Hey, LinkedIn, we need to talk. You’re a fake job enabler.

Hi, LinkedIn? You have a fake job problem and it looks like everyone can see it except you.

You know the ones, the companies who post jobs that you are qualified for, then a few weeks later you get a response that they’re “going in another direction” or even “we have already filled the position”, then right after that, you see the same job reposted.

You may think that it’s the company’s problem, not yours. And you do have a point, since how is posting “ghost” or fake jobs doing anything that brings value to a company? All it seems to get companies are a bunch of pissed-off rejected applicants who will never apply to that company again and tell their friends that applying there is a big waste of time.

But the behavior of all these companies also reflects badly on you. If people will abandon applying at certain places, it’s not much of a stretch for them to also avoid LinkedIn altogether, since you have been the ultimate source for all of these fake jobs. This is a problem big enough that it is eroding trust among job seekers, myself included.

You might say there are fake jobs on every job site, and you are correct. However, LinkedIn, you are uniquely positioned to handle this problem in an ethical, user-forward way that the other sites cannot match.