normally takes me to do 1. Since I've seen no actual correlation between effort and success, I figured quantity will give better results than quality. Of course, I might put in actual effort for an opening that I find really interesting, but that's an exception.
  • josefrichter 10mo ago
    Cover letters are dead imho. Even before AI came to play.
    • GJim 10mo ago
      Total opposite here. If you can't be bothered with a simple cover letter (a paragraph or two is fine) highlighting why you are a good fit and just send a CV..... Frankly, it comes across as low effort spamming.
      • Akronymus 10mo ago
        As someone currently looking for a new job, I stopped bothering with cover letters because they didn't make the faintest of differences. After many dozens of rejections I am just burnt out about writing them.
      • jagoff 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        • GJim 10mo ago
          If you consider briefly highlighting the relevant parts of your experience to a potential employer as "fucking shit", then perhaps you are unsuitable for the role being offered.
• avidiax 10mo ago
  We could at least require that all applications have a standardized format for resumé and a list of legally allowable questions. No more requiring the candidate to do 30 minutes of data entry to encode their resumé into your HR system. Then a ghost job wouldn't really waste much time, since uploading a JSON should take 30 seconds.
  • pastel8739 10mo ago
    Companies already get so many applications that applying is a crapshoot without a referral. I feel like this is the opposite of what we need.
    • avidiax 10mo ago
      The employers want applications so badly they are willing to post job ads that don't exist. The need for a referral to get human eyes on your resume is a different problem that isn't made better by making every application expensive for the applicant. Poor quality applicants have more time, you might say.
      • pastel8739 10mo ago
        I disagree and think that increasing the cost of applying would indeed help this problem. If the number of applications is too high for humans to possibly review, what other possible solution could there be?
        • avidiax 10mo ago
          The problem posed by this article is that companies are wasting candidates' time by making applying take time while offering no actual position. What if we imagined that companies charged a fee to apply instead of charging candidate time? Then these ghost positions would be obviously considered fraud. We don't normally pay applicants for their time, but isn't a ghost position requiring substantial time to apply also a fraud on the applicant? All I'm saying is, by removing the payment in time, you remove the fraud. Applicant spam is an orthogonal problem that has other solutions. Linked-in could limit applicants to one application every 30 minutes, max 16 per day. Employers can use keyword filtering as they already do.
• ZuoCen_Liu 10mo ago
  Ghost jobs are essentially the 'vaporware' of the HR world. In any other department, misrepresenting your intent to engage in a transaction would be seen as a breach of professional ethics. The fact that it has become a standard KPI for HR departments to 'keep the pipeline warm' at the expense of thousands of hours of unpaid candidate labor is a massive market failure.
  • p-e-w 10mo ago
    > In any other department, misrepresenting your intent to engage in a transaction would be seen as a breach of professional ethics. In most other situations related to money or contracts, it would be a criminal offense punishable by prison time.
    • JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
      > In most other situations related to money or contracts, it would be a criminal offense punishable by prison time What are you thinking of? In most cases, that falls firmly under the category of bullshitting. Annoying. Unprofessional. Dishonest. But rarely criminal. What makes this possibly illegal (though I'm still unsure if it's crimial) is that it's specifically around employer-employee relations.
      • pharrington 10mo ago
        Fraud is very illegal.
        • Nextgrid 10mo ago
          Only when done by individuals, or against rich people.
        • JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
          > Fraud is very illegal Fraud requires intent. And a lot of commercial bullshitting either does not have fraudulent intent, or has it but in an entirely unprovable way.
• d--b 10mo ago
  A lot of head hunters will dangle job offers that don’t exist just so they can get info on the company you’re working at - basically they’re trying to keep tab on who’s in charge of hiring, so they can contact them. There are also those who are paid by your boss just to see if any of their team members is looking to take off. I don’t think there is anything new here though. These practice have existed for a while, and there’s not much you can do about it.
