Resume Builder, which offers résumé templates, surveyed nearly 650 hiring managers in May and found nearly seven in 10 said it was “morally acceptable” to post fake jobs. Hiring managers credited the move with increasing revenue, morale, and how much workers get done.
Here’s the weird part though-
About seven in 10 of the fake jobs were on a company website or LinkedIn, according to the survey. And, yet, despite all the shenanigans, many fake listings often lead to real interviews — and even employment.
Four in 10 hiring managers said they always contacted workers who applied for made-up jobs. Forty-five percent said they sometimes contacted those job seekers. Among companies that contacted applicants, 85% report interviewing the person.
“A lot of them are getting contacted and interviewed at some point, so it’s not necessarily a black box,” Haller said.
Does that part make sense to anyone?
Those are talent captures. A lot of times managers have enough budget to barely hire someone but don’t really have the need to justify a guaranteed expenditure. They put out a job opening to see who applies. If a rockstar applies, they’ll hire them just to get them into the company. Good people will always find a spot. If a bunch of normal people, who might be just fine workers but aren’t standouts, apply then the fake job doesn’t get filled.
I’ve canceled very real job openings because the quality of people who applied didn’t really excite me and I didn’t really NEED someone. My team was chugging along and I had a little extra budget to help out, but my team continued just fine without hiring someone else. My budget got cut the next year by about what I would have spent on the new person, which would have made me get rid of a normal person while a rockstar would have been able to move somewhere else in the company.