Nearly 40% of employers posted fake job ads over past year, according to survey

Frustrated jobseekers who suspect their online applications may be going nowhere may be right, as a recent nationwide survey suggests that nearly 40% of employers posted a fake job ad over the past year.

Of the nearly 650 hiring managers polled in May, the survey found that 39% said their employers had posted a fake ad in the past year, according to the ResumeBuilder.com survey published last month. Roughly 30% of respondents said their employer had at least one fake job ad still up.

"It isn’t all in their head by any stretch," Jim Morris, owner of the Farmingdale Express Employment Professionals office, a franchised recruitment firm, said of wary jobseekers. "We’ve definitely seen fake job ads. Definitely multiple times monthly."

Reasons for posting fictitious job ads include: making it appear as if a company was open to external talent; to make an employer look as if they were growing; to placate overworked employees into thinking co-workers were on the way; to make workers feel replaceable; and to collect resumes for any future recruitment efforts.

Morris said when he contacted Long Island employers to offer recruiting assistance, the employer often told him that the position was not likely to be filled.

"When we reach out to them and say, ‘I see your posting, can we help you out with this role?' often we hear some variation of, ‘You know, that’s from HR, that’s from corporate, I don’t know why they have it up, I can’t grow our head count,' ” Morris said.

Other times, he said, employers will say they don’t plan to fill the role 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 mostly seen the issue pop up when dealing with large employers with national operations. "I don’t know if it’s coming from a bad place, but it’s going on."

Hiring managers in the survey said, in most cases, 37% of the time the idea to post the ads came from HR departments. Behind them, senior management — 29% — and company executives, 25%, were responsible for implementing fake ad initiatives.

"The word ‘fake’ should not enter anywhere in the hiring process," said Stacie Haller, chief career adviser for ResumeBuilder. "It’s disgusting. It’s especially reprehensible when It’s the HR department posting fake job postings."

Beyond ethics, Haller said, posting bogus ads doesn't solve issues like overworked employees, the need to show growth, or motivating existing staff to work harder. Fake ads just paper over those issues, she said.

"We’re talking about lying in the hiring process," she said. "It can’t possibly be sustainable."

Despite those concerns, most respondents said fake ads had been a valuable tool for the company. According to survey findings, 68% of respondents said bogus ads positively impacted revenue: 65% said it boosted employee morale, and 77% said productivity benefited.

Additionally, 45% of respondents said fake ads led them to sometimes contacting applicants, while 39% said they always contacted candidates over the ads. Of those that contacted applicants, 85% said they went on to interview job seekers over the fake ads.

Surprisingly, 7 out of 10 respondents said the use of the ads was morally acceptable. Forty-three percent said the practice was definitely acceptable, while 27% said it was probably acceptable.

Roughly 20% of hiring managers said the practice probably wasn’t acceptable, while only 10% said it was definitely not morally acceptable.

Ethics aside, attorneys on the Island said fake postings presented potential legal risks for employers, even if their use wasn’t inherently illegal.

"Although we believe presenting a ‘fake’ job posting is unlikely to violate any particular New York State Labor Law, employers would be wise to remember that New York State has specific legal requirements regarding job postings," employment lawyer Gerald C. Waters Jr., partner with Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone in Mineola said in an email.

Under pay transparency legislation signed into law last year, employers throughout the state with four or more employees are required to disclose good faith salary ranges in job postings, both externally and internally.

With many bogus ads leading to interviews, Waters said employers with no intention of hiring also ran the risk of introducing claims of discrimination against themselves.

"If a candidate applies for a fake job, but during the process of the application and interview, are subject to alleged discriminatory treatment . . . that applicant may seek to file a state or federal claim of discrimination," he said.

"Real or fake, every time an employer posts a job offer, we believe an employer faces some risk of failing to comply with New York State law," Waters said.