The last thing you need when you´re job hunting is more mind games

January 10, 2012 7:29 AM

According to some of the job-search literature I´ve read/what I´ve heard from friends, companies will sometimes post ads for positions that don´t exist. I´m not talking about outright scams/MLM; I´m talking about legitimate companies advertising for positions that they don´t currently have open. How common is this practice? Why would you go through all the trouble of posting for a non-existent job? Is there an easy way to spot positions that aren´t real?

One explanation I´ve heard is that these kinds of postings
are to collect demographic data; what kinds of people would apply for x position should it open, and what do their qualifications look like? But that seems like a lot of extra work for an HR person to deal with, not to mention a pretty rotten deal for job searchers.

posted by ActionPopulated to Work & Money (18 answers total)

A retailer in the UK that I have worked for always advertised for managerial roles (this is from department manager up to store manager) and then either placed people into roles that came open or kept their applications on hold until a suitable role became available.
posted by ellieBOA at 7:35 AM on January 10, 2012

"Don't have open" and "don't have open to the public" are two different things. Certain companies (I don't know how this is determined) have to publicly post job openings even if they're 100% sure they're promoting from within and the job has literally been filled before it was made public.
posted by griphus at 7:36 AM on January 10, 2012 [8 favorites]

One thing that happens is that a company may have an internal candidate in mind for the position, but rules may require them to also consider a certain number of outside candidates. So they'll advertise for the position, sometimes using very specific criteria that don't actually have anything to do with the position, just to privilege the person they have in mind.
posted by Jeanne at 7:36 AM on January 10, 2012

Recruitment agencies often post fake positions that are too good to be true. This is to entice you into sending them your CV. Then they call you and let you know that the original position is already filled, and try and sell you on the far less attractive positions that they actually have available.
posted by emilyw at 7:41 AM on January 10, 2012 [3 favorites]

This is also true of temp agencies.
posted by turtlefu at 7:44 AM on January 10, 2012

Recruiters/temp agencies absolutely do this.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:44 AM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Certain companies (I don't know how this is determined) have to publicly post job openings even if they're 100% sure they're promoting from within and the job has literally been filled before it was made public.

This happens with state jobs. I have a family member who works for the state and they have to post jobs even when the way the union rules work there is zero chance that they will not hire from within because they have a list of qualified internal candidates.
posted by jessamyn at 7:50 AM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Even when the chance of getting a job is minimal you may choose to regard the application process as worthwhile: the odds are stacked against you but the internal candidate may not be as good as you think.

The best way to screen against this type of job is to call whoever is given as a "contact for more details" and ask them if they have internal candidates.
posted by rongorongo at 7:53 AM on January 10, 2012

What jessamyn said also applies to US public schools - my friend was just hired for a position that will eventually be posted (i.e. after the job is filled) because they have to advertise it without exception.
posted by guster4lovers at 7:54 AM on January 10, 2012

This happens a lot in tech industries that like to hire H1B visas, because they are nominally supposed to only hire people with them when they can't find a suitable candidate otherwise. Usually this results in job postings with requirements that effectively read like someone's resume and/or are impossible to meet.
posted by feloniousmonk at 7:54 AM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sometimes it's just because it's less trouble to keep the ad up than to take it down. Also, job re-posting sites like indeed.com (and many others) scrape employer's sites; the jobs were legit at one time, but there is no way for the employers to contact those re-posting sites and let them know the jobs are filled. Sometimes it's because the need isn't urgent, but for "the right candidate" the company would consider making a spot.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:19 AM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

I know someone who was the "internal candidate" for a job that had to be posted. The required experience was incredibly specific, and the procedure for applying was so hoop-jumpy (apply on specific date in person only in this city, interview on specific date only in another city) that lo and behold! The only candidate left standing was the guy they wanted all along. He got the job!
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 8:23 AM on January 10, 2012

A friend that was a partner in a IT consulting company that targeted small businesses ran ads for network engineers all the time. They were not hiring. They made note of which small companies were on the verge of losing their IT guy because he was job hunting, and started calling the company every 30 days. Often enough to make it worth the effort, they hit a company when they were scrambling to make due without their IT person, and were able to save the day and land a new client.

