What is the Deal with Ghost Jobs?
BySoozy G. Miller, CPRW, CDCC, CDP
What is a ghost job?
The current comments on social media seem to define “ghost job” as any job for which a candidate never received a response.
It must have been a fake-out posted by a company; the job never existed and the company never planned to hire anyone because otherwise I would have gotten an interview.
Many stressed job seekers think that they have been perfectly qualified for at least some of the jobs they have applied to, so they deserve some kind of response.
I didn’t receive any response—even a generic “Thanks for applying” email—so the job must have been a fake-out, and how rude is that?! Hiring is broken everywhere!
Companies do post so-called ghost jobs. They exist. There are three hiring scenarios that can be considered ghost jobs:
Company conducts a candidate pool test to see who is out there.
Company is hiring internally but posts the job anyway as a back-up.
Company is looking for a cash infusion or has potential investors and wants to show they are strong in the market and actively hiring.
If you apply to one of these, you probably won’t hear back. You had no way of knowing. That is just reality.
Here are job post scenarios that social media is labeling ghost jobs that are not ghost jobs at all:
Reposted jobs or jobs open for months
The hiring team cut off applications after a certain number due to high volume, but the best person for the job was not in that first round. Or the team / department / division was restructured and the job description has changed. Again. In this case, posting is a lather-rinse-repeat scenario.
Keeping the queue active
Some companies wait to close the job posting until after the new hire starts, due to fear of no-calls and no-show hires. Or a new hire didn't work out after 30, 60, or 90 days. I worked on hiring for a law firm at which the CEO wanted me to keep all applicants active all the time because he was so nervous that new hires wouldn’t last 90 days.
Specialty role
The job posting stays up for a long time because thousands of people may be applying, but nobody is a specialist in one piece of software or one niche role. One recruiter colleague had interviewed hundreds of people, none of whom had the expertise in one piece of special software that the company needed, and they were not willing to train. So the job remained posted.
Evergreen jobs in high turnover industries
For example, AI engineers tend to have contract roles that last just a few months, because they are hired to fix one problem and then go. Other industries like hospitality, retail, and healthcare expect turnover over every couple of months. Therefore, job postings are always live.
I subscribe to the idea that the timing of your application doesn’t matter, but your application itself does. Plenty of my clients have landed interviews immediately, after waiting more than a week to apply.
This is all to say that, yes, there are ghost jobs, and you might have applied to one or more during your job search. If you applied to the job and don’t hear back, move on.
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