Job Descriptions: The Unfiltered Version

By Lauren Deats • The stuff I only say behind the velvet rope • 8 min read

Okay. Cards on the table.

This is the version of the job-description talk I do not put on the free blog, because some of it makes hiring managers clutch their pearls, and I like to save my spiciest takes for the people who pull up a chair at the VIP table. So pour your coffee, sugar, because we are about to talk about what job postings in 2026 are actually doing. And it is not what your college career center told you.

I spent almost twelve years on the hiring side. I have written these postings. I have sat in the room where somebody said "just leave it up, we are not really hiring, but it looks good." So believe me when I tell you the game changed, and nobody sent you the memo. Let me be the one to send it.

👻 The Dirty Secret: A Lot of These Jobs Are Not Real

Here is the part that is about to make you feel a whole lot better about your quiet inbox. A huge slice of the postings you are applying to right now are ghost jobs. Real-looking roles, from real companies, that nobody has any actual plan to fill. And this is not some rare glitch. Depending on whose data you trust, somewhere between one in four and one in three active listings is a ghost. More than eight in ten recruiters have admitted their company posts them. Read that twice.

Why on God's green earth would a company do that? A few reasons, and not a single one of them is about you:

Pipeline building. They want a stack of resumes ready for a role they have not even gotten approved yet.

Looking growthy. A long, busy careers page makes investors and competitors think business is booming, even when headcount is frozen solid.

Keeping the team nervous. This one is just ugly. Some companies leave your exact role posted so the people already doing it work a little harder and complain a little less. Bless it.

So when you tailor the perfect resume, write the cover letter that finally sounds like you, hit submit, and then hear crickets for three weeks? Sometimes that silence is not a verdict on you. Sometimes the door was painted on the wall.

Now here is where it gets useful, because knowing ghosts exist does you no good if you cannot spot one before you have burned your whole Saturday on it. And that, my VIP friend, is exactly what is waiting behind this next little velvet rope.

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