Many candidates who have submitted applications for tech jobs complain that sometimes they don’t receive a response at all. Some of the jobs continue to be advertised, but are not filled for a long period, occasionally for a year or more. According to placement agency Ethosia, the proportion of “ghost” jobs – vacancies that have been advertised but not filled and continue to appear on the company’s website – has jumped dramatically in recent years. For comparison, if in January 2022 the rate was 3%, over the last two years it has reached 9%-11%. The data refers to a variety of jobs, including software development, hardware development, product, human resources, operations, purchasing, sales and more.
“A ghost job is a familiar phenomenon,” explains Ethosia CEO Eyal Solomon. “It is expressed when a company posted a job on LinkedIn and froze it, but did not remove it for one reason or another.” In most cases, he says, this is not an attempt to mislead job seekers, but rather the result of organizational inefficiency or lack of clarity regarding future hiring needs. “For example, when there are enough candidates who have applied for the position, an advanced recruitment process with specific candidates, problems with standards approval, or simply because the organization is having difficulty making decisions.” The current rate of ghost jobs, according to Solomon, is exceptional given the war, which affected business activities of many companies: “There is no such thing as 9%-11% in normal times.”
A lack of human resources and a signal to talents
TLV Partners head of talent and people Toby Stein explains that one of the main reasons for this phenomenon is the lack of human resources. He says, “Human resources teams receive hundreds of resumes and begin the recruitment process, but because of limited resources, by the time a candidate is finally accepted for the position, dozens or hundreds of other candidates have mounted up who simply didn’t get a response. There is a natural difficulty in getting back to everyone who applied, as well as updating the status of the position in real time.”
However, he says, in some cases, ghost positions also serve as a tool for recruiters. “Many companies conduct experiments in advertising jobs to test responsiveness to positions in different locations, such as overseas. For example, for a position in the US.”
In other cases, says Stein, there are positions that always remain open: “Companies that are facing difficulty recruiting for sought-after positions, such as senior algorithm engineers, leave the positions open permanently. This signals to quality talent that the door is always open. In addition, sometimes there is an internal candidate who wants to be promoted in the company, but management requires a formal search process, so it advertises the position as part of the protocol.” Generally, Stein stresses, the market has also changed since the war broke out. “In many areas, it is no longer a ‘candidate market.’ There are more resumes than vacancies and fewer recruiters who can handle all the applications.”
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Israel is not the only place
A look overseas shows that the phenomenon is not unique to Israel. In the US, for example, in recent years, tech giants like Google and Amazon have announced hiring freezes, but at the same time continue to advertise many jobs on their websites. This is a phenomenon called “backfilling” – a process in which companies continue to hire for specific positions despite a general hiring freeze.
Amazon VP people experience and technology Beth Galetti recently explained this gap: “Generally, depending on the business or the region in which the company is located, we will hire replacements for employees who apply for new opportunities and there are targeted places where we will continue to recruit people gradually.” In other words, according to her, despite the announcements of hiring freezes, companies still need to maintain a minimum workforce in order to continue to make a profit, and therefore they are interested in maintaining a pool of strong candidates for positions that become vacant when employees leave of their own accord.
In December, Swedish payments giant Klarna said it “stopped hiring about a year ago” and was cutting its workforce due to the use of AI. However, the company’s website still lists more than 50 open positions, and executives have been posting recruitment updates on LinkedIn throughout 2024. When confronted with the gap, a company spokesperson admitted: “We are not actively recruiting to expand our workforce, but are backfilling for essential roles.”
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on February 26, 2025.
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