In today's job market, many job seekers are facing a frustrating process — where they apply to legitimate job postings and never hear back — a phenomenon often referred to as "ghost jobs." Recruiting expert Hung Lee joined TheStreet to discuss the truth behind these fake job listings.
Related: Why you aren't hearing back from the job you applied for
Full Video Transcript Below:
CONWAY GITTENS: All right. So tell me, we're seeing a rise in ghost jobs. So that's where legitimate companies are posting fake job listings. What's going on here and what's the point?
HUNG LEE: You know what, I would actually challenge the premise a little bit. I think there's a lot of ghosting going on in the sense that candidates are sending applications to job adverts and then not getting a response. So that can certainly feel like the job may be fake. But it's, it's less likely that the job is actually fake. It's more likely that there is just a significant inefficiency with regards to how companies and recruiters handle job applications, which is, I think, a better explanation for the phenomena of not getting a response to a job application.
CONWAY GITTENS: And so I understand that you don't necessarily buy into the idea of there being a ghost job scam, but just humor me for a minute. If there is such a thing that is happening where companies are posting jobs that they don't intend to fill, how can we identify if you're right or I'm right?
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HUNG LEE: It's going to be difficult to prove because we're talking about the intent of the organization, right? So the reason why I'm confident that the ghost job phenomena is overrated in the sense that the job is never designed to be filled is simply the effort that, that it takes for an organization to not only post the job, but then to have to handle the applicant flow makes it sort of not worthwhile. There isn't any real value in an organization doing it. It's much more likely as a result of inefficiencies internally in the business. It's certainly to do with job advert duplication. That's another phenomena that is a big contributor to this. And also there's a lot of jobs out there that kind of need to be published because of compliance reasons. Also particularly in the, in the public sector. So those jobs are created at the, posted the real jobs. And there's a, there's a full intent to hire, but it may not be necessary to actually post the job from a recruitment point of view, but you do it for a compliance reason. So the job isn't fake, it's just an unnecessary advert.
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