Ghost job listings: what they are and how to spot them

Some of the biggest names in tech have been shedding staff numbers by the tens of thousands in recent weeks, yet you keep spotting job listings that give the impression these firms are still hiring across a range of sectors … confused? Welcome to the world of ghost job listings. 

Once the preserve of dating apps, ghosting in the world of recruitment is a new phenomenon designed to give the illusion of growth when companies are in fact vacating the hiring space and responding to a period of decline by reassessing their resources. 

But scaling back doesn’t look good for business, which is why so many of the tech companies that we’re reading about are strategically staging job listings, or leaving older ones in place, to give the illusion of restructuring instead.

There’s another reason why tech companies are posting ghost job listings: job listings are a good way for HR departments to pool CVs and keep details of talent looking to make a move in the future on file. 

According to a survey conducted by Mobile Monkey, the average tenure at most tech firms is less than two years (only Facebook can lay claim to an average duration of 2.02 years), so high turnover in tech has always been a factor. 

How can you spot them? 

Ghost jobs look the exact same as regular live listings on the surface, but if you know where to look you’ll spot the cracks easily enough. 

For starters, look at how long the listing has been live. Anything that is older than 60 days tends to be a ghost job as hiring managers recruiting for roles tend to not let prospective hires languish in limbo for that long before making a job offer. 

Next, take a look at the job description—if it seems evergreen or vaguely encompasses about five different roles e.g. software engineer or software developer but doesn’t get into specifics about languages or what kind of coding you’ll be doing, it’s probably a ghost job. 

Keeping up-to-date on what’s happening in your industry will help you stay ahead. If the company you’re applying for has been hit with a wave of recent layoffs, or if they’ve reduced their staff by several thousand and have disclosed internal restructuring is taking place to save money, they’re probably not hiring. 

The good news? The Tech EU Job Board is full of live job listings in companies that are actively hiring, like the three below. 

CRM Manager - Engagement m/f/d, Deezer, Paris

Deezer is ideally positioned to play a key role in the continued development of the booming music streaming market. As CRM Manager - Engagement, you join a team of CRM experts focusing on building strong engagement at each stage of the user lifecycle. The engagement team works day-to-day with content, marketing and product teams to translate business needs into customer centric plans and in this role you’ll be tasked with creating and implementing CRM automation strategies to increase user engagement around the Deezer product and its music content, and monitor, analyse and report on CRM performance metrics, such as customer lifetime and engagement rates, and communicate learnings to the organisation. View more details about this role here. 

Manager Financial Accounting, N26, Berlin

The Manager Financial Accounting role at neobank N26 involves taking ownership of its accounting methodology and principles. You’ll also be required to lead the evolution, maintenance and due application of the group chart of accounts and ensure the correct accounting of intercompany relations and other transactions like purchase price allocation. Candidates should have a university degree with a focus on finance, controlling or audit, five years’ work experience in a financial consulting environment and extensive knowledge in IFRS and German GAAP. You’ll also need to be a native German speaker and fluent in English. See the full job description here. 

Software Engineer - Banking, Spendesk, Berlin

The banking team within Spendesk is in charge of everything related to money and as a Software Engineer within this team you’ll work to develop and maintain the API that offers banking services and work on every part of the feature specs, technical design, development, testing, documentation, and maintenance. Applicants should have at least four years’ of experience in back-end development, strong experience in designing distributed and secure systems, knowledge of modern JavaScript/ES6, NodeJS on large scale backend applications and SQL. You’ll also be comfortable with DevOps aspects. You can find out more details about this opportunity here.

For more jobs in companies that are actively hiring visit the Tech EU Job Board today. 

Lead image: Tandem X Visuals