Last week I wrote about ghost jobs, postings that sit online with no real intention behind them. I called it a problem I'd seen firsthand. This week, the data caught up with me, and it's worse than I expected: the real story here is 90% vs. zero. 90% of hiring managers admitting it happens, versus zero accountability for the candidates it affects. Resume Genius's 2026 Hiring Trends Report surveyed 1,500 hiring managers and found that 90% admitted their companies intentionally

Job seekers have a name for it now: ghost jobs. Postings that sit online for months, sometimes years, with no real intention of hiring anyone. Companies use them to build a talent pipeline "just in case," to make investors think they're growing, or simply because nobody remembered to take them down. Whatever the reason, the result is the same, candidates pour real time and real hope into applications that were never going anywhere. But ghost jobs aren't the only way companies