The truth behind 'ghost jobs'

Hung Lee, Editor at Recruiting Brainfood, joins TheStreet to discuss why we're seeing a rise in "ghost jobs."

Transcript

00:00All right, so tell me, we're seeing a rise in ghost jobs.

00:04So that's where legitimate companies are posting fake job listings.

00:08What's going on here and what's the point?

00:12You know what, I would actually challenge the premise a little bit.

00:18I think there's a lot of ghosting going on in the sense that candidates are sending applications

00:24to job adverts and then not getting a response.

00:27So that can certainly feel like the job may be fake.

00:33But it's less likely that the job is actually fake.

00:36It's more likely that there is just a significant inefficiency with regards to how companies

00:42and recruiters handle job applications, which is, I think, a better explanation for the

00:48phenomenon of not getting a response to a job application.

00:51I understand that you don't necessarily buy into the idea of there being a ghost job scam.

00:58But just humor me for a minute.

01:00If there is such a thing that is happening where companies are posting jobs that they

01:05don't intend to fill, how can we identify if you're right or I'm right?

01:15It's going to be difficult to prove because we're talking about the intent of the organization.

01:21The reason why I'm confident that the ghost job phenomenon is overrated, in the sense

01:27that the job is never designed to be filled, is simply the effort that it takes for an

01:34organization to not only post a job, but then to have to handle the applicant flow, makes

01:39it sort of not worthwhile.

01:41There isn't any real value in an organization doing it.

01:47It's much more likely as a result of inefficiencies internally in the business.

01:54It's certainly to do with job advert duplication.

01:58That's another phenomenon that is a big contributor to this.

02:03And also there's a lot of jobs out there that kind of need to be published because of compliance

02:10reasons also, particularly in the public sector.

02:13So those jobs are created, they're posted, they're real jobs, there's a full intent to

02:19hire, but it may not be necessary to actually post a job from a recruitment point of view,

02:26but you do it for a compliance reason.

02:29So the job isn't fake, it's just an unnecessary advert.