Fake jobs

Greg Wyatt • November 18, 2024

Picture the scene.

You’ve just gone through the emotional turmoil of losing your job. Or maybe something’s happened at work to galvanise your decision to make a change.

You take a bit of time to figure out what the right next move is - a great idea.

Then you go through the obvious channels to see what jobs are out there.

The most obvious of which are job boards and other websites which promote jobs.

Your first reaction is one of hope and optimism - there seems quite a bit out there, so maybe you’ll secure something quickly.

And if you happen to be reading this, new to a job search, indeed you may.

However, for many people in this market, comes a pretty quick realisation that a significant number of adverts do not represent jobs that exist.

A double whammy in your emotional rollercoaster of recent weeks.

Today’s article looks at what ‘fake jobs’ are and what to be mindful of. There are a few categories to go through, each with different nuance, but ultimately the outcome is the same: an advert that, at best, wastes your time.

This what we’ll go through:

  1. Scraping

  2. Relisting

  3. Laziness

  4. Evergreen vacancies

  5. Fishing

  6. Scams

  7. The disappearing act

First a quick overview from the recruiter perspective.

When you put an advert up, you may allow a bit of time for applications to come in before assessing them and starting the interview process.

Let’s say the volume is manageable, and the outcome not guaranteed, particularly when a candidate you want to offer decides to take a different job instead.

There are no villains in this common scenario, and it’s common enough that risk is a consideration when advertising.

If a recruitment process takes six weeks from advert to offer, and the outcome isn’t guaranteed, it can make sense to leave the advert up, in case you need more candidates in your pipeline.

What about if your process takes three months? Illness, holiday, lack of availability, changes - there are many reasons a process can be delayed.

There are many tools and suppliers which support a hiring process, one of which is the job board, and often features are developed to support ‘what happens if things go wrong’. Or to maximise applications with the apparent intent of enabling wider choice, which can lead to many issues in its own right.

  1. Scraping

Scraping is when one website takes content from another and relists it. This can happen as an affiliate/aggregation/commercial arrangement, or to drive traffic to the scraping website.

The idea is that this increases eyeballs on the content.

In the context of job adverts, you can see this everywhere, although things are changing. For example Indeed and LinkedIn both have relisted adverts from elsewhere.

It’s changing because now some job boards have secured volume of traffic, they want to monetise that traffic and keep control of the adverts.

An indication that this happens is when you click ‘apply now’ it takes you to another website other than the employer’s, such as jobrapido which (I believe) is an aggregator.

This can happen multiple times, and every time a job is scraped there can be parsing errors where data from fields are incorrectly transferred.

While if the original advert is then updated, it’s not necessarily the case for scraped adverts.

So scraped adverts can give inaccurate salary, locational, or even job information. They can also stay listed when the original has closed, without the employer ever knowing about it.

Leading to looking like a fake job.

  1. Relisting

As a feature for advertisers, many job boards allow an automatic relisting of adverts, once a week/month, to ‘bring it to the top of the pile’.

These relists can occur throughout the lifespan of an advert, such as in the example above - six weeks in an advert appears new, but a candidate is about to be offered.

Here, the vacancy may be live, but your application may not be considered, because it is so far in process.

This can also happen manually for many reasons.

I’ve taken down a job after a couple of weeks to rewrite it, based on fine tuning from an interview process. Or when a candidate has declined an offer put forward to them. Or when a vacancy has been put on hiatus.

The reason for a manual relisting might be unknowable if it isn’t stated in the advert, but it isn’t necessarily for bad reason.

If I were to relist an advert, it would only be because I need more candidates, in which case your application would be read.

But in many situations relisting can encourage an application that won’t ever be assessed.

  1. Laziness

Unfortunately it is the case that adverts may remain listed simply because someone forgot to take them down.

This is more likely to happen if there isn’t a cost per advert, such as on an employer website, or if there is an unlimited contract.

  1. Evergreen vacancies

Some vacancies are perpetually advertised to enable a candidate pipeline for a particular specialism.

There may be no vacancy now, but anticipation of vacancies in future, particularly within larger employers, or perhaps an recruitment agency that specialises in that field.

I would hope this is made clear in the advert, but that doesn’t always happen.

  1. Fishing

Sometimes those adverts aren’t evergreen, they’re simply there to harvest applications on the off chance that vacancy comes up.

I remember a Cambridge agency that used to scrape employer adverts, list them as their own, then submit those CVs speculatively to the same employers - without a commercial arrangement in place.

Make of that what you will - I think it’s despicable behaviour.

Is there any way to check for fishing? I’d probe the advertiser for specific information, and what their relationship is with the hiring process.

However, that’s not proof of bad behaviour, because of how the contingency model works. When multiple agencies work on one vacancy, it’s common not to provide company information until later in the process.

Conversely, if an agency is fishing only to build a bank of CVs, it’s unlikely they’ll admit to it.

  1. Scam jobs

It sickens me that advertising and job scams are on the rise.

If it doesn’t feel right, if they are asking for payment, if they do a bait and switch (this job isn’t right but here’s our CV writing service), if they ask for ID that can be used for other purposes:

Beware.

Here’s some information from Indeed on what to look out for.

Here’s an example of a scam I came across early this year.

  1. The disappearing act

This last category may or may not be a fake job.

Here’s the scenario - it looks like a vacancy, it sounds like one in discussion, perhaps you even interview there on site, perhaps you even do a 5 hour presentation at final interview on your 90 day strategy.

But then it disappears. Either permanently, or maybe reappearing but with no further comms from the employer/agency.

I hear this happening a lot, particularly at a senior level, in the UK market.

There are a few reasons it can happen, not all indicative of fakeness:

  • Company had budget to recruit; however changes in the business, or external factors, means the vacancy isn’t viable at least immediately

  • Company didn’t have budget to recruit and only establishes there is no budget later in process

  • Company runs an interview process to get free consultancy in the form of a final interview presentation (scumbags)

  • Company dipping toe in market to see what’s out there, with no intent to hire

  • Company benchmarking internal hire for future planning purposes

  • Agency establishes there may be a need for employer to hire and runs speculative process that doesn’t get approval

I’m sure there are many more reasons this can happen, and there isn’t a huge amount you do, given the appearance is that of a real vacancy.

You can ask if budget has been approved, do your research on the business on glassdoor or by speaking to alumni. But ultimately this kind of vacancy is a Schrodinger’s Cat - you won’t know if it’s live or not until the process is complete.

The purpose of this article is to highlight how this happens, but it’s also to set your expectations.

If you go into a fresh job search understanding this can and will happen, I hope it takes the sting away if you come across it. And enables you to get to the truth of which jobs are actually out there sooner.

This article may help you get better use of job boards , for the vacancies that count.

Thanks for reading.

Greg

Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026
So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026
What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).