Job Boards Are Still Rife With 'Ghost Jobs'. What's the Point?

BBC ^ | AJ Dellinger, | 3/19

[nickcarraway]

Employers are posting seemingly open roles that were never meant to be filled at all.

The labour market is tightening – and it's getting harder to find a job. In the wake of the Great Resignation, which drove more job vacancies than employers could fill, workers often had their pick of open roles. Now, they have largely lost their leverage among layoffs and budget cuts, and those open positions are increasingly rare.

Still, roles do exist – or at least appear to. Job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed continue to advertise open positions, and workers are actively submitting applications. Yet despite an influx of highly qualified candidates, plenty of desirable job adverts have languished on digital platforms with an increasingly common label: "Posted 30+ days ago".

While the listings may be old, job seekers generally still assume companies are actively hiring for the roles. The truth is more complicated. Some of these are simply not-yet-removed adverts for jobs that have been filled – but some were never meant to be filled at all. These are 'ghost jobs', and they're becoming an increasingly common – and problematic – obstacle for job seekers.

[bobcat62]

I have an H1B hotlist in my inbox. 50 names of H1B + OPT workers that are on the bench without work. Here’s a sampling of what’s on the bench:

Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Java Full Stack Developer
Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Java Full Stack Developer
Sr. Cloud / DevOps Engineer
DevOps Engineer
DevOps Engineer
Data Analyst
Sr. Data Engineer
Sr. Snowflake Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer
Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer
Sr. Data Engineer/ AWS
Sr AWS Cloud Data Engineer
Data Analyst
Sr. IOS Developer
Sr. iOS Engineer
SAP FIORI / UI5 Developer
Business Analyst
Business Analyst /Scrum Master
Product Owner/ Business Analyst
QA Automation Engineer
Senior SQL BI/Power BI Developer
Sr. Salesforce Developer/ Admin
Oracle DBA
Sr. Dot Net Developer
.Net Developer
UI Developer / ReactJS Developer
Full Stack Developer
Android / Mobile Application Developer
Data Scientist
SAP EWM Functional consultant
Java Full Stack Developer
QA Automation
UX/Product designer, UI Designer, Visual Designer
Site Reliability Engineer/DevOps/infrastructure Engineer
Senior DevOps Engineer/Site Reliability Engineer
Project Manager/ Scrum Master
Sr.ServiceNow Developer
Mobile Application Developer - iOS, Android, React Native
.NET Core, Angular, Azure, Linq, Entity Framework, Sql Server.

[zeugma]

Problem is that I am a non-Indian working in IT, a fat old white man.

You mean someone who can actually do things other than lie on your resume about your qualifications?