Ghost Jobs and AI Hiring Trends 2025
Key Points
- AI tools are proliferating on the candidate side because they’re easy to build, add clear value, and carry little legal risk, while companies face heavy liability concerns when using AI for hiring decisions.
- Employers are moving cautiously with AI‑driven recruiting, avoiding “out‑of‑the‑box” resume‑screening products for fear of inadvertent bias and discrimination lawsuits, often developing internal, tightly controlled solutions instead.
- The widespread use of AI to craft resumes has flattened the quality distribution, making most applications look uniformly polished and raising the baseline résumé quality for the average job seeker.
- “Ghost jobs” are job postings that appear to be real openings but actually serve other purposes—such as data harvesting, SEO, or signaling—rather than genuine hiring intent.
- To spot a ghost job, look for signs like vague role descriptions, lack of clear hiring timelines, minimal company engagement, and inconsistencies between the posting and the firm’s known hiring activity.
Full Transcript
# Ghost Jobs and AI Hiring Trends 2025 **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Uv5_Zl_J0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Uv5_Zl_J0) **Duration:** 00:09:49 ## Summary - AI tools are proliferating on the candidate side because they’re easy to build, add clear value, and carry little legal risk, while companies face heavy liability concerns when using AI for hiring decisions. - Employers are moving cautiously with AI‑driven recruiting, avoiding “out‑of‑the‑box” resume‑screening products for fear of inadvertent bias and discrimination lawsuits, often developing internal, tightly controlled solutions instead. - The widespread use of AI to craft resumes has flattened the quality distribution, making most applications look uniformly polished and raising the baseline résumé quality for the average job seeker. - “Ghost jobs” are job postings that appear to be real openings but actually serve other purposes—such as data harvesting, SEO, or signaling—rather than genuine hiring intent. - To spot a ghost job, look for signs like vague role descriptions, lack of clear hiring timelines, minimal company engagement, and inconsistencies between the posting and the firm’s known hiring activity. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Uv5_Zl_J0&t=0s) **Ghost Jobs and AI Recruiting Trends** - The speaker explains how AI favors job applicants over employers, outlines the rise of “ghost jobs,” and offers ways to identify them amid evolving 2025 tech hiring dynamics. ## Full Transcript
so I got a few requests to do a post on
ghost jobs what ghost jobs are what the
labor market looks like for Tech and AI
in 2025 I thought I would do it all in
one video I want to talk about the
trends that have changed that are
shifting application and recruiting
relationships I want to talk about how
ghost jobs play into that and what they
are and then I want to talk about what
they aren't and how you can tell if
something is a ghost job or not so first
off major Trends the number one trend
that I think is relevant for AI right
now in jobs is that AI is
disproportionately in favor of talent
versus recruiting versus hiring side of
the picture and the reason why is very
simple it is easier and has far less
liability issues to write an AI tool
that enables you to be more effective at
applying for jobs it's all upside it's
all positive you can position it as a
level or for people who might not be
able to compete
otherwise and there's no liability
concerns there's no legal concerns at
all on the other hand on the sell side
or on the on the uh hiring side you need
to be so careful about AI because you
want to avoid bias in the hiring process
there are legal implications for
companies if there's even a hint of bias
how can you prove that the AI system
you're using is not biased and so
companies that are in the space that are
Reinventing how AI is and and recruiting
work together they're moving slowly
they're moving carefully the tools
they're using are very pinpoint and
they're doing that because of the legal
risk involved and that is a dynamic that
is shaping how AI shows up day-to-day in
the talent market so for example there
is no tool that allows you to out of box
use AI to exclusive review all of these
resumés and then come back with an
assessment now very large companies may
choose to take that liability internally
by writing their own tool that they
don't talk about but there is no outof
boox startup that does that because of
the liability associated with AI making
decisions in a blackbox manner that
could reflect some kind of bias against
a protected characteristic such as race
and so so in that situation you have to
be aware that your resume by and large
is probably still going to have to be
looked at by a human or not looked at at
all at the same time
resumés are getting more and more
consistent the distribution of resumé
quality used to be like a traditional
bell curve where you'd have
extraordinary résumés that you could
easily pick out you'd have really bad
ones and you'd have a bunch in the
middle it's now tightened up and moved
to the right or whatever it looks like
on your screen the other side and that
means that all of these rums are bunched
in quality because AI has enabled you to
write a very consistent very uniform
resume individually speaking that
enables you to on average move up your
individual resumé quality unless you're
a one or two% resumé writer AI is
probably going to improve you at this
point if you're extraordinary it will
make it worse but that's the edge case
the problem is that too many people look
at that and they see that it moves the
quality up overall and they don't stop
and think about the group effect they
don't stop and think about the fact that
there's groups of resumés that now look
very similar sitting in recruiter
inboxes and recruiters don't have the
time to parse the minute differences
