The global online social network LinkedIn sets itself apart from other platforms by being designed for career growth, professional networking, and job searching. According to the company, LinkedIn is meant to function as an interactive digital resume where users can connect with colleagues, apply for jobs, and share industry updates. Although roughly 85% of the users rely on free accounts, “Premium” subscribers receive specific perks, including applicant data.
However, earlier this month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced it had opened an investigation into the career networking service, alleging that LinkedIn had advertised and profited from “fake or misleading job opportunities,” which are also known as “ghost jobs.”
Such vacancies are advertised with no actual intent to fill them, and the Texas AG claimed that such job posts account for 20% to 27% of all listings on LinkedIn.
“For years, LinkedIn has marketed its paid Premium subscription services to job seekers who have the expectation that the platform’s job listings represent legitimate, active hiring opportunities,” the AG’s office stated, noting that the company generated significant revenue from those subscribers.
“LinkedIn does not independently verify the hiring status of most listings on its platform. LinkedIn’s Premium marketing materials do not disclose that a significant percentage of job postings may be inactive, unfilled, or otherwise not representative of genuine hiring opportunities,” the Texas AG’s office continued. “As a result, consumers may have paid subscription fees based on materially misleading representations regarding the value and effectiveness of LinkedIn’s job marketplace.”
Paxton’s office also announced it had issued a Civil Investigative Demand (“CID”) to LinkedIn seeking documents, data, and internal communications related to the company’s advertising, marketing, verification practices, and representations concerning Premium subscription services and job listings.
Promises Made?
Past reporting from Medium.com found that the service’s marketing efforts do imply that upgrading to a career or business plan will make subscribers more “discoverable.” Still, its algorithms actually reward steady personal activity and networking rather than subscription status.
As a result, most casual or passive users are likely to see little to no return on the subscription’s monthly cost, Medium.com added.
For job seekers, the situation is even worse if around a quarter of the listings are for ghost jobs.
“The subscription promises tools to find real opportunities faster: job match scores, advanced filters, priority visibility to recruiters. None of that matters if a meaningful share of the listings underneath are not genuine jobs at all,” explained Angeli Gianchandani, global brand strategist and adjunct instructor of integrated marketing and communications at New York University.
Gianchandani, who is a LinkedIn premium subscriber, told ClearanceJobs that at its core, LinkedIn exists to connect people, notably talent to opportunity, ambition to a next step.
“Ghost jobs break that connection at the exact moment it matters most,” Gianchandani warned. “Job seekers, particularly displaced workers, veterans, and recent graduates, trust the platform to lead them somewhere real. When close to a third of listings turn out to be hollow, the platform has stopped leading people toward opportunity and started leading them in circles.”
Being Ghosted!
It is unclear if LinkedIn knew that so many of the positions were essentially ghost jobs, and it seems unlikely that the company wasn’t able to determine what listings may have seemed too good to be true.
“LinkedIn and other online job sites receive or identify postings that employers may have little or no real intent to fill. Sometimes companies are looking to build talent pipelines or signal growth without actual vacancies. In today’s job market, companies might post jobs to meet certain regulatory requirements – with no intention of hiring ‘outsiders,'” said technology industry analyst Susan Schreiner of C4 Trends.
Then there is the issue that it is possible sites such as LinkedIn knew the issue existed, but didn’t attempt to address it.
“The deeper issue is leadership. Somewhere inside the company, someone understood the scale of this problem and chose premium revenue over the integrity of the product anyway,” added Gianchandani. “That choice erodes the very connection the business was built on.”
LinkedIn could still address the issue.
“Perhaps new AI algorithms could improve LinkedIn’s job fulfillment platform, making it more aligned with its premium offerings and better meeting user expectations and needs,” Schreiner told ClearanceJobs. “LinkedIn and others need to do a better job of catching red flags, such as when a job is posted multiple times within a certain time frame, or when a posting has been open for an extended period.”
Politics At Play?
The timing of this announcement is also noteworthy, suggested Schreiner, who further told ClearanceJobs that the investigation began as Paxton may be looking to gain some publicity in his run for the United States Senate in his home state of Texas.
“While other proposed legislation like The Truth in Job Advertising and Accountability Act is underway, Paxton’s attempt is likely a ploy to make himself look better ahead of the midterms, given his other challenges, the jobs situation, and the economy in Texas,” said Schreiner, adding that ghost jobs aren’t entirely new.
Such positions have existed since the days when employment listings appeared in local newspapers. Still, the growth of the Internet and social media has only amplified the proliferation, challenges and frustrations of identifying them.
“While the expectation is that LinkedIn’s premium service can provide a more selective and upscale job-search experience, its strength has always been in recruiters finding you, not the other way around,” suggested Schreiner. “The key challenge is how LinkedIn can improve its job filtering process to ensure greater transparency, accountability, and better outcomes.”
The timing is notable for another reason not tied to the mid-term elections.
It comes as AI is making it that much easier for fake listings to be created quickly, generating polished text, and even creating entirely fake company websites. This is a problem not limited to LinkedIn, but AI has upped the game for scammers by correcting common-to-spot grammar errors and formatting issues.
The other side of the AI coin is that many individuals may fear how advances in the technology could impact their existing careers.
“A ghost jobs scandal arrives directly on top of that anxiety and confirms something many people already suspected: a platform is only as good as the human judgment behind it. I tell my own students the same thing every semester: a career journey depends on the networking you do in person, at school, in communities, through activities and sports, because that is where you learn about opportunities, companies, and cultures that a platform like LinkedIn will never surface. Those relationships carry actual accountability attached to a name and a face, not a listing that may or may not exist,” said Gianchandani.
This case could matter well beyond LinkedIn for these reasons.
“Companies that lead with responsibility toward the people who trust them keep that trust. Companies that quietly tolerate the gap between what they promise and what they deliver eventually lose the users who built their value in the first place,” Gianchandani continued. “If this investigation pushes LinkedIn toward real transformation, rather than a quiet settlement, it will be good for every job seeker who has ever felt let down by a platform that was supposed to connect them to something better, and for every employer whose real opening got lost in the noise.”