  • Oras 10mo ago
    > A lot of head hunters will dangle job offers that don’t exist just so they can get info on the company you’re working at - basically they’re trying to keep tab on who’s in charge of hiring, so they can contact them. This is quite common especially now when the market is bad. The pattern is a LinkedIn message with vague description (interesting role at a sector), no mention of rate, names or anything else.
    • rightbyte 10mo ago
      > vague description (interesting role at a sector), no mention of rate, names or anything else. Consultancies does that when they recruit for likely or ongoing leads too, though. To not leak the lead.
• zkmon 10mo ago
  My first job was in an industry where "ghost jobs" had a different meaning. Local mafia used to add fictitious names to the worker register at work sites, and someone would come and collect the pay in cash every month. The daily work reports would show these workers as engaged in some house-keeping work.
  • wutwutwat 10mo ago
    should probably shut up before you end up one of the names used in those ghost jobs
• dandare 10mo ago
  I am not sure if more regulation is a solution, but the lack of respect for job seekers is a real problem. And not just with ghost jobs. My recent experience as a job seeker was harrowing - even with large, proud companies. I would pass multiple rounds of interviews with senior/director-level interviewers only to never hear back from the company - even after a direct request for an update or feedback. Just total ignorance. Again, this happened with a FAANG+ company.
  • zwnow 10mo ago
    I wonder why people still apply to FAANG companies, there is nothing to be won by working for them. Your work has zero impact, you're actively paid to enshittify stuff over making it better, you have horrible bureaucracy within the company, they lay off thousands of people per year so your job never really is secure, all of FAANG is ethically corrupt beyond means. I'd never hire a FAANG employee to be honest, while working there your skill actively declines because all you really do there is play corporate charade and hope not being laid off.
    • mckn1ght 10mo ago
      Aside from the fact that you have no real job security anywhere, people take FAANG jobs for money. Both the high pay at the company itself, and the idea that once FAANG is on your resume, it will command the best jobs afterwards too. I think they have to pay that high because the work sucks so much in reality. That's the equilibrium point between the demand for people to work there, and the supply of people willing to put up with it.
      • zwnow 10mo ago
        I had good job security doing in house IT for some companies. Never have seen anyone being laid off, could've stayed there for years to come, the stuff I've built was actively being used and made work easier for people. The domain knowledge I gathered even strengthened my job security as it was more efficient to pay me over having to re-train other people. The only risk to my job was me as I left for a startup after a while. Sure, pay wasn't that high compared to FAANG but at least I didn't make peoples life worse while also hating my job.
• bradley13 10mo ago
  "...wonders how they're actually going to monitor and regulate this. I don't think the government has the resources..." This. Imagine the bureaucracy. The cure would be worse than the disease.
  • tmoravec 10mo ago
    They sort of address this in the next sentence: "But if people run into problems, they can make a complaint and it will be looked into." Random checks and whistleblowing are used in other, more "serious" processes, e.g., tax checks. At least here in Europe.
• tmoravec 10mo ago
  > "Others, we found, were inflating numbers and trying to show their company is growing, even if it's not." Sounds like a fraud against investors? That could be a way to attack this problem because in the U.S., many issues get turned into laws and regulations protecting shareholders.
• nephihaha 10mo ago
  This has been going on for as long as I remember. Often they have decided who will go in but still advertise the position and even interview for it.
• hermitcrab 10mo ago
  >I would pass multiple rounds of interviews with senior/director-level interviewers only to never hear back from the company - even after a direct request for an update or feedback. That is very disrespectful and reflects badly on that company.
• hermitcrab 10mo ago
  Years ago, there was a job agency advertising an IT banking job in the Caribbean. Every week. For years. Apparently it was just a way for them to harvest CVs. 'Sorry you didn't make the interview for that job, but can I interest you in a role creating TPS reports for a company in Slough?'. Scummy behaviour. But I guess they got away with it.
