It’s getting harder to tell the difference between Sleepy Hollow and LinkedIn. Rife with fake job listings and non-responsive managers, the hiring market is becoming an especially harrowing experience for applicants. Three in five candidates believe they’ve encountered a false job listing (or ghost job), according to job platform Greenhouse’s 2024 State of Job Hunting report. 

“The data highlights a troubling reality—the job market has become more soul-crushing than ever,” Jon Stross, president and co-founder of Greenhouse, wrote in the survey of more than 2,500 global workers. He goes on to call the whole situation “kind of a horror show,” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

On Greenhouse alone, 18 to 22% of jobs listed are fake. Almost 70% of companies using the platform posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024, adds the Journal.

A separate survey of 650 hiring managers conducted by Resume Builder finds that many companies don’t see any issue with their behavior. Seven in 10 of those posting fake job listings defend said postings as morally acceptable, claiming it to lead to a boost in morale, revenue, and productivity. 

Meanwhile, workers are stuck facing a maze of dead ends, leading to 79% admitting to Greenhouse that they’re experiencing heightened anxiety in this current job landscape. A whopping 91% of employees say the current job market is challenging and 57% point to the increased competition as fueled by AI.

The factors leading to a rise in ghosting 

Hiring managers reported to Resume Builder that these ghost jobs are intended to give the impression that the company is open to external talent (67%) and growing (66%). Other times it’s a mirage for current employees, intended to give off the appearance of an alleviated workflow (63%) or make workers feel replaceable (66%). Lastly, sometimes it’s just about hoarding resumes (59%) for later use.

And it’s not just fake job listings to worry about. Ghosting comes in other forms too, as 61% of job seekers tell Greenhouse they’ve been ghosted after a job interview. That’s a 9% increase since April 2021. The behavior has become so prevalent that some Gen Z applicants are admitting to ghosting employers back in response to the bleak hiring market.

This is likely in part due to the increased number of AI applications, Greenhouse posits, noting that the workload for recruiters has increased by 26% in the past quarter. 

“Companies are struggling to manage the overload of applications fueled by AI, but they need to realize that the market runs in cycles and they won’t always have the upper hand.” writes Stross. “Every unanswered email and every vanishing hiring manager isn’t just a minor inconvenience to candidates; it’s costly and can damage a company’s reputation, making it harder to attract top talent in the long term. “