Another tiresome tactic that recruitment firms use is to leave up ads for roles that were actually filled months ago - either to attract CVs and/or make them look busier than they actually are.
Edit: There's probably a book waiting to be written on the dodgy tactics of recruitment firms. Mind you, I became a bit less harsh on individual recruiters when I was in an office that shared a floor of a building with a recruitment firm and got to see how they treated their staff. They were too cheap to hire meeting rooms when they were doing staff reviews so we regularly had people getting complete bollockings in the shared kitchen area - which isn't much fun to witness and a pretty ghastly way to treat your own staff.
I've been recruiting for almost 20 years and have been considering writing a book about various tactics. My blog regularly exposes some of the recruiter tricks and strategies on topics from counteroffers to candidate control. If I become convinced there would be even modest demand, I'd write it.
I'd like to read an equivalent for recruiters and as more people encounter recruiters than management consultants I expect the audience would be much larger!
My comment got a few upvotes, so perhaps there is more interest in this topic than I originally thought. I wrote an ebook "Job Tips For Geeks: The Job Search" a couple years ago that included a few tips on working with recruiters, but that wasn't the focus. I'll give it some thought, thanks for the insight.
I'd love to read that. I've also been curious about how the Indian Recruiter industry works. I get far more of their spam than that from any other source. I remember at one point they were adopting hilariously over-the-top British names. Venkat would identify himself as Bradford Wellington the Third or some such. A lot of that has stopped, the tactic must have backfired.
Definitely true, but it's not just recruitment firms that leave dummy jobs up. Startups do this all the time, especially for competitive roles like software engineer and UX designer. It allows internal recruiters and hiring managers to perpetually keep an eye out for good talent. It also makes the companies look like they are doing well and growing.
It's pretty much the default position if an actual vacancy exists but then gets filled; unless your mailbox is being overwhelmed by new applications, taking down the job offers takes more effort than leaving it up.
Many companies have more or less phantom job listings on their websites and the free boards because whilst they haven't got any positions that need filling, they can afford to create role(s) for the right candidates. And as you've said, some probably can't afford that yet but at least they look like they're growing and get the resumes of people interested in what they might be able to offer in future.
Larger companies often have job ads up for positions they expect to fill internally, because policy requires they advertise it externally.
