90% vs. Zero: Why I Still Believe Real Sourcing Beats Fake Job Ads

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 post jobs they have no plans to fill right away. Not a guess. Not a candidate's suspicion. Ninety percent, straight from the people doing the hiring.

What 90% vs. Zero Actually Means for the Person on the Other End

Sit with that number for a second. Nine out of ten hiring managers surveyed said their own company does this. That's not a handful of companies cutting corners, that's the norm.

So why does it happen so often? The reasons given weren't even malicious in intent. Nearly half said they use fake postings to build a pipeline for future roles. A third said it signals growth and stability to investors or competitors. Some said internal policy requires external postings even when they already know who's getting the job internally.

None of that is candidates being paranoid. It's companies using job ads as a business tool that has nothing to do with actually hiring someone.

But here's what gets lost in that logic: on the other side of every one of those postings is a real person. Someone updating their resume for the fifth time that week. Someone rehearsing answers to interview questions for a role that was never open. Someone who may have turned down a different opportunity, or held off on a decision, because they were waiting to hear back on something that was never real to begin with.

For a job seeker who's struggling, who needs the income, who's already feeling discouraged, finding out the opportunity never existed isn't a minor inconvenience. It's a real blow, and it's happening to people over and over, all across the market.

The report also found nearly two-thirds of hiring managers admitted their company has misrepresented some part of a role or the hiring process itself, understating how difficult the job is, giving inaccurate timelines, letting candidates believe something that wasn't true. This isn't a system with a few cracks in it, it's one a lot of people have quietly stopped trusting, for good reason.

There's a Better Way, and It's Not Complicated

Here's what I keep coming back to: none of this is necessary. If a company wants to build a pipeline of strong candidates for a role that might open up in six months, there's a way to do that without publishing a fake job ad and letting hundreds of people apply to something that isn't real.

It's called sourcing. It's called relationship-building. It's called a recruiter reaching out directly to people who might be a great fit down the road, having a real conversation, and staying in touch, so that when the role does open, there's already a warm, qualified group of people who know the opportunity is genuine, because a real person told them so.

Interestingly, the same report found that more than half of hiring managers are already using or seriously considering this exact approach, identifying talent before a role is even formally defined, rather than posting and hoping. That's not a fringe idea. That's the direction the smartest companies are already moving.

This is exactly the model I've built my business around. I don't post jobs and wait.

I source directly, build real relationships with candidates before there's ever an opening, and bring hiring managers a shortlist of people who are genuinely interested and genuinely qualified, not a pile of applications from people who tailored a resume for something that was never going to happen.

Ghost jobs exist because companies think there's no better option. There is. It just requires actually doing the work of building relationships instead of posting a job and hoping something sticks.

If you've ever applied to a role that turned out to be a ghost posting, I'd genuinely like to hear about it, what happened, and how did it change the way your job search going forward?