It’s really hard to find a job right now, and the prevalence of “ghost jobs” is not helping.
According to an internal review of data by hiring platform Greenhouse, 18% to 22% of job posts are ghost listings, or roles that companies aren’t actually trying to fill.
Greenhouse has more than 7,500 clients, including Major League Baseball and HubSpot, and found that nearly 70% of the companies using its platform had posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024.
Construction, the arts, food, and legal were the industries with the most ghost jobs, according to the internal data.
For about 15% of Greenhouse’s clients, posting ghost jobs was a regular occurrence. Half of the jobs listed by this group went unfilled in the second quarter of last year.
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“It’s kind of a horror show,” Greenhouse president and co-founder Jon Stross told the Wall Street Journal, adding that “the job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.”
Greenhouse isn’t the first to study the issue. An October analysis from Resume Genius found that there were over 1.6 million potential ghost jobs on LinkedIn in the U.S. alone.
Why Do Companies Post Ghost Jobs?
According to Resume Genius, leaving up dead-end job postings is advantageous to companies because it creates the illusion that the company is growing, leaves the door open to new talent, and allows them to amass LinkedIn followers and emails for mailing lists.
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Clarify Capital, a small business loans site, surveyed over 1,000 hiring managers in 2022 and one of the most common reasons provided for having ghost job listings was to keep current employees motivated by giving the impression of growth.
How to Spot a Ghost Job
According to Resume Genius’ Job Seeker Insights Survey, conducted in August, nearly one in three job searchers were frustrated by ghost jobs.
Resume Genius recommends that job seekers always check the date that a position was listed and pass on applying if it was up for two months or longer. According to the Society of Human Resource Management, the average time to fill open roles was 41 days in 2024, or about a month and a half.
Another way to spot a ghost job from a job board is to cross-check the role with listings directly on the company’s site. Sometimes the company’s site will have more up-to-date information.
Checking the company’s social media and reaching out to the company directly are also options.
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