I think Wellfound (f/k/a AngelList) is doing this. The jobs advertised on there are real...
I'd been on the job market four months. Every day I did the rounds: Levels, Wellfound, YC/jobs, Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn.
It is what it is, as a crappy jobs market.
Wellfound? I didn't ever hear from anything from their job ads.
And I'm pretty certain that whatever Wellfound/AngelList was, it has become a company that just markets resume writing services, resume review services, all sorts of other services that draw in your money somehow.
Why do I say that?
120+ applications on Wellfound since then. Crickets. Absolutely nothing.
One day I got an email, "Your profile has been viewed!". Weird, never seen an email like that from Wellfound. Indeed, "You have 1 profile view in the last 90 days".
Huh. 120+ applications, 120+ times me answering filling out Wellfound's content questions on "why you would be a good fit for this role", "tell us about x and y and z", no interviews, no contact, only ONE company has ever even viewed my profile (and for what it's worth, it's not a company that has any positions open).
Well, maybe my answers suck, you say. Maybe my resume isn't as impressive as I think it is.
But similar answers and the same resume get me fairly steady hits on every other site I mentioned, I've got to multiple final rounds, I've been explicitly told I was hirable, I was just the number two, I was "in the top three".
And to be clear, many of the companies I see on WF are advertising on other sites too.
My suspicion? WF DOES take job listings, but they also harvest them from other sites - the job is real, but there's no-one from the employer reviewing the applications to their "phantom" job at Wellfound... and meanwhile all people like me are doing are providing content for WF to harvest and train models for their real business model: AI-driven resume writing and review service and other products.
My AI video interview? Viewed... zero times.
Huh.
Unless, maybe you're so clueless that you do spend significant amount of time on each hand crafted submission, hoping the (unbeknownst to you) 23 yr old HR admin with a degree in comparative psych will appreciate the subtle indicators of subject matter expertise you've carefully woven through your cover letter and provocatively embedded in your relevant experience. Or perhaps instead, you took the time to look up the name of the hiring manager and reviewed all their socials to try to understand them better and thoughtfully included hints through your application that you share common interests, you might even see them in a bar or restaurant on their side of town, maybe you'll talk to them, you think to yourself, but no it would be too much we should simply observe, and wait, the work we've put into the application will speak for itself... In either case, yes I agree life will be hard for you, perhaps even cruel, for such a rare flower the light of day is cruelty. I wish you luck. Don't email me.