The sadness of not getting a job after putting a lot of time and effort into applying has been compounded by the revelation that the position may not have even existed in the first place.
Across Australia, a horrific trend of so-called ‘ghost job’ advertisements has emerged, crushing the aspirations of applicants who thought they had the credentials and a good chance of getting the job.
Ghost jobs are advertised positions that the employer does not intend to fill, or that have already been filled.
Affected Aussies have flocked to social media to express their anger at wasting time applying for non-existent positions.
One job hunter submitted 33 applications in two months, resulting in only two interviews.
“I don’t want to hear anyone say ‘nobody wants to work’, these companies won’t hire,” they wrote on X.
A telltale sign that an advertised role may be a ghost job is if the advertisement for it has run for more than 30 days, workplace commentator Ben Hamer told me. ABC Radio National.
The sadness of not getting a job that someone put a lot of time and effort into applying for has been compounded by the revelation that the job may not have even existed at all (stock image)
Employers “cannot afford to be without someone for months,” Hamer said.
But they can afford to play with people’s emotions by advertising jobs that aren’t available.
“What a lot of companies do, especially recruiters, is post jobs on recruitment sites because the more jobs they have on them, if they have the budget, the smaller companies can’t compete,” Graham Wynn of Superior People Recruitment told Yahoo.
It’s a trick companies use to ensure their job openings always appear first and then push the smaller job openings further down the page, allowing them to find the best candidates for their real jobs.
Large companies often purchase a package for a certain number of ads, and if they don’t have enough orders to use the space, they sometimes simply place “fake” ads to fill the gaps.
Some recruiters also use fake job advertisements as a marketing tool to make themselves appear as experts in a particular field, and greater than they really are.
This can then lead to people wanting to do business in that area calling them rather than a company they perceive as smaller or with less specialist knowledge.
According to Wynn, some ghost jobs exist for legal reasons.
He gave the example of a company that had to advertise a vacancy online because it needed to show that it was open to hiring an external candidate.
But the reality was that the company had already filled the position internally.
Large companies often buy a package for a certain number of ads and if they don’t have enough jobs to use the spots, they may just run ‘fake’ ads to fill the gaps (stock image)
Sometimes job postings remain online even after the position is filled, in case the person hired changes their mind, or because the company wants to see what types of candidates are available for future openings.
Dr. Hamer said another clue that a job may not actually exist is that the wording of the ad is not specific.
“If it seems like (the ad) is a little vague, then it may be a ghost job. If it’s very specific, it gives you the impression that there’s a real role they’re trying to fill.
“Some of those may be ones where the recruitment process has just been delayed. But a good portion of them are (positions) that were never actually intended to be filled.”