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There can be ample roadblocks during a job hunt, including so-called “ghost” jobs.
These can be phantom listings for jobs that don’t exist, or those posted such a long time ago that it seems the job may not be available.
Luckily, there are ways for job seekers to sidestep the challenges of a potential specter job and raise their odds of landing as real gig, according to career experts.
Ghost jobs aren’t a nascent phenomenon, but a hot pandemic-era job market turbocharged some seemingly bad behavior.
Ghosting among job seekers and employers, for example, has become more prevalent as parties more frequently go silent during the hiring process.
Recent labor market dynamics also brought terms like the great resignation, quiet quitting and loud quitting into the collective lexicon. Such “fun” new names belie the fact that these trends existed — albeit perhaps with less prevalence — before the pandemic, said Mandi Woodruff-Santos, a career coach.
10% had jobs open at least six months
Still, long-unfilled jobs seem to be ample, creating headaches for applicants.
For example, a basic search on LinkedIn showed about 1.8 million jobs had been posted on the site over a month ago, according to data available Friday.
In 2022, 10% of hiring managers reported having job ads that had been available for six months or more, according to a poll by Clarify Capital.
There’s a “good chance” jobs posted online for longer than two months are ghost jobs, wrote Aaron Case, a senior content writer at Resume Genius.
As a former hiring manager, Woodruff-Santos has seen firsthand why ghost jobs may exist: For example, a media company might simultaneously post ads for “senior editor” and “associate editor” roles — even though, in reality, the company only has one available job.
The strategy helps companies broaden the net of talent drawn to each role, she said, though it creates a ghost job in the process.
“It takes time” for workers to apply online, said…
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