Applying for a job can be tedious and frustrating enough—especially if the role you applied for doesn’t even exist.
The practice of posting non-existent jobs is growing. Survey results from Resume Builder show a whopping 40% of companies posted fake jobs within the last year, and three in 10 companies still have them up. To the job seeker, this practice seems shady, but 70% of hiring managers believe posting fake jobs is “morally acceptable,” according to the study.
The reasons why hiring managers would do this are plentiful—even if it may not make sense to applicants. Some use it as signaling to burned-out employees that help may be on the way, while others do it to test the market, benchmark salaries and benefits among competitors, and make it appear as if they’re staying on top of DEI initiatives. Others do it to build a pool of potential candidates they can contact when an actual vacancy arises, Lauren Winans, CEO and principal HR consultant for human resources consultancy Next Level Benefits, tells Fortune.
But what’s most alarming is that some employers use it as a scare tactic to signal to current employees that they could be replaced at any time.
“One part of business practice has always relied on misinformation to attempt to keep employees feeling afraid and insecure,” Daniel Boscaljon, an executive coach and the co-founder of business consultancy Healthy Relationship Academy, tells Fortune. “Many illogical motives may inspire this act. It could be wanting employees to believe that they won’t be as badly overworked, to make employees feel insecure, or to send a message to rival companies.”
A waste of time and resources
Not only does posting fake jobs give both candidates and current employees a false sense of hope, but it’s a waste of time and resources. It takes time to develop a job posting—whether real or fake—and candidates pour time and effort into putting together an application.
Posting a fake job is “never ethical due to the amount of time, effort, and emotion that good candidates invest in job applications,” Euan Cameron, founder and CEO at video interviewing platform Willo, tells Fortune. What’s even more concerning to Cameron is the statistic from the Resume Builder survey showing 85% of companies engaging in this practice went as far as to interview candidates for the fake jobs.
“This really shocks me,” Cameron says. This leads to “wasting further time, putting candidates through a stressful process unnecessarily, and potentially impacting their wellbeing.”
Posting fake jobs can cause ‘irreparable damage’
It’s not just job candidates who have to deal with the consequences of responding to fake postings. The companies who engage in this practice can get caught.
Posting fake jobs can “seriously degrade the existing employees’ opinion of their employer and cause irreparable damage to the employer brand for prospective candidates,” Cameron says. “A company’s actions in its first interaction with a candidate reveal a lot about how that organization operates. In a world where businesses grapple with productivity, this practice screams untrustworthiness, irresponsibility, and wastefulness.”
And in a digital world where information is at our fingertips, companies should also be concerned about the reality of their hiring practices spreading across social media and other online forums. This can harm a company’s reputation on websites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn and can make it more difficult for the company to hire top talent in the future out of fear from potential candidates that the job isn’t even real, Cameron says.
Plus, deceptive advertising practices have legal repercussions, Winans warns. But other experts say there are some loopholes that companies use to avoid being punished for the practice.
“A company can say that the job was advertised by mistake or that the company decided to go another way,” Boscaljon says. “This makes it difficult to call advertising fake jobs illegal. It certainly reflects a company culture that is bankrupt and is likely a sign that other ethically problematic activities are accepted by leadership.”
How to spot a fake job posting
Just like most information on the internet, it’s important to verify what you’re seeing. Experts have some ways to suss out whether or not a job posting is real. If you see the posting on a job board, it’s a good idea to verify the posting on the company’s official website.
“If it’s not listed there, it might be fake,” Winans says. “Vague job descriptions, unusually high salaries, and lack of contact information can be red flags.”
Cameron also recommends directly contacting the employer who posted the job and asking for more information about the role including questions about the company and expected responsibilities. Generally, genuine job ads will be met with a genuine response, plus “it’s also good practice to demonstrate your interest in the position.”
And, in general, it’s always a good idea to do research on a company’s culture before applying for a job, Boscaljon says.
“If the business has a lot of turnover, if employees are unhappy, if management or leaders have a reputation for underhanded practices, these are signs that there are many reasons to apply for a job, even if it is real,” Boscaljon says.