Have you heard about ghost jobs?
We've covered them here before and, no, they aren't seasonal work playing Casper at the local haunted house.
Hiring companies list jobs online with no actual job in the real world, often just to gather personal information on applicants. And it's a big problem.
Yeah, the BBC is reporting that a full 22% - more than 1-in-5 - jobs posted online don't exist in the real world.
It's a real and continuing problem on both sides of the Atlantic.
Up to 22% of jobs advertised online last year were positions listed with no intent to hire, according to a study across the US, UK and Germany by recruitment software provider Greenhouse.
A separate UK study put the figure even higher, at 34%.
34%?
1 out of 3 jobs posted online may be totally bogus?
So why are companies posting ghost jobs? Dr Escalera's research suggests a variety of reasons.
'We surveyed hiring managers, and found some companies post positions to create a talent pool,' she says. 'It isn't that they don't want to hire, it's more they're not hiring immediately.
'Others, we found, were inflating numbers and trying to show their company is growing, even if it's not.'
[Career coach] Dr [Jasmine] Escalera adds that she has also heard examples of companies posting jobs to obtain and sell data.
How is this even legal?
Entrepreneur magazine has similar numbers in their study, stating that 27.4% of jobs posted on LinkedIn are fake.
Los Angeles topped the list with 30.5%, suggesting nearly one in every three job postings is fake.
Philadelphia was No. 2 with 30.1%, and Indianapolis ranked third with 27.8%.
Although New York had the highest number (volume) of ghost jobs (23,000), it only led the Big Apple to come in at No. 4, with 26.7%.
Finally, San Francisco rounded out the top 5 with 26.0%.
Welp, good luck job searchers!
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