This has been true as long as there have been job postings. Online jobs boards just made the problem worse.
This came up a few years ago as well, it seems like someone discovers it about every 5 years or so, and then goes OMG!!!!1!
Some of it is Indians just harvesting whatever companies post, regardless of how long it's been there.
Yes. I remember first seeing this in the early 1980s. If you had an opening but you already knew who you wanted to hire, you still had to post the opening; as a formality of corporate policy. Oftentimes those job postings have great detail in the job description and must have expertise on day one (custom tailored to the person they already have in mind) minimizing the number of competing applications.
That's still a common problem, I've ran into a few of those myself. The ones that just don't exist period are harder to weed out - those seem to be just normal posts that never get a reply.
It comes up every year. Ive talked with a lot of people about it. It should be considered fraud at this point.
It's never going away because there's no penalty to posting a fake job. You just spend 10 minutes posting it, all the resumes that are emailed go into a mailbox for later analysis and data harvesting, and repeat.
Certain sites like Monster are completely useless because of this. I've even had recruiters argue with me about jobs posted on a current employer's website that I knew were only there because no one knew how to update the website anymore.
Yep. Been there too. I basically only deal with a recruiter or someone directly working with a company anymore.
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