'Ghost job' ads are getting so bad that lawmakers want to ban them(www.wsj.com)
77 pointsby bcaulfield6 hours ago13 comments
  • Aurornis4 hours ago
    That statistic that 1 in 5 job listings might be a “ghost job” comes from a company developing application tracking systems (Greenhouse) and as far as I can tell they included every listing on their website that wasn’t eventually marked as hired in their system. So a company that wanted to hire multiple people under the same application, choosing to leave it open, would be classified as a ghost job.

    Most tech companies I worked for would have had our common hiring listings like “Senior Software Engineer” flagged as ghost jobs under this system. I think they wanted to use this report to get their name out, and it’s working because journalists like the WSJ and even politicians are now parading their report around.

    The Greenhouse website looks like exactly the kind of ATS you don’t want. The top feature I see on their website is “Voice AI” which will perform an AI voice interview with the candidate for you.

    I don’t want anything to do with that company and I don’t trust their numbers either.

    • darth_avocado3 hours ago
      The opposite can also be true. Just because a position was marked as “hired” doesn’t mean anyone was actually hired.
    • milesvp4 hours ago
      Good to be skeptical. Remember, though, that there is zero cost to displaying ads. That means they get bundled at places like indeed. If you’re HR and have 3 openings, but have 4 ads you can run for less than the price of 3… Personally, I might run an ad for some kind of triple threat that has no chance of finding someone.

      Also, the cost of screening ad responses is near zero compared to 30 years ago.

      So we have economics that encourages ghost job listings. Personally I’d like to see big taxes on job postings scaling for company size, maybe duration too. Would solve this particular problem.

  • johnaoss4 hours ago
    They have been banning them! Ontario, Canada had legislation come into effect earlier this year that achieved the following (albeit for only for companies of 25 employees or more):

    - Required disclosure on the usage of AI in resume screening

    - Mandatory salary ranges that can only have a range of $50k (except over $200,000)

    - Required to state if the vacancy is real or 'planned for later'

    - Must respond to applicant within 45-days of the final interview updating them on the status of their application.

    Enforcement is also made slightly easier by requiring companies to retain copies of their job postings and any additional documents that are part of the application for 3 years.

  • ramijames4 hours ago
    I run a mid-sized job board (https://miserablyunemployed.com/) and I deal with a substantial amount of reports from users about jobs that aren't accurate or don't exist. They get taken down immediately.

    The worse offenders are the companies that are using fake jobs to drive traffic to their sites. There is a special place in hell for those people.

    I wish that legal systems were better equipped to deal with bad actors that obey the letter of the law, but skirt ethical and moral boundaries. I think a lot of the worst things in the world would get fixed if we had some better way of dealing with them.

    • em-bee3 hours ago
      that is a good looking job board. except i am missing a filter for the type of work, like IT, software, marketing, design, etc. also filtering by industry would be nice. and part-time/contract options. there seems to be a remote filter, but it's a bit confusing how to activate that.
      • ramijamesan hour ago
        I appreciate that, and the feedback. Will find some time over the weekend to add it. We already have these facets, I just don't expose them in the filters. Good call.
    • ButlerianJihad4 hours ago
      How do you deal with false reports about bona fide jobs, but from malicious actors, such as competitors or trolls?
      • ramijamesan hour ago
        I have a blacklist that filters them out at scrape-time.
        • ButlerianJihad37 minutes ago
          I am not sure that makes any sense in the context of what I asked, and it also seems to imply that your business is based on scraping others' sites, which is a bad look.

          Also you chose a horrendous name for it. Holy crap, I would never sign up to a site with that name, not to look for actual work! Much less a bottom-feeding scraper bot! Most job boards try to keep sort of an upbeat or optimistic mood, at least!

  • zeckalpha5 hours ago
    Yet, the government requires these, e.g. in the case of PERM applicants. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employer-recruitment...
    • trollbridge5 hours ago
      Well, the government actually requires a non-ghost job posting for PERM applicants. There may not be much enforcement of this, particularly employers going out of their way to try to get as few qualified applications as possible.
      • hibikir4 hours ago
        Because, given you aren't filing for PERM these days for someone that you have not already hired, someone off the street is going to be straight out worse than your current employee.

        PERM ade sense in a theoretical world without H1s or F1s, where you are filing PERM for someone off the street. But that almost never happens outside of cases where yes, you coud put the ad in the front page NYT and you'd still hire the candidate. And thus eitehr way you slice it, looking at the resumes of your ghost ad is a waste of time either way.

        And if one really wanted to go back to that kind of green card process, it has to be very fast anyway, instead of being as slow as it is. Otherwise it becomes useless regardless.

