Wolverhampton one of UK's worst places for time-wasting fake 'ghost jobs'

It is a recruitment practice where companies fake job openings for their own benefit.

Careers and CV experts StandOut CV wanted to find out just how big this problem is and where in the country the ghost job hotspots were.

It analysed 91,318 job listings in the 30 biggest cities/towns/boroughs reviewing the number of jobs posted and those that were still live, but posted more than 30 days ago.

StandOutCV claims one in three – 34.4 per cent – job adverts online are ‘ghost jobs’.

The worst area was the London borough of Islington where over a quarter (26.1 per cent) of job listings were ghosts followed by Southend-On-Sea (23.7 per cent). Birkenhead is third at 22.7 per cent followed by Wolverhampton at 22.5 per cent.

Veterinary nurses looking for a new job were the most likely to find these listings on their job search, with almost three in five (59.1 per cent) vacancies posted being ghosts. Software engineers were the second most likely to face ghost jobs at 46.5 per cent.

Andrew Fennell, director of StandOut CV advises job hunters to avoid anything older than 30 days without verifying it is still live. Some job boards don’t indicate if a job was posted 30 or 60 days ago, they’re simply labelled ‘30+ days’.

“Ghost job listings have been around for a while, but they're now getting exposed as the job market becomes more competitive. It’s likely they appear more frequently for jobs that require highly-skilled and experienced candidates.

“Unfortunately, it would be incredibly tough to regulate ghost jobs which is why I tell job hunters to research a role as much as they can, especially if a job description is lacking in detail or was posted a while ago.

“If the job listing was posted 20-30 days ago, it could still be worth an application. To double-check, it's worth sending a quick message to the recruiter on LinkedIn as this could save you a lot of time in the long run."