I’ve recently read several LinkedIn posts from people who applied for jobs they felt they were a perfect match for, but instead of receiving an interview request, they were rejected or received no feedback. Many of the comments blamed fake job postings. While I believe this is true in some cases and some job markets, there are other reasons this can happen. In this post, I’ll share some thoughts on fake job postings and what else could be going on.
This is based on my experience recruiting in Japan’s English-speaking tech job market. The issues I discuss here may not apply in other job markets but I expect most of them do.
The aim of this post is not to excuse poor behaviour from hiring companies. I think it’s helpful for job hunters to understand how recruitment works and by highlighting problems, it’s an opportunity for companies to improve the job-hunting experience for everyone involved.
So here we go, starting with those fake jobs.
Fake Jobs
In a recent survey in the US by Resume Builder, a career site, 40% of companies surveyed reported they’d posted a fake job this year. 3 in 10 companies reported they currently have fake roles listed. Companies gave reasons (excuses) such as building talent pools for future hiring, giving the appearance of growth to impress investors and others, and ‘motivating’ current employees to work harder.
Although many of the companies stated they did interview and hire people from their fake job ads, the dishonesty involved makes this a highly unethical practice. If you want to grow a talent community, offer value to your target market to connect with you. If you want to motivate your employees, is threatening them with replacement the best way to go?
Does this happen in the English-speaking tech job market in Japan? In my own experience, I’d say this is not something I’ve frequently encountered here. I’ve had my suspicions once or twice (such as when I see the same junior dev role advertised for 18 months and know it could be filled quickly), but not often.
Poor Job Descriptions
First of all, companies typically post job descriptions as their job adverts (note: this isn’t a good thing – job descriptions and job adverts should be two completely different things).
A job description is a poor representation of a job in the same way that a resume is a poor representation of a person. But what do I mean by ‘poor’ in the context of this article? A couple of issues come to mind:
Vague:
I sometimes see job descriptions that have requirements like this:
- Experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing RESTful APIs and microservices architectures.
This looks harmless enough. But how much experience are they looking for? At what scope and scale? Is a year’s experience in my current environment enough? Or will they hire someone who has been doing this for 5+ years?
Companies may write like this to throw a wide net and receive a lot of applications that they’ll filter later, but it leads to people applying who aren’t going to match what the hiring manager wants and are going to be rejected.
A mismatch between the job description and the hiring need:
Here I mean a mismatch between what the job description states and what the hiring manager is actually looking for, often as a result of using a generic job description.
At many companies, especially large ones, job descriptions are standardised to be consistent across different locations or teams. There is little or no room to customise them to specific hiring needs. Often the hiring manager or in-house recruiter is not allowed to edit the job description at all.
However, hiring for any role is specific to an individual context. For example, if the developer with the most API development experience in the engineering team quits, the hiring manager may be focused on replacing the lost API skills but the job ad is for a generic backend engineer covering a wide range of expertise.
You read the job description and feel you’re a great fit for the overall requirements, but the resume reviewer has a narrower focus and doesn’t feel you fit.
Whether it’s a case of vague wording or a mismatch between what’s being asked for and what’s being hired for, job ads are an area where companies should improve. It will be better for both job hunters and the companies themselves.
Too many applicants
You’re a great fit for the role, but a lot of people have applied and many of them are a great fit too. It can be hard to stand out and be noticed when a lot of people apply for the same job. Companies usually don’t have the resources to speak with everyone who applied so they’re going to filter down based on their most important criteria.
Poor resume review skills
The person reviewing your resume may not have the necessary knowledge to understand how well you fit the position. This can happen, for example, when recruiters cover specialisations they don’t know particularly well (it happens a lot in tech) or when a new recruiter is thrown in at the deep end without the support and training to do their job properly.
Bad Timing
Many job ads remain posted until someone is hired. There might be someone at the final interview stage but the job ad is still up and people are still applying.
As an agent, I check in regularly with my clients to get updates on their hiring pipeline and some companies will update me when they have enough applicants. But if you’re just looking at a job ad on LinkedIn or a careers page, you’re not going to know what the hiring status is.
FYI, checking the date the job ad was posted isn’t always helpful as ads get refreshed for SEO reasons.
It would be great if companies paid more attention to this and took down their ads when they have enough people in the hiring process.
Your resume doesn’t show relevant skills or experience
I understand the frustration of customising your resume for jobs only to be constantly ghosted. But if you have the skills and experience but your resume doesn’t show that you match the main requirements of a role, you’re very unlikely to get an interview.
At the very least, have a basic resume that covers your core skills, experience and achievements, and customise it for the roles you are particularly excited about.
And have someone else review your resume for you. It’s easy to overlook things when it’s your own experience. I’ve spoken with data analysts who forgot to put SQL on their resumes and machine learning engineers who mentioned all the packages and frameworks they’ve worked with but forgot to write the word ‘Python’. Keywords get picked up by recruiting systems, and resumes with better rankings will be read first.
Bias
Your resume may be screened by a biased reviewer. For example, in Japan, ageism is common. When I first started recruiting here (in 1999) I sometimes had companies specify an age limit when they asked me to work on a role. I’d either ignore the age limit or find a new client. Ageism is less overt now in the English-speaking job market here, but it certainly still exists. Unfortunately, you may encounter different biases depending on who and where you are.
Companies should be auditing applicant reviews to identify and correct biases, but this doesn’t happen as much as it could or should.
And sometimes people make mistakes and just click the wrong button in their Applicant Tracking System or delete an email before reading it. Not often, but it happens.
Final thoughts
Job hunting can be stressful and frustrating. If you’re involved in the hiring process at your company, please take some time to think about how you can improve your hiring practices. And if you’re looking for a new job currently, be persistent and don’t give up.
Looking for a new IT job in Japan? Check out my job board. Hiring? Get in touch and let’s see how I can help.
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