      • diogenescynic4 hours ago
        They shouldn't accept newspaper job ads anymore. It's a total scam when they use those because no one is applying for jobs from the wanted section of a local newspaper in 2026. They left too many obvious loopholes these companies take advantage of.
        • 8note3 hours ago
          its still at the wrong step though.

          it should be before you can go looking to hire somebody on a work visa, rather than to keep somebody you hired on a work visa

    • 5 hours ago
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    • rotringlvr5 hours ago
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    • trhway4 hours ago
      Even if all of the PERM postings to be considered "ghost", it is just 120K postings per year. And PERM postings are usually promptly removed, not just hanging there like typical ghost job postings.
  • SilentM6822 minutes ago
    Lawmakers should do more than ban them, they should require companies to notify the applicants of their final decision. I'm still waiting for dozens of companies to let me off the hook, one way or the other. That is the worse aspect of this practice in my view, that and the nasty practice Job posters have of listing the number of applicants, typically more than 100, next to the job Ads, knowing full well they'll never respond, because those jobs have been reposted, over and over.
  • klardotsh3 hours ago
    We already have a law description we could easily expand just a tiny smidge to explicitly include these in its scope, and the punishments would already be fitting: fraud.
  • joeax3 hours ago
    Instead of banning ghost job ads, job board companies like Indeed should consider "authentic job" badges for ads and require proof a person was hired to the position. When you have real, authentic jobs people gravitate to your site. If you let junk job ads (ghost or otherwise) run amok on your site, everyone leaves. This is why you don't hear about monster.com anymore.

    You don't need another government ban. Let capitalism do its job.

    • fn-mote2 hours ago
      Again, you need to deal with people gaming the system - claiming they were hired in order to boost credibility ranking of the company (or site).

      When there’s a benefit to the site and the employer, that’s two potential sources of corruption.

  • alex435785 hours ago
    Great idea, virtually impossible to enforce I’d imagine.
    • trollbridge5 hours ago
      Quite easy to enforce with a private right of action.
      • thayne4 hours ago
        How would you acquire evidence that it is a ghost job, and they didn't just decide to hire someone else? How would you even know if there is a case worth pursuing?
        • bluefirebrand4 hours ago
          Employees who are fed up with their employers bullshit could whistleblow pretty safely
    • kylehotchkiss5 hours ago
      I'm sure some ambulance chasing lawyer types will make quick work of the problem
      • bell-cot3 hours ago
        Perhaps. But I suspect the world would be a far better place if ambulance chasing lawyers were actually so good at solving problems.
  • bariswheel4 hours ago
    Building a talent pool by disingenuously leaving a position open to farm resumes and have a warm pipeline of candidates should be 'regulated' at the least. I'm trying to write politely today.
  • dredmorbius2 hours ago
    Archive / paywall: <https://archive.is/bfl83>
  • yipinwong4 hours ago
    Been years since "Ghost job" was to be regulated. Nothing's been done for years.

    This is yet another "they wanna ban" but won't do type of article.

    Sick of this.

  • kylehotchkiss5 hours ago
    Instead of wanting to, why not just do it? This is a bipartisan win.
    • Aurornis4 hours ago
      Because the definition of a “ghost job” starts falling apart when you look closely at the numbers. A company that hires multiple people under a single generic listing like “Senior Software Engineer” would be classified as a ghost job, despite actually producing more hires than job listings. It would be annoying as hell if there was a law dictating that we had to post 50 separate job listings every time we wanted to hire 50 people and then carefully assign candidates to the right one so we didn’t accidentally trigger some ghost job law.
      • bluefirebrand4 hours ago
        You could just state "we are hiring 50 people for this position" if you really are hiring 50 of the exact same role. Is there any value for posting 50 different identical job listings?
        • Aurornisan hour ago
          The fallacy at play is thinking that every company knows exactly how many people will be hired. Some times we hire by budget: The department has $X million to expand headcount and how fast it goes depends on the seniority and skill level of the applicants we get. Or maybe the first few people we hire are moving faster than expected so we raise the bar and start being more selective to match the people we just hired.

          There are infinite reasons that a job listing may not get marked as filled within a short timeframe used in these studies. I know some people want strict requirements or things like fining companies who don’t hire someone in time, but the majority of postings that fit this definition are not “ghost jobs”.

    • DonsDiscountGas4 hours ago
      Seems like a difficult thing to enforce. Presumably not impossible to make some progress tho.
    • xkqd5 hours ago
      Just speculating here but perhaps those ghost job listings are used to artificially boost the appearance of growth or even just things being business as usual.

      Might be useful to some folks.

      • forinti4 hours ago
        That would be securities fraud.
        • xkqd4 hours ago
          Doesn’t necessarily have to be to mislead investors, could be to mislead applicants, competitors, whatever.

          I know if my business was shittin’ the bed I wouldn’t want to give any appearance of that. Better to just let everyone think it’s business as usual, no matter what.

        • xboxnolifes4 hours ago
          Isn't everything?
        • stackskipton3 hours ago
          I mean, all they have to say "We were hoping the RIGHT candidate applied that met all our criteria and they never did."
  • tithos5 hours ago
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