'A lot of demoralized people': Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

If you’ve recently been laid off and have started the arduous process of looking for a new job, you’ve probably seen them on networking platforms like LinkedIn: postings for roles that are 30 days old, maybe more, with suspiciously wide salary ranges. They usually have hundreds, or even thousands, of hopeful applicants vying for the same position, but if you do a quick cross-check and notice that the role isn’t posted on the company’s actual website — or any of their social media pages — you should probably stop drafting that cover letter, because it’s possible they’re not hiring at all. 

“Ghost jobs,” or ads for positions that aren’t actually open, are a common phenomenon in the tech industry, which has been plagued by layoffs and budget cuts over recent years. As unemployed workers struggle to regain their footing, recruiters and career coaches who spoke with SFGATE warned that these fake jobs posted by real companies serve multiple, sometimes insidious purposes. 

Navigating a worrying hiring trend

According to a 2024 survey from MyPerfectResume, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled. While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it’s also used to commit psychological warfare: 25% said ghost jobs helped companies gauge how replaceable their employees were, while 23% said it helped make the company appear more stable during a hiring freeze. Another damning 2024 report from Resume Builder said that 62% companies posted them specifically to make their employees feel replaceable. They also made ads to “trick overworked employees” into believing that more people would be brought on to alleviate their overwhelming workload. 

Jasmine Escalera, a career coach who broke down MyPerfectResume’s recent survey, said that the sheer number of HR professionals and recruiters who posted ghost jobs was astonishing. 

“I think overall, just that one number was a legitimate shocker for all of us,” she told SFGATE.

Irene Nexica, a career coach and tech recruiter who was laid off in 2023, told SFGATE that the notion of ghost jobs being out there adds an extra layer of worry for job seekers.

“In today’s market, they are already spending a lot of time researching and customizing their applications,” Nexica said. “So the idea of doing even more work to find out if the job listing is real freaks people out, and I’m seeing a lot of demoralized people who are still compelled to apply for financial reasons.”

This “disturbing” trend has serious ramifications on job seekers who are already strained by the ever-tightening market — and it’s more common than we realize, especially on job boards. 

After interviewing 1,641 hiring managers, Resume Builder researchers found that 40% of employers posted fake job listings in 2024, and that three in 10 currently had ghost jobs listed. The idea to post them mostly trickled down from HR, followed by senior management and executives, their June 2024 article continued. Though the listings were posted on multiple hiring platforms, the majority of them appeared on LinkedIn and the companies’ websites.

Evidence suggests this trend is taking hold throughout the Bay Area, too. 

A collaborative document circulating online reveals a growing list of employers accused of posting ghost jobs. Many of them, it turns out, are tech companies with offices based in California. Most of the companies listed didn’t respond to SFGATE’s request for comment, but Evidation, a health data company listed in the document, denied posting such listings. 

“Evidation only posts jobs we are actively hiring for,” spokesperson Amy Puliafito told SFGATE, adding that scammers have impersonated the company and likely engaged in fraudulent communications in the past. As a result, she recommends applying directly on the company’s website.

‘Sometimes I feel like a psychologist’

John Lovig, a veteran recruiter and career coach who hires employees for tech companies across the U.S., including California, says that ghost jobs are a deeply frustrating phenomenon among exasperated, overworked job seekers.

“You want to be able to feel like you’re going to make progress in your job search, and it’s just super challenging when not all the jobs that are posted are real,” he told SFGATE. 

It can be devastating for people to not hear back after firing off hundreds of applications, so when they finally receive a phone call, it can feel like their only ticket out of the unemployment line, he explained. As a result, he often has to coach his clients and emotionally center them. Otherwise, they’ll come across as too desperate and make a poor impression on recruiters.  

“Sometimes I feel like a psychologist,” Lovig said. 

While it’s common for companies to encourage potential candidates to submit their resumes for future consideration, it becomes problematic when they make it seem like they’re actively hiring for an open role. He says it happens quite frequently in the tech industry in particular, likely because there have been so many layoffs over the past several years. And, sometimes, aside from harvesting resumes, recruiters for senior-level positions will do something Lovig finds even more deplorable: They’ll use it to network and make business connections. 

For example, a company will say they’re hiring for a chief technology officer, and once the recruiter gets applications, they’ll schedule an interview, Lovig explained. Then, during the conversation, the recruiter will say, “Oh, by the way, I noticed that you’re currently hiring some software engineers. Maybe I can help you with that,” he continued. 

“I think it’s very sales-y and sheisty,” he said.

Though he wouldn’t disclose which companies engaged in these practices, he said they commonly occur on a national, sometimes even global scale, he said. 

His advice is to consistently network, even if you don’t need to — and to create original content online. 

It “gets a lot of people to see your page,” Lovig said.

“I get career coaching requests because of the content that I put up,” he continued, explaining that it engages audiences while advertising his services. For workers in tech, this is an especially helpful way to network, he added. 

“You really want to get in front of people,” Escalera said, adding that having personal connections at companies will give you intel on whether their jobs are actually open or not, too. 

“Always, always, always put networking as one of the top components of your job search strategy,” she said. 

This will be especially crucial moving forward, because as companies continue to flagrantly post ghost jobs without regard to workers’ well-being, it’s clear that they’re here to stay, no matter how unethical they seem to be.  

“It’s a concerning scenario, particularly when these misleading postings originate from HR departments — the very entities entrusted with shaping accurate perceptions of their organizations,” Resume Builder’s chief career adviser Stacie Haller said in the June 2024 article. “Whether it’s to create an illusion of company expansion or to foster a sense of replaceability among employees, such practices are not acceptable.”