Why Ghost Jobs? Answer: Intelligence
January 21, 2025
Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.
A couple of years ago, an intelware outfit’s US “president” contacted me. He was curious about the law enforcement and intelligence markets appetite for repackaged Maltego, some analytics, and an interface with some Palantir-type bells and whistles. I explained that I charged money to talk because as a former blue-chip consultant, billing is in my blood. I don’t have platelets. I have Shrinky-dink invoices. Add some work, and these Shrinky-dinks blow up to big juicy invoices. He disconnected.
A few weeks later, he sent me an email. He wanted to pick up our conversation because his calls to other people whom he thought knew something about selling software to the US government did not understand that his company emerged from a spy shop. I was familiar with the issues: Non-US company, ties to a high-power intelligence operation, an inability to explain whether the code was secure, and the charming attitude of many intelligence professionals who go from A to B without much thought about some social conventions.
The fellow wanted to know how one could obtain information about a competitor; specifically, what was the pricing spectrum. It is too bad the owner of the company dumped the start up and headed to the golf course. If that call came to me today, I would point him at this article: “1 in 5 Online Job Postings Are Either Fake or Never Filled, Study Finds.” Gizmodo has explained one reason why there are so many bogus jobs offering big bogus salaries and promising big bogus benefits.
The answer is obvious when viewed from my vantage point in rural Kentucky? The objective is to get a pile or résumés, filter through them looking for people who might have some experience (current or past) at a company of interest to the job advertiser. What? Isn’t that illegal? I don’t know, but the trick has been used for a long, long time. Headhunting is a tricky business, and it is easy for someone to post a job opening and gather information from individuals who want to earn money.
What’s the write up say?
The Wall Street Journal cites internal data from the hiring platform Greenhouse that shows one in five online job postings—or between 18% and 22% of jobs advertised—are either fake or never filled. That data was culled from Greenhouse’s proprietary information, which the company can access because it sells automated software that helps employers fill out job postings. The “ghost job” phenomenon has been growing for some time—much to the vexation of job-seekers.
Okay, snappy. Ghost jobs. But the number seems low to me.
The article fails to note the intelligence angle, however. It concludes:
The plague of such phantom positions has led some platforms to treat job postings in very much the same way that other online content gets treated: as either A) verified or B) potential misinformation. Both Greenhouse and LinkedIn now supply a job verification service, the Journal writes, which allows users to know whether a position is legit or not. “It’s kind of a horror show,” Jon Stross, Greenhouse’s president and co-founder, told the Journal. “The job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.”
I think a handful of observations may be warranted:
- Some how the education of a job seeker has ignored the importance of making sure that the résumé is sanitized so no information is provided to an unknown entity from whom there is likely to be zero response. Folks, this is data collection. Volume is good.
- Interviews are easier than ever. Fire up Zoom and hit the record button. The content of the interview can be reviewed and analyzed for tasty little info-nuggets.
- The process is cheap, easy, and safe. Getting some information can be quite tricky. Post an advertisement on a service and wait. Some podcasts brag about how many responses their help wanted ads generate in as little as a few hours. As I said, cheap, easy, and safe.
What can a person do to avoid this type of intelligence gathering activity? Sorry. I have some useful operational information, but those little platelet sized invoices are just so eager to escape this dinobaby’s body. What’s amazing is that this ploy is news just as it was to the intelware person who was struggling to figure out some basics about selling to the government. Recycling open source software and pretending that it was an “innovation” was more important than trying to hire a former US government procurement officer, based in the DC area with a minimum of 10 years in software procurement. We have a situation where professional intelligence officers, job seekers, and big time journalists have the same level of understanding about how to obtain high-value information quickly and easily. Amazing what a dinobaby knows, isn’t it?
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2025
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