This is the season of hiring. Log in to your LinkedIn account and right from brands and advertising agencies to PR shops, there seem to be a wide spectrum of vacant positions being prominently advertised.
But, wait, take a step back and think. What if the vacant position advertised has been making the rounds on social media platforms for months? What if the roles advertised don’t exist or are no longer vacant or simply that there is no intention to hire?
This is the phenomenon identified as ghost job posting or listing.
In 2024, as per a report by Resume Builder accessed by Moneycontrol, four out of every 10 companies in the study admitted to posting fake job listings—where there was no intent to hire—and 40 percent were found to have published ghost jobs, or positions that did not exist.
In a recent conversation with Storyboard18, Jaideep Kewalramani, chief operating officer and head of employability, TeamLease Edtech, said this has been rampant, especially in the technology, BFSI or banking, financial services and insurance, and B2C or business-to-consumer segments.
Speaking of its presence in marketing and advertising, the issue ranges anywhere from two percent to 10 percent, he added.
But the figures shared by AVSAR, a recruitment consulting and outsourcing company, with Storyboard18 say the prevalence is far higher, suggesting that 15-20 percent of all such listings fall in this sector.
However, Ishan Uchil, managing partner, The Job Shop, a recruitment agency specialising in advertising industry placements, said that he has seen a dip in such posts by ad agencies this fiscal compared to last year.
How rampant is it in advertising?
The practice of ghost job postings has been around for over a decade but has picked up in the last five years. Arantxa Aquino, lead, HR and talent experience at Bengaluru-based Talented, states that ghost job listings picked up pace during and immediately after the Covid-19 period.
AVSAR links its growth to the rise of digital marketing, freelance and contract-based work. Once seen as an industry secret, today, ghost job postings are a recognised element of recruitment in advertising and marketing.
Aalap Desai, co-founder and chief creative officer at ad agency tgthr, who termed this phenomenon as a ‘recent bug’ in the advertising system, said that its growth is dependent on agencies’ hiring cycles.
“A disturbing fact I noticed during one of my stints was that it peaks just before appraisals so that the HR team can prepare a bank of candidates in case people quit after a bad appraisal. HR knows the intensity of the attrition post the appraisals. It would be so much better if they just gave fair appraisals every year but that, unfortunately, is not the case,” said Desai.
Why does this happen?
TeamLease Edtech’s Kewalramani put this down as a means to create a false sense of high growth, brand value and to gather market information. Apart from such posts reflecting the lack of organisation controls and ethics, sometimes this technique is used by recruiters to develop a talent supply chain and keep the hiring engines warm.
Desai highlighted how ghost job listings have gained power on the desperation of the large number of people looking out for jobs. He also pointed out the sad fact that some candidates do not think of applying anywhere else or refuse backup offers.
Moreover, he said that in many cases, even after the spot has been filled, they forget to take down the advertised vacant role.
Another reason for ghost job listings, according to Aquino, is when businesses are in pipelines. “If my agency is going for a pitch or I know that this is the potential new business that we can hire for, I am already in the work of keeping my pipeline ready,” she said.
She added, “I think what companies tend to do is mostly try and keep their jobs open through the year which also has a lot of people applying over time and reapplying. So there are cases where people who have applied six months ago have applied again, and that tends to stay on top. That’s what comes under pipeline building.”
However, there is also the issue of talent pipelining and budget approval delays in bigger organisations. “Speaking from my previous experience, our approvals and budgets in bigger organisations go into weeks before an approval comes through. By then, I’ve lost out on my candidate and on all the time that I’ve also wasted behind this one person,” said Aquino.
Aquino also likened it to a kind of straw poll. She said, “I also feel like a lot of people just post ghost jobs to understand the talent that is out there, whether it’s trying to understand skill sets, what portfolios are made of these days, or to even understand salary expectations. This is all without the interest of hiring them immediately.”
Yash Kulshreshth, chief creative officer, Atom Network, pinpoints the rise in this phenomenon to the mushrooming of agencies.
Iyer too pointed to this factor, saying, “The rise correlates with a volatile economy and FOMO hiring practices. Digital agencies are more prone because the industry moves at lightning speed—roles evolve faster than hiring cycles. A job listed today could be irrelevant tomorrow. Mainline agencies do it too, but for broader leadership roles, keeping options open for shifting strategies. Digital’s hustle culture makes ghost jobs feel like another campaign—quick, catchy, but hollow.”
The Job Shop’s Uchil cited some other reasons for the rise in ghost job listings. The first is, simply, limited bandwidth. HR team members being limited in numbers in advertising agencies, there would be loopholes in processes while updating job posts on a regular basis. “Keeping a backup resource becomes a task for the HR and that is why we see those posts on even after one shortlist is done,” he said.
Also, it is their responsibility to be aware of the talent pool available in the industry. Uchil listed their likely concerns: “Do I have the right kind of resource? What is the skill set that they bring to the table? What is the kind of money that they are making? What is that we have to offer for them to come on board? And job posts are the best dipstick (a qualitative research method) in the industry?”
However, Punt Creative’s executive creative director and founding member Rohan Naterwalla links this phenomenon to the hiring freezes that agencies go through at some point in the year. They merely want to ensure that when the embargo on new recruits is lifted, and they have a roster of people ready to be taken on board.
“I do get calls from candidates asking, ‘Hey, this job posting was there six months ago. Is this still open?’,” said Uchil. “And as recruiters, we do our best to save them the shame by covering it up in the name of employer branding.”
Which roles are widely ghost jobs listed?
Roles that are tied to client-driven, project-specific work see the highest number of ghost postings, the AVSAR report noted. This suggests positions like social media managers, content creators, digital marketing specialists, graphic designers and account managers are frequent targets.
