It’s important to note that this trend isn’t being promulgated solely by CEOs, but also middle managers (boldface mine):
Forty-percent of companies said they have posted a fake job listing this year, according to a survey in May of 650 hiring managers from career site Resume Builder. Three in 10 companies currently have fake listings on their sites or on job boards, according to the survey.
Unlike job scams in which criminals seek to obtain applicants’ personal information, hiring managers themselves are often behind these “ghost jobs.”
While seven in 10 hiring managers say that they believe the practice is morally acceptable and beneficial for business, it complicates job seekers’ searches for work, and can also erode their trust in companies….
Companies harbor several motives for running the deceptive ads, according to the survey. First, some aim to trick current employees into thinking that the business is not only growing, but also making an effort to hire more workers and alleviate their existing workloads.
In some instances, hiring managers said their goal is to signal to current employees they are replaceable.
Nearly 60% of companies surveyed said they collected resumes to keep them on file for a later date, with no intention of immediately hiring anyone.
“They may do it to suggest that they’re hiring so if you’re an employee you’ll think, ‘We’ll relieve you of your workload’,” Haller said. “It may also be to say, ‘We’re a growing company.’ On the darker side, it could be to say, ‘We’re looking to replace you, so you better work harder’.”
As far as hiring managers are concerned, most say the morally dubious tactic works. Nearly 70% of them said posting fake job listings boosted revenue. Sixty-five percent said the job ads had a positive impact on morale, and 77% reported an uptick in productivity among workers.
Where on the political spectrum do you think the people willing to do this typically fall?
As with any kind of authoritarianism, workplace authoritarians rely on a lot of help to carry out the harm they do.
mikethemadbiologist
There’s another angle on this too. Places that hire people on work visas usually have to advertise that position and then certify to the government that their visa-holder is still necessary to fill the position.
I have applied for one of these positions as an internal transfer, not knowing what it was actually for, and was quietly advised by company leadership that *if I was sure I wanted to proceed* I could of course compete with $existing_employee, but the posting was only made because of a federal legal requirement and not because they were actively seeking someone new for the position. That whole “if you’re sure” thing was a warning bell followed up with a four-alarm fire siren that sounded like “regardless of the outcome, $existing_employee might have to travel back to $homeland and reapply, which could squeeze timelines on $project and affect our budget”.
To clarify, I have no problem in general with work visa programs. Nobody took ‘muh jerb’, and I couldn’t give less of a shit about the average skin tone or accent in my office. Our immigration system should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment; it is vastly more ruthless, uncaring and corrupt than most people realize. My concern is that we’re conditioning said hiring managers to fudge the numbers. Someone who’s done this for immigration reasons (which IMO are pretty valid even if it’s ducking the spirit of the law) will see a lot less of a barrier to posting ghost jobs for other reasons.
Sure would be nice to see some legislation on this, and perhaps an enforcement team that can generate resumes that match posts to see which companies aren’t calling back their exact matches. In fact, that sounds like it might actually be a practical and productive use for chatgpt…
Another source of ghost jobs, here in the “beltway bandit” of DC’s government/military support software, is in the bidding wars.
They don’t have the jobs NOW, but they will have them if they win the bid, so they host the job listing to collect the resumes and say they can have X people ready to work on day 1, giving confidence to the Feds that the contractor can deliver.
I had many an ignored resume throughout my 2 times actively hunting (mid 90s and mid 00s) where this was the case. I gave up on military support projects (in spite of having a clearance) and moved to commercial because they finally called up on the resume where the DoD firms just were keeping in holding for that potential, not for a job they had to offer.