3 in 10 Companies Currently Have Fake Job Postings Listed

This is one of those situations where naming and shaming is not only acceptable, but a moral obligation. I especially would want to know which hiring managers are among those 7 out of 10 who believe fake listings to be morally acceptable, such that I and others can save myself the time and effort of going through a pointless application process.

I suspect Canonical is one of those.

I regularly see positions near to my position (France, sometimes in villages!), and when I apply I receive from 8 to 12 minutes after an email that says "Sorry but your resume is not relevant"... except that my resume has *exactly* all the requirements.

When I talked to my friends about this they tries to apply too and... same thing: 8 to 12 minutes for certain positions, they have been rejected with the exact same response.

Isn't the number of job postings a key metric for the job market? Because if yes, it must've been really misleading.

i know the reason. they sometimes want to show the investors that we are hiring and we need money. they show the money being spent but they save for themselves. i have a friend who is an HR and he is my source on it.

In 2008, while working for a staffing company during the economic downturn, I observed a controversial practice. The company posted job listings that were known to be highly unlikely to result in actual placements. The primary objective was to engage candidate references, turning these interactions into sales opportunities. While I viewed this as potentially wasting candidates' time and straining their professional relationships, the company justified it as a way to maintain a network for future hiring needs. They believed that keeping the system active at full capacity would ensure readiness when the job market rebounded, transforming these difficult-to-fill positions into real opportunities. This experience has led me to always insist on providing references only after a technical interview, a practice that has served me well.

The people lying to the weak end of the market are the same ones that don’t see a problem with it. No surprises here.

Way more than 3 out of 10 in my personal experience of unsuccessfully looking for a job for two full years now

This is one of those things I suspect should probably be made illegal, just like fake reviews are. There is no benefit to society for companies being allowed to post fake job listings, and an awful lot of downsides to both jobseekers (wasted time and effort for a job they'll never get) and services hosting the jobs (makes their listings useless for users).

And while I hear that sometimes it's for 'compliance' reasons (can't hire an internal candidate without listing the job publicly), there should be better laws there too. It's blatantly exploiting a loophole that just about everyone would say goes against the spirit of the law/guidelines and simply shouldn't be allowed. Either jobs can't be listed if a candidate has already been chosen internally, or that companies are required to show equal consideration to both internal and external candidates.

As if there are not enough ways humans are wasting their time