Ghost Jobs: Why Fake Job Listings Are Growing
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Here's your money briefing for Friday, January 17th. I'm Mariana Espudu for The Wall Street Journal. A growing number of job seekers who feel like they're throwing applications, cover letters and resumes into a void might be applying to so-called ghost jobs. According to a new analysis from the hiring platform Greenhouse, one in five jobs advertised is fake or not filled.
It's almost like there are millions of people who feel like the world is gaslighting them because they read headlines like we have in The Wall Street Journal that says we just had a great jobs report.
What are ‘ghost jobs’ and how are they defined?
And it makes people think, well, if everything is so great and people are getting jobs, why do I feel so stuck? Why am I not getting traction?
We'll talk with Wall Street Journal Careers and Work Bureau Chief Lynn Cook after the break.
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How prevalent are ghost job listings according to Greenhouse and WSJ?
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If you haven't heard back from that job you applied for months ago, it might not have been a real job posting. Wall Street Journal Careers and Work Bureau Chief Lynn Cook joins me. Lynn, what is a ghost job and is it as spooky as it sounds?
It is. is as spooky as it sounds because people who are out there looking for jobs are very spooked by this. It's being defined as the job is advertised. People might be interviewed for it. They might even have to do take-home assignments or personality tests. But ultimately, the job is never filled. So it looks like there's a job that's open, but then no one ever gets hired. And that's fundamentally what a ghost job is. And a lot of people, millions of people really have experienced this in the last couple of years alone. Why do companies do this?
Why do companies post jobs they don’t plan to fill?
Why do they post jobs that inevitably don't get filled? That is the number one question people have. And they're very angry. And there are actually a lot of reasons. And some of them are perfectly rational. Somebody leaves a company, you want to backfill their position, you talk to HR, you advertise it, and then suddenly someone higher than you says, wait a minute, are we sure we want to backfill that position? As people leave this company, we'll just leave some of these jobs unfilled and save some money. And a lot of companies do that, especially when there's questions about the economy, as there have been for the last year or two, especially in 2024 when the political situation was very much in flux.
A lot of companies just said, we're going into kind of frozen mode till we figure out what's going on here, who's going to win, because whoever took the White House would radically change tariffs and all these other things. So that's actually a very reasonable, logical reason something might be posted and not filled, but it still doesn't feel good if you're the person who applied and never heard back. There are some not so reasonable, some people would say more nefarious reasons. things that companies do too. They might decide, well, we don't really know if we want to fill this job, but let's just throw a posting out there and fish for somebody. Maybe there's a perfect candidate that we can't live without, but there might be 800 people applying and they're taking a look and saying, eh, we're not really committed to filling this role.
That happens too. Then you have things like these third-party staffing agencies that will advertise jobs, sometimes with a company name on it, sometimes with a label that says confidential.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:52
2
What are ‘ghost jobs’ and how are they defined?
0:52–1:12
3
How prevalent are ghost job listings according to Greenhouse and WSJ?
1:12–2:33
4
Why do companies post jobs they don’t plan to fill?
2:33–4:52
5
How do third-party recruiters and staffing agencies contribute to ghost jobs?
4:52–6:30
6
What warning signs can job seekers spot to identify a ghost job?
6:30–8:07
7
How do ghost jobs affect candidates’ experiences and hiring timelines?
8:07–8:19
Speakers
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