Employees looking for jobs online are becoming frustrated as many job postings are not linked to real jobs as businesses freeze hiring.
Key Details
- The current labor market is strong, with 10.8 million job openings listed in January, according to the Labor Department.
- Many companies have paused hiring but leave job listings up to have a pool of potential candidates when the job needs to be filled.
- In a survey of more than 1,000 hiring managers last year, 27% reported having job postings up for more than four months, according to a study by Clarify Capital.
- One-third of the hiring managers say they left the ads up so it looked like the companies were hiring so overworked employees wouldn’t be frustrated, while 50% say they left them up to give the impression the companies were growing.
Why it’s news
Job-posting websites are full of pages and pages of listings of positions from entry level to senior executives. Job seekers spend hours scrolling through the listings and then more time carefully applying to relevant positions. And then silence—as many companies do not respond to applicants.
Many job seekers are not hearing back for an interesting reason—the employer isn’t hiring.
A recent study has found that many of these job listings online are “ghost listings” meaning they are filler listings from businesses that aren’t actually hiring for the role.
In the study, many hiring managers reported leaving job listings up for over four months to give the impression that the business was growing and hiring new employees when in reality, hiring was frozen.
Many firms report leaving the ads up even when the business was not hiring because the roles had high turnover, and if the company was not currently hiring for the position, it is likely that it would be in the near future and could reach out to candidates who applied.
Other large or corporate businesses said job listings sometimes fall through the cracks, and due to the company’s size, it is sometimes hard to keep up with what role has been hired and what hasn’t.
Employers say it is easier to have a running pool of applicants to choose from than creating a job listing and waiting for applicants when a position opens up.
While employers report the process is easier, many employees report being frustrated as they apply to numerous jobs they believe they are qualified for and not hearing anything back.
Many employees say it hurts their confidence because they thought the business does not like them when in reality, it was an empty post that wasn’t actually intended to be filled.
