It’s a well-known fact that the job market is in disarray right now. Just how bad it is varies from person to person, but the general consensus is that it takes hundreds of applications to even get an initial interview. And if you’re lucky enough to get a second interview, don’t hold out hope because you might get ghosted.
One woman thought that she had finally reached the end of her long job-search journey, only to have a promising company ghost her.
After months of looking, a woman thought she had found the perfect job.
TikTok content creator Morgan Von Feldt shared a video detailing her difficult job hunt and how she finally thought she found the perfect role.
“I have been applying for jobs for about eight months,” she said.
“I’ve done the hiring process before, but I have never seen it as horrible as it is right now,” she explained. “It’s just mind-blowing.”
But, there was “one specific experience” that Von Feldt really wanted to discuss with her 26,300 followers.
“So back in the beginning of May of this year, I applied for a job that I was really, really, really excited for,” she shared.
“They sent me an email and asked me to fill out, like, a couple of questions over email, um, about the job and my experience and everything,” she continued. “I did that, and I sent the email back, and then probably, like, a week later, I heard from them again, and they wanted to interview me. And so my first interview with them was on June 11.”
Little did the woman know that her initial contact with the company would begin a long process of back-and-forth communication that went nowhere.
“And they did a few days later ask me to set up a second interview, which would be a project-based one because it was a graphic design position,” she said. “And so that was probably the next week.
Von Feldt said she did another project-based interview after the first one. Everything seemed to be going well, but then she went a longer period without hearing from the company. After about a month, they finally got back in touch.
“They emailed me and they said that the position that I originally applied for and had been interviewing for, they were, like, no longer moving forward with it at all,” she stated. “No one was getting hired for that position ’cause it wasn’t gonna exist.”
The company wasn’t done with Von Feldt, though. “They said that they wanted to offer me, like, a contract position, which for graphic design, that would look like sort of a project-based type thing,” she explained.
Von Feldt was disappointed the role wasn’t more “consistent” but was still ready to take it on.
“It was offered to me, this contract position,” she said. “Um, their HR person was on vacation or something that week, but I would get a contract for this position the following week.”
“That did not happen,” she stated. “That was August 16. Today was October 24, and I don’t have a contract. In fact, I have not received any communication whatsoever since August 16.”
It sounds like the woman got duped into applying for a ‘ghost job.’
Several commenters on her video pointed out that Von Feldt seemed to be dealing with a company that posted what’s known as a ghost job.
Resume Genius’ senior content manager and hiring manager, Geoffrey Scott, explained what ghost jobs are to CNBC.
“Ghost jobs are actually not scams,” he said. “They’re from real companies, but they are openings that don’t actually exist. That company is not actually hiring for that role at this moment in time. They might be interested in hiring for that role in the future, or maybe they were hiring for it, but due to budget cuts, those roles were closed or put on hold.”
Ghost jobs are complicated because they aren’t technically fraudulent.
A company can’t really get in trouble for posting them. But, they still do a major disservice to the applicants, who believe these are roles they have a real shot at.
These fake listings also inflate the job market, making it seem better than it is, and in the case of Von Feldt, she wasted months of time on an interview process that could have been spent in contact with a company that actually wanted to hire her.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
