Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You’re looking for a new job, trawling the job boards and checking the career pages of companies you’ve heard good things about. You find a role that looks like a great match for your skills and experience. You buff up your resume, labor over a cover letter, and hit Apply with your fingers crossed.
And then nothing.
The experience of applying for a job only to hear nothing back—not even a “thanks, but no thanks”—feels increasingly widespread lately, and not just in the realm of software and technology. Sure, sometimes hiring managers are swamped with candidates (or simply disorganized) and don’t respond to every applicant. But recent research has shown that lots of job postings are ghost jobs: listings for roles that an organization has no intention of filling, at least not imminently.
What’s behind the rise in ghost jobs? Why do companies post them? And how can job candidates stop wasting time and suffering false hope?
It’s tough to determine how many apparently open jobs are actually ghosts, because most companies don’t want to admit to the practice (Stack Overflow, for the record, does not post ghost jobs). The Great Resignation and the financial uncertainty of the pandemic years elevated the variety of ghost jobs, in keeping with a Harvard Business School report. One widely cited survey of 649 hiring managers discovered that nearly 40% of hiring managers mentioned their corporations posted ghost jobs this yr, starting from entry-level roles to positions within the C-suite.
It is a drawback for anybody attempting to know the job market—or get employed in it. As Kara Dennison wrote in Forbes final fall, “posting a job description with out the intention to instantly begin the hiring course of inflates the true variety of jobs out there and elongates the job search, a lot to the frustration of many job seekers.” Dennison is referring to the Job Openings and Labor Market Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported 9.6 million accessible jobs in September 2023, a determine that she writes “left many questioning why hiring numbers appeared so low regardless of growing job openings.” The reply, Dennison explains, is that “‘job opening’ [means] one thing totally different than what job seekers count on: a present open job that one can apply to and count on to be interviewed for and probably employed.” A few of these “job openings”—make that lots of them—are ghosts.
Corporations put up ghost jobs for myriad causes:
- They need to rent somebody—finally. The corporate desires to fill the position sooner or later, however the place isn’t accessible but (as an illustration, as a result of they don’t have headcount or they’ve instituted a hiring freeze).
- The itemizing is out-of-date or they’re hedging their bets. They’ve already employed somebody for the position, however haven’t taken the itemizing down. This may very well be as a result of the hiring crew merely forgot or as a result of the corporate desires to proceed attracting attainable new candidates in case their new rent doesn’t work out.
- They’re “all the time open to new individuals”: The group is all the time looking out for potential candidates for future roles, whether or not or not they’re actively hiring in the mean time. This was true of fifty% of respondents in one survey from Clarify Capital.
- They’re performing financial optimism: The group desires to offer the impression that they’re thriving, notably in an unsure financial local weather. This was the rationale cited by 43% of hiring managers in the Clarify Capital study.
- They’re deceptive their staff or instilling concern: Greater than 60% of corporations in the Resume Builder survey who reported posting ghost jobs mentioned they did so “to make staff consider their workload could be alleviated by new employees.” Yikes. Possibly worse? Sixty-two % of respondents mentioned they posted ghost jobs expressly to make their staff really feel “replaceable,” an actual case of the FUD coming from inside the home.
Seven in 10 of the hiring managers chargeable for posting a ghost job this yr “consider posting faux jobs is morally acceptable.” Ghost jobs may or may not be legal, relying on what jurisdiction applies. However posting a job you haven’t any intention of filling anytime quickly—particularly should you’re doing it to mislead or unsettle your individual staff—strikes most individuals as a nasty factor.
“Ghost jobs expose the uncertainty and lack of transparency within the financial system,” writes Dennison in Forbes. Folks waste vitality and time making use of for them, following up with hiring managers who aren’t truly hiring, and making ready for interviews that aren’t going to occur. That’s exhausting and demoralizing.
As we talked about above, half of hiring managers are posting ghost jobs to maintain a expertise pool on the prepared in case of future hiring wants. However from a candidate’s perspective, being on a hiring supervisor’s radar is hardly the identical factor as being thought of for a selected place the corporate is trying to fill on a well-defined timeline.
The identical Clarity Capital survey we referenced earlier discovered that 85% of corporations that put up ghost jobs are literally interviewing candidates for these roles. If a candidate is aware of they’re making use of or interviewing for a theoretical future position as a substitute of a selected place an organization is trying to fill ASAP, that’s one factor. However the lack of transparency rubs most potential candidates the improper manner, particularly after they’ve devoted time and vitality to interviews. Asking staff to interview individuals the corporate doesn’t plan to rent isn’t a great use of their time, both.
Corporations that put up ghost jobs additionally threat harm to their fame, if clients and potential staff understand them as missing transparency or integrity.
It’s not all the time apparent which job openings are actual and that are ghosts. If it had been, ghost jobs could be much less of an issue for job seekers. However there are some tell-tale indicators:
- Very obscure or generic job descriptions. If it reads like a template, it in all probability is. Reliable job postings, particularly for extra senior roles, are usually very particular in regards to the obligations concerned and the {qualifications} they’re in search of. Even when the posting itself is obscure, a hiring supervisor trying to fill a legit position ought to get proper again to you with particulars while you ask.
- You’ve seen this itemizing earlier than. Reliable job postings seem and disappear after they’re crammed, however ghost jobs (not not like common ghosts) simply hold hanging round. Whereas it’s not a hard-and-fast rule, a job that was posted just a few days in the past is far much less prone to be a ghost job than one posted a number of months in the past.
- You may’t discover out a lot in regards to the firm. If you happen to discover discrepancies like an electronic mail handle that doesn’t match the corporate’s web site or the absence of knowledgeable on-line presence, steer clear. At worst, these job postings may be phishing efforts: scams to get you to share your private data, like a passport or Social Safety quantity, with somebody posing as a recruiter.
In all probability probably the most irritating facet of in search of a job is how little of the method is below your management. There’s no silver bullet for this sort of ghost. Despite your finest efforts to keep away from them, you’ll in all probability apply for a handful of jobs that change into ghost gigs. So it is sensible to place your vitality into the features of your job search that you just can management:
- Community good, not exhausting: In Forbes, Dennison means that job seekers community extensively to construct connections and get comfy advocating for themselves. “Strategic networking,” she writes, is “about constructing the appropriate connections inside goal corporations you’d wish to work at. While you community with present staff, you not solely study actual roles that they’re hiring for, however you may leverage an worker referral out of your community for a job alternative but to be marketed, which is finally higher than becoming a member of the group.”
- Turn into a storyteller: Studying to inform the story of your profession trajectory—the place you’ve been and the place you need to be—is one other ability job seekers want. “Recruiters and hiring managers decide candidates by how simply they will illustrate their expertise concisely,” says Dennison. That is one cause why interviews and networking are nice follow: they help you acquire confidence by narrating your experiences and demonstrating your hard-won expertise and perspective.
- Throw your self into steady studying: Committing to studying new expertise, even when you need to carve out time out of your present job and different obligations to do it, is vital in a fast-changing, aggressive job market like software program growth. Discover social learning communities and communities of follow the place you’ll be able to be taught new expertise and ideas and get higher at what you do.
- Keep open. You by no means know the place you would possibly discover your subsequent position. If you happen to’ve all the time been a product supervisor, you may be stunned to search out you may be profitable on an engineering crew, too. If you happen to’ve gravitated towards enterprise corporations to date, search for openings at start-ups or open-source foundations or small companies in want of IT help.
Have you ever been haunted by ghost jobs? Have any insights or experiences to share? Tell us within the feedback.
