Lawmakers Move to Ban 'Ghost Job' Ads That Waste Applicants' Time
'Ghost Job' Ads Are Getting So Bad That Lawmakers Want to Ban Them
Fake job postings, or 'ghost jobs,' have become so pervasive that lawmakers are stepping in. These ads, which companies use to gauge the market or create an illusion of growth, waste job seekers' time and erode trust. New legislation aims to require transparency, forcing employers to disclose when a listing is not for a real opening. The article explores the scale of the problem, the motivations behind the practice, and the potential impact of the proposed ban.
It's a bait-and-switch that wastes people's time and undermines their faith in the job market.
- Aurornis
That statistic that 1 in 5 job listings might be a “ghost job” comes from a company developing application tracking systems (Greenhouse) and as far as I can tell they included every listing on their website that wasn’t eventually marked as hired in their system. So a company that wanted to hire multiple people under the same application, choosing to leave it open, would be classified as a ghost job.
Most tech companies I worked for would have had our common hiring listings like “Senior Software Engineer” flagged as ghost jobs under this system. I think they wanted to use this report to get their name out, and it’s working because journalists like the WSJ and even politicians are now parading their report around.
The Greenhouse website looks like exactly the kind of ATS you don’t want. The top feature I see on their website is “Voice AI” which will perform an AI voice interview with the candidate for you.
I don’t want anything to do with that company and I don’t trust their numbers either.
- johnaoss
They have been banning them! Ontario, Canada had legislation come into effect earlier this year that achieved the following (albeit for only for companies of 25 employees or more):
- Required disclosure on the usage of AI in resume screening
- Mandatory salary ranges that can only have a range of $50k (except over $200,000)
- Required to state if the vacancy is real or 'planned for later'
- Must respond to applicant within 45-days of the final interview updating them on the status of their application.
Enforcement is also made slightly easier by requiring companies to retain copies of their job postings and any additional documents that are part of the application for 3 years.
- ramijames
I run a mid-sized job board (https://miserablyunemployed.com/) and I deal with a substantial amount of reports from users about jobs that aren't accurate or don't exist. They get taken down immediately.
The worse offenders are the companies that are using fake jobs to drive traffic to their sites. There is a special place in hell for those people.
I wish that legal systems were better equipped to deal with bad actors that obey the letter of the law, but skirt ethical and moral boundaries. I think a lot of the worst things in the world would get fixed if we had some better way of dealing with them.
- zeckalpha
Yet, the government requires these, e.g. in the case of PERM applicants. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employer-recruitment...
- klardotsh
We already have a law description we could easily expand just a tiny smidge to explicitly include these in its scope, and the punishments would already be fitting: fraud.