1 in 5 On-line Job Postings Are Both Pretend or By no means Crammed, Examine Finds

The job hunt could be a slog. Complicated job portals, dense competitors, and time-consuming software processes all conspire to make job searching one of the crucial annoying experiences on the planet. After all of the work that goes into an software, 99.9 % of the time you hear nothing again. It’s sufficient to make you are feeling such as you’re firing purposes into the abyss—as if the roles you’ve utilized to by no means existed within the first place. Effectively, in accordance with a latest research, that will truly be the case.

The Wall Avenue Journal cites internal data from the hiring platform Greenhouse that reveals one in 5 on-line job postings—or between 18% and 22% of jobs marketed—are both faux or by no means stuffed. That information was culled from Greenhouse’s proprietary data, which the corporate can entry as a result of it sells automated software program that helps employers fill out job postings.

The “ghost job” phenomenon has been rising for a while—a lot to the vexation of job-seekers. The Journal story cites the experiences of 1 unlucky job-seeker, Serena Dao, who looked for a job for over a 12 months. Dao says that, earlier than touchdown her present place, she utilized to some 260 jobs and regularly questioned whether or not the positions she was making use of to have been actual or not.

Some onlookers have speculated that the follow of posting such commercials is definitely a corporate strategy designed to make the companies posting them seem to be they’re rising when, in reality, they’re not. Quick Firm writes that this follow could assist firms “feign energetic hiring and progress” and helps the “C-suite hit quarterly objectives with out the damaging notion of eradicating jobs from their profession websites.” One other commentator for Forbes notes that ghost jobs can inflate “the true variety of jobs available in the market and elongates the job search, a lot to the frustration of many job seekers.”

The plague of such phantom positions has led some platforms to deal with job postings in very a lot the identical manner that different on-line content material will get handled: as both A) verified or B) potential misinformation. Each Greenhouse and LinkedIn now provide a job verification service, the Journal writes, which permits customers to know whether or not a place is legit or not. “It’s type of a horror present,” Jon Stross, Greenhouse’s president and co-founder, informed the Journal. “The job market has grow to be extra soul-crushing than ever.”