Resume Builder, which offers résumé templates, surveyed nearly 650 hiring managers in May and found nearly seven in 10 said it was “morally acceptable” to post fake jobs. Hiring managers credited the move with increasing revenue, morale, and how much workers get done.
Here’s the weird part though-
About seven in 10 of the fake jobs were on a company website or LinkedIn, according to the survey. And, yet, despite all the shenanigans, many fake listings often lead to real interviews — and even employment.
Four in 10 hiring managers said they always contacted workers who applied for made-up jobs. Forty-five percent said they sometimes contacted those job seekers. Among companies that contacted applicants, 85% report interviewing the person.
“A lot of them are getting contacted and interviewed at some point, so it’s not necessarily a black box,” Haller said.
Does that part make sense to anyone?
This is straight up fraud. I believe that one of the reasons companies do this is to signal business growth to prospects and investors. For public companies, that’s a form of securities fraud. I observed this firsthand when doing a job search a few years ago. I would apply to new job listings as soon as they were published. After not hearing a response I would check in to see if the listing was still active. I would frequently see the exact same listing reappear every six weeks or so. I watched this cycle repeat for more than a year with some companies. Each time the job is re-listed, the clock resets on networks like LinkedIn. It creates the illusion of fresh business activity and growth. One specific company that did this was Snowflake. To clarify, I am directly accusing Snowflake of securities fraud.
I was looking on LinkedIn recently, had to get an extension just to hide all those, really cleaned up my search results after a while.
What addon is that? Its very frustrating using LinkedIn and having to click through so many pages of useless results, especially all the listings from other job boards.