Ghost Job Listings have quietly become one of the most damaging trends in modern recruitment, creating a dangerous illusion of opportunity while eroding trust in employers.
I was recently sitting across from a Series B founder in a coffee shop in Indiranagar. He was beaming.
“We have a database of 15,000 vetted engineers,” he told me, gesturing at his phone as if holding the crown jewels. “We aren’t hiring right now, obviously burn rate and all that but when we flip the switch, we’re ready.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him right then. But I will tell you.
He doesn’t have a database of 15,000 assets.
He has a list of 15,000 people who hate him.
This is the phenomenon of the “Ghost Job.” It is the practice of keeping job requisitions open on LinkedIn, Naukri, and Instahire with zero intention of hiring in the immediate future. In the Indian market, this has become an epidemic. It’s a strategic mirage. It looks like a pipeline. It feels like safety. But in reality? It is an unsecured loan taken out against your brand’s reputation. And the interest rate is skyrocketing.
The Illusion of Infinite Optionality
Why do smart leaders sanction this? The logic seems sound on the surface. We live in a volatile market. Attrition in Indian tech, while stabilizing, is historically unpredictable. So, Talent Acquisition (TA) teams build a “warm bench.”
They post roles to:
1. Project Growth: Investors and competitors look at your careers page to gauge momentum. Silence looks like stagnation.
2. Harvest Data: Collecting resumes for a rainy day.
3. Keep Recruiters Busy: If they aren’t sourcing, what are they doing?
But this logic relies on a fatal assumption: that the candidate market is a static, unfeeling resource that forgets. It isn’t. It’s a dynamic, networked ecosystem. Especially in hubs like Bengaluru, Pune, and Gurgaon.
The “Lemon Market” of Talent
Let’s apply an economic mental model here: Akerlof’s Market for Lemons.
George Akerlof won a Nobel Prize for explaining how information asymmetry destroys markets. If buyers can’t tell the difference between a good car and a bad car (a lemon), they stop paying premium prices. The market collapses.
Apply this to hiring.
When candidates cannot distinguish between a *real* job opening and a *ghost* listing, they stop investing effort in the application. High-quality talent—the top 1% you desperately want—will not waste hours on a bespoke cover letter or a coding challenge for a role that might be fiction.
They disengage.
Who is left applying? The desperate. The spammers. The bots. By flooding the market with ghost jobs to “build a pipeline,” you are actually polluting your own water supply. You are destroying the signal-to-noise ratio in your ATS.
Goodhart’s Law and the KPI Trap
Why is this happening at scale? Look at your incentives.
Goodhart’s Law states: *”When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”*
If you measure your TA team on “Candidate Database Size” or “Time to Fill” (starting from when the need arises, using the pre-farmed resumes), you incentivize hoarding. You are telling your team to advertise non-existent inventory.
Imagine a retailer advertising PS5s they don’t have, just to get foot traffic. When the customers arrive and find empty shelves, they don’t come back next week. They burn the store down on Twitter.
In the age of Glassdoor, Fishbowl, and Grapevine, your “strategic pipeline” is being discussed openly.
*”Don’t apply to [Company X], they’ve had that Senior PM role open for 8 months. It’s a data harvest operation.”*
Once that narrative sets in, it takes years to scrub off. Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) shifts from “Innovative Challenger” to “Time Waster.”
The Psychology of the “Black Hole”
Ghost listings result in ghosting candidates. It is mathematically impossible to provide a high-touch human experience to thousands of applicants for a role that doesn’t exist.
So, the auto-responders take over. Or worse, silence.
This triggers the Zeigarnik Effect in the minds of candidates. Humans remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. A rejection is a closed loop. Silence is an open loop. It festers. It creates anxiety. And eventually, that anxiety turns into resentment.
When you finally *do* have a role open, and you reach out to that “warm lead” from six months ago, they aren’t warm. They are frozen over. You treated them like a line item in a CSV file, and now you want them to treat you like a career destination?
Good luck.
The Monday Morning Audit
We need to pivot from “Talent Hoarding” to “Talent Integrity.” If you are a CEO or CHRO, here is your tactical playbook for next week.
1. The “Zombie” Purge
Audit your ATS. Any requisition open for more than 60 days without an offer out needs to be justified or killed. If you are “always hiring for great engineers,” create a specific, transparent landing page for a “Talent Community” or “Future Interest.” Label it clearly. Do not masquerade it as an active Job ID.
2. Radical Transparency in JD Syntax
If a role is backfill-dependent or budget-contingent, say it.
*”This is an anticipatory search for Q3. We are building a relationship now for a hire in August.”*
High-agency talent respects high-agency communication. They might still apply, but the expectation is set. You aren’t ghosting; you are nurturing.
3. Change the Metric
Stop rewarding “Pipeline Volume.” Start rewarding “Pipeline Engagement.”
Measure the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of rejected candidates. If the people you *didn’t* hire still respect you, your brand is bulletproof. If your “ghost” pipeline hates you, you have already lost the war for talent before the first battle begins.
In an era of AI-generated resumes and automated applications, the only competitive advantage left is Trust.
Don’t trade it for a vanity metric.
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