they're giving your resume less than 10
seconds of attention and you have to
grab them and so that means that resumés
that stand out are hybrid resumés that
stand out have the AI component that
levels up the quality but they have the
specificity that you only get from being
a human that deeply understands the role
and there's really no substitute for
that if you want to grab recruiter
attention in 10 seconds how does all of
this relate to ghost jobs I started this
talking about ghost jobs here we are
four minutes in so ghost jobs happen for
three reasons number one the company
forgets their hiring for the role and
the role has drifted internally in the
company company and it's actually not
that original role that they're leaving
up that is an accident that is a mistake
it is a ghost job but it's not an
intentional ghost job and eventually it
gets cleaned up and the poor recruiter
has to go back through the pile of
resumes and say do any of these fit the
pivot that we just made on this role or
not that's a lot of work number two is
the company is intentionally fooling you
that the rarest case but it does happen
the company is trying to position itself
in the market as hiring in order to
impress investors or somebody else they
create a fake job listing they may
advertise it for fake on LinkedIn and it
does happen it does not happen super
often and the reason why it doesn't
happen super often is really simple it's
expensive it's not free to do that like
you have to actually put time into
writing it you have to put time into
advertising it you have to make sure
that it's posted in a way that people
can see it because the whole point of a
ghost job in that
situation is to show that you're hiring
so if you can't show it if you can't
advertise it if you don't put in the
work to notify people of its existence
you're not getting the value for your
deception and I realize that sounds very
mocky of alant of me but that's just
rational right that that's that's how
that works um and then the last one is
actually more common than the sort of
intentional deception one and that is
that companies post real roles these
actually aren't roles that have drifted
but those real roles they are only going
to hire Superstars for and so they're
extraordinarily selective and they're
willing to be very very patient I think
that Talent sometimes assumes if a job
is posted you want the role filled ASAP
that's not always true the role may be a
real role that you are willing to wait
six months to fill for the right perfect
candidate and talent doesn't always see
it that way so those are all reasons why
a job can be perceived as a ghost job
now I want to get into how can you tell
if a ghost job is a ghost job because
there are
signs if you are looking at the rare
situation where the ghost job is
intentionally
created you can tell because it tends to
not have the diversity of posting that
you get with real jobs so A diversity of
posting means different levels different
job families if you look at the job page
overall there's a nice mix there if you
compare it to the public statements of
the company it align so you can see
they're investing in an area they're
hiring in the area that lines up hiring
managers will talk about real jobs in a
way they won't about ghost jobs the
writing quality itself on the job is
better it's not a vanilla job posting it
has some specifics to it so there's a
lot of quiet signals when you're looking
at actual deception that you can read
for when you're looking at other things
like the company taking its time or job
drift one of the signals is just just
the age of the job if the job has been
there a long time and is still up it
sort of by itself a yellow flag that the
company's priorities may have changed or
the company may just be EXT extremely
choosy you can usually tell which it is
by looking at recruiter postings because
recruiters will say pretty bluntly we're
still hiring for this role this is the
specific flavor of candidate we want if
you know someone say something like they
they'll use LinkedIn for that so how
does this all tie together AI ghost jobs
what what is the relation ship well
fundamentally recruiters have limited
time AI is eating their time with huge
application volume searches and that
tight distribution of application
quality and that means they have less
time to actively manage their listings
and I think that when you look at the
causes for this ghost job perception a
lot of the time it's comes down to the
recruiters not being able to be on top
of the listings as you want because they
feel
understaffed and that's one of those
things where we've never really come
back from 2020 recruit ERS remain under
staffed and under pressure in a way that
we just didn't have during the
2010s and so if you're trying to stand
out in this market it is more empowering
to think of it as probably not a
deceptive job it's probably if you get a
rejection almost certainly someone
looked at your resume and decided it
wasn't a fit and so you should think
about it that way you should regard it
that way and then you should ask
yourself
well did I apply for a job that was
actually a good fit is my resume a
fantastic fit is my resume both like AI
quality Baseline but also showing some
human flare that lets me stand out these
are things you can do and change these
are it's actually empowering to think
about it this way versus just saying oh
it's a ghost job that's why I got
rejected now that may be comforting to
your ego but one I don't think it's
realistic in like 95 98% of cases and
two I don't think it's useful to you it
doesn't help you get better in this
market so this a bit of a longer YouTube
post than I usually do but I wanted to
really dive into this because I got a
couple of comments in in the YouTube
video I posted a couple days ago about
Salesforce and I wanted to just go in on
ghost jobs and say let's have an honest
conversation so put your thoughts under
the comments and let's see where we get
cheers