In recent years, the term ‘ghost job’ has become popular in the job market. This causes frustration in job seekers as they send out countless resumes and cover letters to employers, only to get very few responses.
A ghost job is a job posting for a position the employer doesn’t intend to fill. When averaging the survey results from myperfectresume.com and resumebuilder.com, about 60% of the surveyed employers admitted to posting ghost jobs. The survey held by myperfectresume.com found employers may do this for any number of the following reasons: to deceive overworked employees regarding staffing trouble, to suggest growing business to investors, to assess the effectiveness of a job description, to collect resumes for a ready-to-hire talent pool, to gain insights into the job market and their competitors, to assess how difficult it may be to replace certain employees and to help maintain online visibility of the company on job market forums.
Director of the Tennessee Tech Center for Career Development Dr. Russell Coughenour reasons with circumstance. He said, “Sometimes these ghost jobs are posted by employment agencies working on behalf of an employer. Employment agencies can post jobs which don’t exist to gather resumes and then go out and tell employers they have candidates ‘ready to go.’” He continued, “Very bad practice, [but] has it happened? Absolutely.”
When asked about the potential effects of ghost jobs being common, he replied, “I don’t know. I’m not sure how it could be policed. A company could always say, ‘We thought we were going to have an opening, things changed that we couldn’t predict.’ Who’s to say that’s not true?”
On online chat forums, job seekers fume at the number of ghost jobs they wind up applying for. On Reddit, a user compiles a list of over 77 company names to spread awareness of potential ghost jobs. On other platforms like StackExchange, users question if making fake job postings is even legal.
Attorney Jade Peterson of JP Law firm responded to the legal side of the discussion: “They pretty much can post those at liberty, and I think it does harm both job seekers and is detrimental to employees who are technically fooled by their workplace.”
While there is currently no legislature to hold employers accountable, there is room for change to occur. Multiple petitions have risen on platforms like change.org, and Peterson believes this is the solution to this dilemma.
“People who are lobbyists, they are paid to spend their full time and devote that to making legislation happen. So, for people who have a regular day job to go to and then would like to make litigation happen on the side, it’s almost impossible. That’s how change happens,” Peterson says.
