John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.
This is the most difficult time of the year for the 1.5-million unemployed in this country. Moments of gratitude and plenty are for them days of anxiety and exclusion.
An impending New Year in the past might have fostered hope for better luck to come, yet it is diminished today by the chasm between those seeking work and those hiring.
That gulf’s measure, one that compromises labour mobility and trust, is ghosting – never communicating with job applicants, suddenly cutting off all communications post interview, and posting fake jobs.
What was once unprofessional is now structural, a labour-market deficiency that artificial intelligence is exacerbating.
Opinion: ‘Ghost jobs,’ where companies put up ads but don’t actually want to hire anyone
To address this, Ontario wants to legislate common decency with Bill 190, which comes into effect on Jan. 1. Its “Duty to Inform” legislation targets employer ghosting. It’s a start, yet more human intelligence is the long-term answer.
Ghost jobs are posted for market research or compliance purposes without any intention of ever filling them. Some postings are expired but continually reposted to give the impression that a company is growing but just can’t find that unicorn candidate. Some postings are designed to harvest résumé data while others are for show, the job having already been assigned to an internal candidate.
The most malicious are scams targeting vulnerable people seeking work and using that vulnerability to extract information and money.
One Canadian report published by career website Jobs.ca in September suggests that 34 per cent of all job postings across all industries today are ghost jobs. The toll is concerning.
Job applicants are three times less likely to receive a response today compared with 2021. The typical Canadian job candidate spends hours on what turns out to be ghost jobs, tailoring résumés, doing company research and prepping for interviews.
The cost per job seeker chasing ghost jobs is an estimated $847 by Jobs.ca. Time is money, even to the unemployed.
Canada’s jobless rate falls to 6.5% driven by rise in part-time, youth employment
Well-known career websites such as Indeed Canada and Monster Canada are reported to have a 30-per-cent-plus ghost rate by Jobs.ca, which uses humans to review all job postings and consequently asserts to have as little as 4.7 per cent.
One of the worst offenders appears to be the federal government’s Job Bank Canada.
Its ghost job rate may exceed 40 per cent because of reasons specific to the government. Jobs are posted for compliance reasons rather than for filling actual roles, the foreign worker programs encourage postings to boost the impression of labour shortages and there seems to be little ability to validate job postings.
Work-from-home job postings are far more likely to be scams, with a ghost rate that nears 70 per cent. Roughly half of clerical and sales-jobs postings across career websites and about 60 per cent for entry-level general workers and customer service are real.
Ontario’s anti-ghosting legislation applies to provincially regulated companies with more than 25 employees. When an employer interviews a job seeker but does not hire them, they must inform the person if the role was filled.
This offers some welcome relief. The meat of the law, however, is found in its prohibition of posting ghost jobs. Companies will be required to disclose if a posting is for an existing vacancy. They will also have to reveal if they are deploying AI to screen or chose applicants. Importantly, Ontario is imposing salary transparency by mandating the inclusion of wage ranges in job postings.
Fines for non-compliance can reach $100,000 and audits will be conducted to enforce the legislation.
Legal misconceptions by employers fearful of discrimination lawsuits contribute to the say-nothing culture that prevails today. Moreover, job-application tracking systems (ATS) enhanced today with AI algorithms deployed to manage high volumes of job applications have dehumanized the entire exercise.
So much so that job seekers are responding with their own AI application bots to game the application system and fool company bots. It is a dysfunctional mess with real human and economic consequences.
Bill 190 will help by entrenching some accountability. What will help more is companies valuing human connection in the hiring process.
If someone drops off a résumé at a business in person, don’t direct them to a website. Appreciate their effort, prioritize it. After a person has applied and a skills match has been identified using ATS or AI, the approach should emphasize a high human-touch experience to its conclusion, be it a hire or not.
Companies are hiring people, not bots. If they treat them like bots, that, ironically, is exactly what they will find in their application funnels.