Pretty much everyone knows what it feels like to hunt for a job: You revamp your resume, send out a zillion applications — and you wait.

“If you’re unemployed in a down market it is stressful and every day feels like a month, every month feels like a year,” said Dan Kaplan, a senior partner at Korn Ferry, an HR consulting firm.

Job seekers rarely know what’s happening on the other side of the application. And in some cases, what’s happening is absolutely nothing. The position doesn’t even exist. It’s called a ghost job. And about half of companies list jobs they don’t necessarily intend to fill because they’re “always open to new people,” according to a survey from Clarify Capital. Kaplan said this tactic isn’t new.

“In all practical sense, it’s existed for many years and it means a number of different things,” he said.

Ghost jobs can be an innocent oversight: A recruiter puts up open positions and gets laid off or forgets to take them down once they’re filled. But sometimes employers post ghost jobs on purpose so that to investors it looks like the company is growing, and to overworked and frustrated employees it looks like help is on the way. 

But the most common type of ghost job is talent hoarding.

“You keep postings out there. You collect a large pool of resumes. You may, in fact, make contact with candidates and interview them, just so you have a large pool of talent,” said Kaplan. “But you don’t plan on actually filling the job anytime soon or hiring.”

Kaplan said this happens in a lot of industries, especially tech. And it might be more common now because businesses are anxious. They laid off workers at the beginning of the pandemic, then had a hard time hiring them back when they needed them. They laid people off again when wages and interest rates rose. Now, they’re waiting for the economy to give them the green light to grow again.

“It gives you a pool that you can very quickly ramp back up,” said Kaplan.

Ghost jobs might just be a temporary symptom of an uncertain economy. But Erica Groshen, an economist at Cornell University and former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said the way companies hire and candidates job hunt is changing.

“We’re moving to a new equilibrium where everybody just applies to more jobs than they used to,” she said.

With online job boards, it’s easier than ever to throw your hat in the ring. Meanwhile, companies are taking longer to screen applicants.

“Now it’s worth it for the employers to hold the jobs open longer, look through more resumes, because they have a hope that they’re actually going to find a worker who’s better suited,” she said.

In 2023, the average number of days it took companies to hire hit an all-time high of 44 days, with many jobs open for three months or more.

“I wish I could say ‘here are the top three red flags to look for as a job seeker in these ads to see if they’re real or not real,'” said Vicki Salemi, a career expert at the jobs site Monster. “There aren’t any telltale signs.”

Once upon a time, a posting that’s been open for a while might be a red flag. Now, Salemi encourages job seekers to apply anyway. If you do get an interview, ask about the company’s hiring timeline.

“And do your due diligence throughout the interview process,” said Salemi. “If you discover that what they say they’re now backtracking, that is a sign of their values and their culture and you have to ask yourself, “Is this an organization I’d want to be part of?'” 

That is, if you don’t get ghosted first.