'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them
16 comments
·December 18, 2025malikolivier
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
Fraud. The word you're looking for is fraud.
vanviegen
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
The job exists, in the sense that Bob is currently doing it. Unless Bob turns in notice, your application will be in vain.
WarOnPrivacy
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.
bryanrasmussen
>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.
rdtsc
> 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.
cpa
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
So, they’re just lying to make more money. Got it.
b3ing
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
Another reason maybe to profile the pool of talent that probably gets hired by your competition.
andrewstuart
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
> 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.
bsder
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
> Why are companies so irritatingly resistant to getting back to doing things in-person and real-time?
RTO for the recruiters, eh?
> 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"?