Frustrated job seekers who suspect their online applications may lead nowhere may be right, as a recent national survey suggests that nearly 40% of employers posted a fake job ad last year.
Of the nearly 650 hiring managers surveyed in May, 39% said their employers had posted a fake ad in the past year, according to the ResumeBuilder.com survey released last month. About 30% of respondents said their employer had at least one fake job ad still posted.
“It’s not all in their head, not by a long shot,” Jim Morris, owner of Farmingdale Express Employment Professionals, a franchised staffing firm, said of wary job seekers. “We’ve definitely seen fake job ads. Definitely multiple times a month.”
Reasons for posting fictitious job ads include: making it appear that a company is open to outside talent; making an employer appear to be growing; appeasing overworked employees by making them think coworkers are on the way; making workers feel replaceable; and collecting resumes for any future recruiting efforts.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Almost 40% of employers posted a fake job ad in the past year, according to a recent national survey by ResumeBuilder.
- Of the nearly 650 hiring managers surveyed In May, about 30% said their employer had at least one fake job ad still posted.
- Reasons to post fake job ads These include: appeasing overworked employees into thinking their coworkers are on their way; making workers feel replaceable; and collecting resumes for any future recruiting efforts.
Morris said that when she reached out to Long Island employers to offer recruiting assistance, the employer often told her the position was unlikely to be filled.
“When we reach out to them and say, ‘I see your posting, can we help you with this position?’ we often hear some variation of, ‘You know, that’s from HR, that’s from the company, I don’t know why you have that posted, I can’t increase our staff,'” Morris said.
Other times, he said, employers will say they don’t plan to fill the position but are looking to build a collection of resumes for future use.
“There’s a disconnect with some of these regional companies,” said Morris, who has seen the problem arise primarily when dealing with large employers with national operations. “I don’t know if it’s malicious, but it’s happening.”
Recruiting managers surveyed said that in the majority of cases, 37% of the time, the idea for posting ads came from human resources departments. After them, senior management (29%) and company executives (25%) were responsible for implementing fake ad initiatives.
“The word ‘fake’ should never be in the hiring process,” said Stacie Haller, senior career coach at ResumeBuilder. “It’s disgusting. It’s especially reprehensible when it’s the HR department that’s posting fake job ads.”
Beyond ethics, Haller said, posting fake ads doesn’t solve problems like overworked employees, the need to show growth or motivating existing staff to work harder. Fake ads just cover up those problems, he said.
“We are talking about lying in the hiring process,” he said. “It cannot be sustainable.”
Despite those concerns, the majority of respondents said fake ads had been a valuable tool for the company. According to the survey results, 68% of respondents said fake ads had a positive impact on revenue: 65% said they improved employee morale and 77% said they benefited productivity.
Furthermore, 45% of respondents said that fake ads sometimes led them to contact applicants, while 39% said they always contacted candidates through the ads. Of those who contacted applicants, 85% said they then interviewed job applicants through the fake ads.
Surprisingly, 7 in 10 respondents said the use of the ads was morally acceptable. 43% said the practice was definitely acceptable, while 27% said it was probably acceptable.
About 20% of hiring managers said the practice was probably not acceptable, while only 10% said it was definitely not morally acceptable.
Ethics aside, Isla’s lawyers said fake posts posed potential legal risks for employers even if their use was not inherently illegal.
“While we believe that submitting a ‘fake’ job offer is unlikely to violate any New York State employment law, employers should remember that New York State has specific legal requirements regarding job offers,” employment attorney Gerald C. Waters Jr., a partner at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone in Mineola, said in an email.
Under pay transparency legislation enacted last year, employers statewide with four or more employees must disclose good faith salary ranges in job postings, both externally and internally.
With many fake ads leading to interviews, Waters said employers who have no intention of hiring also run the risk of filing discrimination claims against themselves.
“If a candidate applies for a fake job, but during the application and interview process, is subject to alleged discriminatory treatment… that applicant may seek to file a state or federal discrimination claim,” he said.
“Whether real or fake, any time an employer posts a job opening, we believe they are at risk of running afoul of New York state law,” Waters said.
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