Transcript
Speaker: Hey, stop, stop, stop applying for just a minute. Did you know that in June 2025, 2.2 million job openings on LinkedIn never resulted in a single hire? Was that job you applied to yesterday even real?
Speaker: Okay, stay with me because I'm going to show you how to spot ghost jobs in 30 seconds without a Ouija board. So the next weekend, you're not going to waste time applying to jobs that don't plan to hire you anyway.
Speaker: Here's why you need to stay. Within the next 10 minutes or so, you're gonna have my seven sign ghost job spotting checklist, which you can use today on LinkedIn and Indeed.
Speaker: Let me be honest with you about why this topic matters so much to me. In 2020, during COVID, I was laid off at the age of 53. I did what everyone told me to do. I applied to nearly 100 job positions online. It was part of my strategy of using a network, recruiters, and online job postings.
Speaker: I tailored every single resume. I wrote the cover letters and nearly 50% of those never responded in any way. There was no rejection, no thanks for applying, nothing.
Speaker: just Just silence. if If I add up, say, two to three hours per application without response, that's 100 to 150 hours wasted. That's two to four work weeks burned up in that year.
Speaker: Have you had that same frustrating experience? You spend three hours on ah on a single application. you you You match all those keywords. You fix the formatting on your laptop. You you hit submit and then Nothing.
Speaker: And how many hours have you lost like that this month? 10 hours? 20 hours? I want you to tell me in the comments. Type the word ghosted in if if you've applied and heard absolutely nothing back.
Speaker: I read all your comments and I respond to all of them as well. And later, I'm going to come back to that word ghosted because I want you to know that it's probably not you at all that's the issue here.
Speaker: Here's the thing, a ghost job listing is a a real post from a real company, but there's no current intent to fill it. The wreck is open, but the hiring is frozen. Or or the the role was filled months ago and they left the the post up anyway.
Speaker: Let me be clear on what this isn't. it's It's not a scam to steal your identity. It's not some sort of typo. It is an active listing kept alive, usually on purpose.
Speaker: And that matters for us because we can't out hustle a job that was never real. There are three types of ghost jobs that that you need to know about.
Speaker: One is the the pipeline builder. They collect 500 resumes for future needs. Maybe they'll call you in six months, but probably not. Two, there's the evergreen requisition. Same title, always open, same text every month. It's a revolving door and there's no way to enter.
Speaker: and Then three, there's the optics listing posted to look like growth, maybe to calm the team, maybe to impress investors or just to show HR activity. Which one have you seen the most?
Speaker: Hold that thought. that The numbers that I've researched prove just how common all of this is. You're not crazy. you're You're not imagining any of this.
Speaker: LinkedIn is the worst offender. 27.4% of listings were flagged as ghost jobs. That's a higher percentage than the number of people who who fill the office coffee lot instead of pretending that they didn't see that it's empty.
Speaker: That percentage, it led to 2.2 million openings in June 2025 alone. with no hires associated with those. And that's not my opinion. That is actual platform data.
Speaker: Nationally, estimates range from 18% from real ATS data to around from hiring outcome gaps. On the candidate side, 56% of job seekers said that they encountered a ghost job in the past year.
Speaker: And think about that. That's more than half of us. And and nearly 40% of companies admitted to using ghost job postings, with 30% of them having an active one at the time of the survey.
Speaker: So when you applied to 50 jobs and and nothing, it it was probably not your age on that one. It may have been that the job was never real to begin with, just a specter.
Speaker: So why do they do it? Let me break this down in plain language. One, they build a bench for free. They collect resumes now and they call someone back later if needed. It doesn't cost them anything, but it costs you everything in time, and effort, and in your financial runway.
Speaker: Two, they test the market. They see what level of talent they can get. They see what salary level people would accept. You're not a candidate here. You're an unwitting participant in market research.
Speaker: Three, they signal growth. They look busy and growing to the team, even during a freeze. Core drivers listed in employer research are that they're pipeline building, market sensing, and and growth signaling.
Speaker: One founder even told me specifically about a job I asked about that it wasn't a real job. It was simply to show something for their investors. Four, they keep HR metrics alive. Recruiters under pressure, they they just need to show some sort of activity.
Speaker: and And here's the the irony alert to all of this. LinkedIn benefits from every single click and easy apply. So so dead listings, they keep you in there, they keep you scrolling. So LinkedIn isn't even motivated to clean all this stuff out.
Speaker: Let's take a quick pause here. if If this can already save you time now, please follow our LinkedIn page. It's down below in the comments. And and grab the networking guide that I have at the resource store at ageismsurvivalguide.com. Because remember, referrals beat cold applies every single time in the market, especially at our age.
Speaker: Now, why does this hit us harder after 50? A 28-year-old loses an evening on the ghost job, but you lose part of your financial runway.
Speaker: You spend hours customizing that that job role. you You're researching the company. here You're rewriting bullets with keywords. You're beating the ATS.
Speaker: That's time that you're never gonna get back. Remember those 100 to 150 hours that I wasted in 2020? They're not coming back. And cold applying is already the the weakest channel for jobs because of AI resume floods and ATS filters. Ghost jobs just make that weak channel even weaker.
Speaker: And that repetition of no feedback, it it creates self-doubt. is Is it my age? Sometimes, yes. But oftentimes, it's a ghost job.
Speaker: You need to protect your energy for real targets and real people. Our time to rise means not wasting time on jobs that don't even exist.
Speaker: Here's your benefit today, the 30 second test. You can pause in a minute and screenshot this. It's what I want you to have and use today. Sign number one, the job is stuck in time. It was posted weeks or months ago without a single update, or it's reposted every two or three weeks for months at a time with the same title, the same text.
Speaker: It's a ghost. Sign two, it's missing from the source. So you see it on LinkedIn, you see it on Indeed, but it's not on the company's recruiting page. So if the company doesn't even host it by itself,
Speaker: Don't bother. It's a ghost. Sign three, it's vague on basics. There's no salary range, no start date, no hiring manager name. It just gives vague information about competitive pay and fast growing team that they have in general terms. If you see vague, be suspicious.
Speaker: It's a ghost. Sign four, there's an applicant pile up with absolutely no movement. you get 100 plus applicants in 48 hours and the post just sits there or or or hundreds of applicants and and zero hires for months.
Speaker: It's a ghost. Sign five is the the looping applying path. you You click apply and it takes you to some sort of general talent pool page or or there's a never ending portal page without even a rec number attached to the position. And if there's no rec number, then there's no actual head count planned.
Speaker: Sign six, recycled language, overly broad requirements that could fit anyone. You need to have three to five years experience. No, maybe make that 15. They're built to harvest information, but not to hire.
Speaker: Sign seven are ghost company signals. There's no employee engagement on the post. There's no recruiter name on the post. The company is showing layoffs in the news, but they still have all these postings out there.
Speaker: It's a ghost. So remember that that ghosted comment that I asked you about earlier, if you saw three out of these seven indicators, you probably ran into a ghost. And remember, it's not your failure, it's them.
Speaker: It's a fake job that was never meant to be filled. so So what do you do instead? What you want to do is you want to verify before you apply. You want to network before you submit that application. So for example, check the posting date, check the company site, is the job there? Check if the hiring manager posted it and who the hiring manager is. Maybe send a one-liner to an insider and say, hey, I saw this job rec is open since March. Is the department actively hiring?
Speaker: Put that saved hour into warm outreach instead. Instead of cold applies. You don't have the time to waste like a 30-year-old. You have less time. So you need to protect it.
Speaker: As I always say, youth runs fast, but age knows the terrain. I'll see you in the next one.