  • Steve16384 10mo ago
    > Scummy behaviour. But I guess they got away with it. How could they not get away with it? That's the problem.
  • harvey9 10mo ago
    At least you don't have to worry about tropical storms in Slough
• cmiles8 10mo ago
  In the US a lot of these are pseudo postings for immigration applications. They are technically posting the job, but in pt 3 for on page 72 of a random newspaper in a hope that nobody sees it and applies so they can say “we couldn’t find anyone so we need a visa/green card.” That’s starting to get cracked down on, but it’s been a mess and a sham for a while.
  • josephd79 10mo ago
    In the US, there are a ton of them on major online job boards, not just some random newspaper.
  • teeray 10mo ago
    > They are technically posting the job, but in pt 3 for on page 72 of a random newspaper That one is theoretically easy. When you apply, the job you “couldn’t fill” gets auto-posted to a very, very public government-hosted job board (with applicant tracking).
    • LorenPechtel 10mo ago
      Yup, just holding the data up to the light of day would go a long ways towards preventing problems.
  • smsm42 10mo ago
    There's another side to it. Imagine a company has a guy somewhere overseas that they hired, and they worked with him for 5 years, and now they want to bring them to the US because it's more convenient and close to the main team. Can they replace it with a US applicant? Not really, unless US applicant can magically gain 5 years of experience with company's products or processes. But by law they must publish a job posting. So they post a fake job posting which nobody ever except one person could possibly fit, and silently hope nobody sees it (because they are not bad guys, they don't want to mislead anybody, they just not need a random worker, they want a very specific person for a very specific position, and they already have the person). The lawmakers meant well, the company means well, but the result is a mess.
• diego_moita 10mo ago
  The biggest irony is that the majority of HN's own "Who's Hiring" are ghost jobs. That thread is just bullshit.
• secretsatan 10mo ago
  I'm pretty sure the technical test for one Job application I had was just to solve a particular android testing problem they couldn't figure out.
• windex 10mo ago
  Atleast in Europe there are some basic rules around data collection. In places like India, linkedin is a free for all vacuuming up resume data. I've seen the same jobs on linkedin appear for nearly 4 years with no changes and hundreds of people applying every week. You cant flag it on linkedin either. I guess LinkedIn's business model likes the fake job postings.
• jokoon 10mo ago
  I wish I had a job But honestly I settled with my unemployment. I just don't want to deal with all the bs of applying, and playing nice with recruiters. Either they need me or they don't. I don't want to play games. I don't have the privilege of having a degree or being well networked, or being a great developer. It's a market. There can't be a job for everyone.
• LorenPechtel 10mo ago
  It's hard to imagine that it's gotten worse. My employer imploded in the housing collapse. I got to the point I could screen at least 80% of the supposed job ads as bogus. Many were the same fairly generic thing month after month, some were outright scams (apply for something a bit outside my realm but which I could do, soon I was getting people trying to interest me in training for said role), some were the same job being posted in many manifestations. Maybe the original was legit, but 20 versions of it are 1 job, not 20.
• coolThingsFirst 10mo ago
  Funny this is posted on HN since the HN hiring threads contains companies that have been posting the same job offer for years straight. Zero due dilligence done. 60-70% of jobs are fake jobs nowadays.
• anal_reactor 10mo ago
  Simple solution: company that has at least X employees cannot post more than f(X) job ads per (unit of time), and at least g(f(X)) need to result in hires within (timeframe) unless literally no one responded.
• cadamsdotcom 10mo ago
  Doesn’t this come under the banner of fraud?
• 6510 10mo ago
  It simply should be required to post all job openings with a government agency that will negotiate the terms and fine you horrifically if your offer smells like bullshit. It should go as far as to force the company to hire the best fitting candidate. Elaborate investigations if the candidate turns out a poor fit. Lavish unemployment benefits but you do have to show up at the agency at 8am 5 days per week to follow courses and take tests. If we don't have the employee you need in stock we will build one.