Brilliant. Slightly evil, but brilliant.
posted by COD at 8:44 AM on January 10, 2012 [7 favorites]

Additionally, I've been in the job market twice in the last 12 months. I pretty much assume any job ad that is not in a paid placement somewhere is not real opportunity. If the company is spending $100 to place it in the local tech news daily newsletter, I believe it's real. If it's just on their website, it's probably always there. It doesn't mean you can't get hired, but you probably have to be the perfect candidate. In my search, the only place I found that actually led to interviews with any reliability were job ads on LinkedIn and local tech newsletters. And of course, personal networking. Everything else was a waste of time.
posted by COD at 8:51 AM on January 10, 2012

I know this is an atypical example, but I used to work for a very small company where the owner would, once or twice per year, place an ad in the classifieds of the local papers for a salesman position with the option of eventually possibly buying into the company. He'd get stacks of replies (sent to an anonymous PO Box; the company wasn't identified in the ad) and he'd read through them all. A large percentage were from people we knew and dealt with regularly in the industry, and he would mentally file away the fact that Bob Jones at Acme Steel applied for a job with him and expressed his dissatisfaction with his current employer and would rather own a company than sell for one. Then while making a deal with Acme Steel, he might casually mention to Bob Jones' boss that he'd better keep an eye on him; he'd heard through the grapevine that Bob was looking around for a new job and was also tearing down management behind their backs. Perhaps he's not to be trusted. Bob's boss would then give my boss a nice discount on the material he was purchasing as a "thanks" for that helpful info. My boss also would never hire any of the people who applied for these bogus positions if he ever actually needed a new sales person because he considered it "disloyal" to search for another job while employed (!).
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:12 AM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

This happens with state jobs. I have a family member who works for the state and they have to post jobs even when the way the union rules work there is zero chance that they will not hire from within because they have a list of qualified internal candidates.

One way to spot this in the case of govt jobs is to look at the length of time the job is being posted for. A mgmt job posted for a week has an identified internal candidate. This is probably true of any govt jobs listed for a week.
posted by OmieWise at 11:14 AM on January 10, 2012

A variation on ellieBOA's anecdote. I worked for medium sized consulting company that advertised for positions that did not exist *yet* but that we thought we would need in the next one to three months. It was just like anything else you might forecast in a business that had a lead time. We were selective in our hiring and knew that statistically most candidates were not going to be a fit. The market was very hot at that time and we were having unusually high turnover in some positions. And of course, we were developing business opportunities that sometimes led to staffing an additional project team if we were bumping up against 100% utilization. So knowing that the interview process takes a couple of weeks, we make offers to only X% of all applicants, are experiencing Y% turnover, and have Z% growth forecasted in the bus dev pipeline gave the recruiters a rough idea of what roles they needed to be advertising for and how many they would need to fill. Every now and then we'd end up with a great candidate at the end of the interview process and no job to match them up with, then it became a judgment call whether to hire them to the bench or take the chance they would still be available and interested in us when we needed them.
posted by kovacs at 7:50 PM on January 10, 2012

Is there an easy way to spot positions that aren´t real?

When recruiters/agencies do this, not only is the description too good to be true, but the contact information will be either a general resume drop address ("[e-mail]") or a fake code name ("call Jeremy Smith at (xxx)-main-switchboard"). The agency then knows exactly where anyone who writes or calls that contact saw their ad.

The good news is that they usually leave these identities unchanged for years, so you get to recognize them after a while. Postings that suddenly appear with similar qualifications but a real contact person are much more likely to exist - the salesperson is trying to bypass the general pool and get candidates to call him/her directly. With the rise of social media, you can also try to google up the name to determine if it's a real person or not.
posted by ceribus peribus at 9:31 PM on January 10, 2012