“These roles require specialised skills, making it essential for agencies to have a reserve of qualified candidates. By maintaining a ready talent pool, agencies can swiftly onboard professionals when client budgets are finalised or new campaigns launch,” the recruitment company stated.
MullenLowe Lintas Group’s director of marketing Krishna Iyer, agreed with AVSAR’s observation. According to him, roles in social media management, performance marketing and content creation often top the list.
“These roles are dynamic, high-demand and ripe for pipeline padding. Agencies post to attract top talent but may not have immediate openings. For mainline agencies, positions like brand strategists or creative directors appear as placeholders during pitch season. It is a mix of testing the waters and futureproofing,” he added.
According to Talented’s Aquino—who said that most companies receive their potential candidate within a week—copywriters, strategists and designers are a few designations that are highly ghost job listed due to their high demand.
She added, “I don’t think account manager roles are ghost jobs listed because there are enough people to handle account management in general.”
KV Sridhar, global chief creative officer, Nihilent and its subsidiary Hypercollective, said top management roles are also among the top ghost jobs. This could be to give the stock market the impression that something disruptive is happening. But this may be counterproductive, as he explained: “If you have more headcount, then your liability increases. It costs more money to acquire people, train them, make them work and again lose them very quickly.”
Sridhar said that some small companies put up ghost job posts to gain popularity. However, mid-sized companies mostly refrain from doing so.
In the opinion of The Job Shop’s Uchil, any job role that has a gap in the demand and supply definitely sees a high number of ghost jobs. “For example, apart from junior profiles, brand strategy or planning are among the roles that will have a ghost job posting through the year. There is such a lack of talent coming through that into the industry today for planners that there is no option but to keep your doors open to anybody and everybody who’s a great talent in the market,” he said.
Atom Network’s Kulshreshth echoed the sentiment. “You will see fewer ghost job postings happening at a level of five to seven years of experience because they know people can hit back or people can create a ruckus online given the kind of experience they have and the clout they have assimilated over the years,” he said.
“I have seen agencies list roles to gauge market talent or keep freelancers hopeful,” said Iyer. “For example, during the festive season, one sees listings for creative leads flood job boards but often end with existing teams stretching. It is a tactic to keep competitors guessing and maintain visibility, though it risks misleading talent pools.”
What ‘my agency’ does
Independent agency tgthr is just 14 months old and, hence, they don’t hire at scale, said Desai. “We don’t put out postings but our guiding principle is that for the first 75 people we hire at tgthr, they will be people who the founding members know personally or have worked with to ensure a fit.”
He said, “We have a policy to close them within a month. Since we are small, we are also agile, and so it helps. It is extremely important for us that the people we don’t hire are treated with dignity and respect.”
In the case of MullenLowe Lintas Group, said Iyer, they post only verified roles backed by clear job briefs. If a hiring freeze is in effect, it is communicated openly with candidates, allowing them to explore other opportunities. “While we do post openings, we primarily rely on a robust referral network to onboard talent that aligns with our culture and values—something we consider absolutely imperative,” said Iyer.
Punt Creative’s Naterwalla noted that a lot of agencies today have three months’ notice period. He said, “There are people who are stuck in your agency for a very long time, and you want to replace them. In order to replace them, you need talent that can join almost immediately… But if everyone has just long notice periods, then nothing happens.”
“When we started Punt, we made sure that we kept our notice period to a very standard one month,” he added. “This gives enough time for the agency to replace the said candidate.”
How to evade this trap
Posts that are repeatedly advertised indicate that the organisation does have a sense of urgency, said Kewalramani. However, he pointed to vague descriptions, unreal number of openings and exaggerated compensation as clear red flags. One should also research the organisation background and recent hires as well.
Desai suggested that if the duration of an opening is more than three months, one needs to think twice.
Talented’s Aquino advised that one should pay attention to whether the same job has been posted in multiple ways, and recommended checking about the employer and their recent hiring trends.
The other suggestion Aquino had was the direct approach: reach out to the person who’s posted about the job itself and ask, ‘Is this position you are looking to fill right now or is this a position that you’re looking to hire in the future?’.
“I don’t think anybody will like to withdraw that information,” she said.
Will the industry take a hit?
Some notable industry trends have emerged through this phenomenon, as noted by AVSAR. Recruitment has become AI-driven where agencies can now use automated tools to sift through resumes and build a database of potential hires. This ensures a faster response when real opportunities emerge, reducing the lag associated with traditional recruitment, the recruitment company highlighted.
Since remote working has been expanding the global talent pool, agencies often post speculative job listings to attract candidates from diverse regions.
Desai was pessimistic. He said given that advertising is a service-based industry and people are the product, he was concerned the phenomenon could erode the trust of jobseekers. He said, “The more people get disheartened by this, the more people we lose from an already diminishing number who want to join us.”
Aquino rued that ghost job postings would lead to mistrust among candidates, and that the frustration would manifest in rants on social media.
Atom Network’s Kulshreshth suggested that industry bodies like ASCI or AAAI should step in and address this matter very seriously because it completely erodes the image of the agency in question and the industry at large.
However, Uchil and Sridhar took a more positive stance. According to Sridhar, ghost job postings help in flexible recruitment.
Uchil termed ghost job listing as a recruitment strategy for the new age which helps HR teams sift through the candidates and look at the greater good. He added that this phenomenon is here to stay for a while.
“Apply to everything that is out there in the market. If not today, you are at least registering yourself in a data pool of an agency or a company that may come back to you sometime in the future when the right role arises for you,” was his advice to candidates.
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