WASHINGTON – Applying for jobs can be time-consuming, so it’s maddening when applicants hear about “ghost jobs” – listings for positions that don’t exist.
A survey earlier this year by the career site Resume Builder found 40% of hiring managers said their companies had posted fake jobs.
Fake openings can create the impression a company is growing, signal to overloaded employees that help is on the way, make workers feel replaceable or collect resumes to keep on file.
U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-McKinney, has been investigating the issue after a constituent complained that companies are seeking more and more information from applicants they intend to ignore.
“It is frustrating that Americans spend considerable time and effort applying for positions, only to discover that the job does not exist,” Self said in a news release. “We must ensure that workers have access to genuine employment opportunities and are not left in limbo.”
Self raised the issue in a letter to the Department of Labor and asked how the practice could skew unemployment figures and labor demand projections – statistics that often drive policy decisions in Washington.
In a return letter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told Self the data it collects about job openings is not based on online job postings and would be unaffected by ghost jobs.
The department did not respond to emailed questiond about whether it is considering steps to investigate fake job postings.
Not everyone believes talk of ghost jobs reflects reality.
Tim Sackett, chief executive of HRU Tech., a national technology staffing firm, described it as a “completely made-up phenomenon.”
Sackett said ghost jobs get attention because of eye-catching surveys some career service companies have released, combined with the too common experience of job candidates hearing nothing after applying.
Sometimes jobs have already been filled or eliminated, he said, or the company doesn’t have the bandwidth to respond to everyone who applies.
Applicants are being “ghosted,” but the jobs in question are real, Sackett said by email.
“It happens the majority of our time in our industry and it’s a problem,” Sackett said of applicants being ghosted. “Companies shouldn’t be treating candidates this way, but often there are capacity issues when you get hundreds and sometimes thousands of people applying for jobs.”
The Resume Builder survey and others, including one by MyPerfectResume, have spawned coverage by national news outlets and captured the attention of Capitol Hill lawmakers, even though posting openings without intending to fill them isn’t illegal.
The constituent who reached out to Self said some job posting services charge a subscription fee that incentivizes employers to leave postings up even if they have little interest in filling them.
If a company is paying a monthly fee to post up to 10 job openings, for example, they might as well post 10 jobs. If a position does open, the company will have a handy pile of resumes to sift through.
Self is looking to the House Committee on Small Business and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to learn more about the situation.
“The ghost jobs issue really boils down to honesty and transparency among these large online recruiting hubs. Many are more focused on data mining than actually recruiting,” Self said in a statement.
“We need to look at finding the right balance of consumer protection regulations and deregulations,” he said.
The Texas Tribune redesigned its Public Schools Explorer to add more timely data and features to help families and teachers navigate the state’s sprawling public school system.
In all, Texas has 1,202 school districts and 9,113 public schools, including hundreds of charter schools and alternative campuses. About 5.5 million students attend public schools in Texas, and our explorer includes information on all of them.
It’s an overwhelming amount of data, which is why our journalists focused on organizing the site in a more intuitive way. We included more context to explain what the numbers mean and why they matter. In addition, each school’s performance is compared against statewide and regional trends, which will help families better understand how their child’s school is performing.
We feel this is the perfect time to launch a new site. Parents and families need to be able to see the options available for their children’s education, especially as school choice expands in Texas. We’re showing readers their local campus and nearby campuses, including traditional school districts and charter schools. We show how their school demographics, funding and other characteristics have changed over time to help illustrate broader trends.
We also hope this tool will be useful to teachers, school staff, policymakers and anyone curious about Texas education — including those who need accurate and reliable data to understand how policy impacts students.
Each school district and campus has its own page on the site. Within those pages, data is now organized into a handful categories, including student demographics, classroom experience, opportunities and outcomes, and more. Each category has its own URL, making it easier to share information that matters the most.
We’ve added new data from the Texas Education Agency, including funding information for school districts to help readers better understand where and how schools get money. We also redesigned the districts page to make it easier to find districts using different filters.
In addition to these new features, our site will be more up to date than ever before. Previously, the explorer was updated once a year. Now we can integrate new data as soon as the state releases it, with finance numbers expected in the spring and state accountability ratings in August.
This new explorer builds on the Data Visuals team’s ongoing work covering public education issues affecting students and teachers across the state. In a recent story, we showed how low-income students are being left behind in higher education outcomes and included a lookup tool to help readers explore the data in their own communities.
If you have feedback, email us at schools-feedback@texastribune.org. Also, stay tuned for more updates — we plan to release new features soon. After exploring the new tool, be sure to check out the Tribune’s extensive public education coverage for more on how these issues are playing out across the state.
This project is supported in part by Greater Texas Foundation and Houston Endowment.
Tuesday was the deadline for Texas families to apply for the state’s first school vouchers. In this week’s episode of the TribCast, hosts Matthew and Eleanor speak with Jaden Edison, the Tribune’s education reporter, about who signed up, the future of the program and why Muslim schools were initially shut out from participating.
Watch the video above or subscribe to the TribCast on iTunes, Spotify, or RSS. New episodes every Tuesday.
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