Black Hat Recruiting

Meaning of Black Hat

During a recent phone conversation with an SEO Analyst candidate, he asked me how I thought the economy was doing and did I see an increase in job openings. I explained what I was seeing and he said it sounds like Black Hat SEO.

Black Hat SEO: “Black Hat search engine optimization is generally defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner.”

Black Hat Recruiting or just not Ethical

So, I’m calling what I’ve been seeing Black Hat Recruiting: Posting jobs that do not exist in an attempt to unethically obtain resumes.

Over the last couple of months I’ve noticed hundreds of jobs being posted by anonymous posters. They don’t identify the company. In some instances, it states at the bottom that this is a current opening or an example of an opening that we normally have available. The odds are this means: This is not a real job.

There are way too many duplicate and triplicate jobs posted on a variety of job sites. Resumes go in, but there is no response from whoever is collecting these resumes.

These jobs are not real. These are posted by someone or some company gathering resumes.

There are in some cases, “confidential job searches,” but there’s no reason for a recruiter to hide the name of their own company, unless the jobs are not real.

All of my postings are real jobs. I am not hiding my company, my name or my phone number.

As an example, I have an exclusive arrangement with a client. I’ve posted their very niche type job on their behalf and have seen it reposted a dozen times on several job sites, word for word under an anonymous email. The responses are not coming to me, nor are they going directly to my client. So where are these resumes going?

I can’t answer that question. But I have a suggestion for stopping it. Don’t send your resume in to any job posting if you don’t know where it is going.