“Why do companies repost the same job or many similar sounding jobs, over and over, month after month, after getting thousands of applicants, and not hiring?”
Why not? It is free marketing, it makes it appear that the company is growing, it tells existing employees that they are easily replaceable, it builds a solid database of people looking for work, and it tells you what the competitors are doing and who is looking to jump ship.
“That is wrong, isn’t a job posting supposed to be about hiring people?”
Maybe five years ago, but today? Nope. Rarely are people hired from job postings on websites like LinkedIn. In the next thirty days, companies will post over 5 million jobs on LinkedIn in the United States, and if that results in 20,000 hires, I would be surprised. Might as well play roulette blindfolded, better odds of winning. Even that, most of those hires are fillers, and probably will not last more than a few months.
“But it wastes candidates' time, it is disheartening to people, and hurts those in need of a job.”
So? It is free advertising, and free labor, looks good to investors, and companies know that in today's market, most candidates will not call these companies out. Heck, for the effort of a single job post, companies can get thousands of hours of free labor.
If it helps any, most of these jobs are not even real, and will never be placed. Just placeholders for something that may never come.
This comes at a time, when unemployment is over 4%, around 7 Mn people are unemployed, but still continous job posting being advertised.
This comes at a time, when unemployment is over 4%, around 7 Mn people are unemployed, but still continous job posting being advertised.
Until we reach a point where candidates call out these companies, websites like LinkedIn will continue to make billions of dollars on candidates with false hope, candidates are the product after all, and companies will continue to exploit candidates so they can look good to investors, and existing employees, and build free market research.
In doubt? If you need free organic engagement on your company's social media profiles, just post a few open jobs. Chances are pretty good, without even trying, you will get hundreds of users engaging, all organic, all free. Pretty common practice these days. Companies don’t even bother buying user engagement anymore, just post a few job openings, set it, and forget it.
Until candidates speak up, there is only upside for companies, and hiring candidates is no longer even remotely in the equation.
