28% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days (unlisted.careers)

Yes. I recently got a job (IT infrastructure engineer with a non-tech company) on a posting that was 6 months old. they had filled it, and at the same time got approval for a second headcount so they never pulled it down

If the listing is generic like "senior software engineer" and all of the requirements are generic like being able to program or do teamwork, it's probably a generic listing.

Applying anyway is a safe bet, but I wouldn't invest as much energy into tailoring your resume if it's a 6 month old posting from a 50 person company with a website that looks like it's from 2009. That company probably forgot to take the listing down.

> maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people

This wouldn't help because you have no way of knowing if they've already hired 9 people or 1 person.

The target can also change constantly. At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring.

The main reason the jobs are reposted are to get them to the top of the feed

Small companies may look to fill a certain set of skill-sets, and if that is filled by one person or three doesn't matter much; can puzzle around to make the workload fit what is found. large companies may hire 10 people generically, but may stop at 5 if they don't like the candidates, or hire 16 after a good set of resumes.

Forcing companies to be overly specific in the roles is just making it harder to apply.

The only issue is that it's never one factor. Rising interest rates, s174, ghost jobs, outsourcing: them and many more factors all add up.

They've got a few open spots if you're interested in relocating to Springfield, MO (and even some entry level IT positions https://careers.oreillyauto.com/us/en/job/R203370/IT-Support... - that one was posted 09/21/2026)

You could argue that AWS doesn't know what they're doing but they also hire way more software developers than all but a handful of other companies

I’m not saying there are no companies that keep non-live job ads up purely for fishing purposes but, in my experience, it’s not the norm. It would really piss jobseekers off and that’s the kind of word that tends to get around and make it harder to hire in future. Maybe not if you’re a FAANG, because so many people want to work for you anyway, but it’s going to cause problems for “normal” companies.

I know this analogy breaks down a little bit since this behavior does actually happen, sort of, in real life p2p markets but the point is, it sucks and if you've ever sold anything on fb marketplace you know how obnoxious it is dealing with people who demand a lot of you but do not intend to actually commit to buying what you're selling.

But I certainly feel ripped off applying for jobs they never intended on filling. If they put up a lot of hoops to jump through to apply (submit a portfolio, set up an account, write a cover letter specific to our company), times that by the 1000 people who have applied, and it's an exorbitant amount of human time getting wasted.

Why though? I've done hiring before - it takes less than 30 seconds to skim a resume. The recruiters also have no idea what the responsibility is for the jobs they are hiring for - it's a terrible place to bottleneck candidates on.

It sounds like everyone, including recruiters, are being sent on a snipe hunt.

That assumes that I am writing my resume for just your job posting. If I am just going to copy and paste the job requirement verbatim on my resume, doesn't that make your job screening applicants for actual experience much harder? Often times the difference is splitting hairs anyway ("we're looking for someone who paints brown houses").

But as a rule I don't customize my resume for every job posting anyway - if I have to apply to 70+ job listings to even hear back from even one of them, I would just frankly not have the time to do so.

Regardless, if my application is getting thrown out because my title is not quite right in a subtle way, or I reference Javascript but not Python, and no one is telling me - that's unfair on everybody. The company is going to skip over the best candidates for superficial reasons, because nobody is telling them their resume isn't perfect.

This sounds like a dream. We posted a job a couple of weeks ago and had 1200 applications in around 2 days. Most are complete garbage. I'm confused why they took the time to apply at all, even if AI did it for them.

Resumes are only a 1 page summary (2 if you're really experienced) and this kind of market has you doing hundreds of submissions if you lack connections (or your connections are also job searching). You don't have the time to tailor every application for every role.

A shame because LLMs should really be perfect at this. Most current tools are too obsessed with writing for you (and creating a blander resume) instead of just taking a master CV and drag and dropping the most applicable roles/projects/experiences in.

The company essentially handed the recruiter $10k because they were too bad at reviewing their own applications.

IME (hiring, not interviewing) it's always been 3-4 rounds. First is an HR phone screen (usually 20-30 minutes on the phone), 2nd with hiring manager, 3rd with a senior engineer/architect, and a 4th with the hiring VP. And those are almost always combined into a single morning or afternoon(2+3 or 3+4) and the final round doesn't always happen (VP's choice).

Sounds like asking a lot from candidates but unfortunately candidates lie a lot and the cost of hiring candidates that don’t match up to the requirements when paying $300k-$500k/year is just too high. Firing people is hard and takes a long time, especially in management roles. My personal guidance to managers is to have rounds match the level and experience required for the job. You can hire an intern with 2 rounds after the hiring manager conversation but a staff IC probably needs 5, directors need 7.

Job is posted. You apply along with hundreds of other people. The recruiter/hiring manager needs to spend some time sifting through them along with juggling all the other tasks they have going on. Let's say that this takes 1-2 weeks. Some places may let the opening sit longer to get more applicants.

Several candidates are identified as possible fits. Recruiter reaches out to them to schedule the recruiter screen. Schedules need to line up. This likely takes 1-2 weeks until the recruiter screen happens.

The recruiter needs to schedule the tech screen after a successful recruiter screen. Again, schedules need to line up. This could take another 1-2 weeks.

Feedback needs to be submitted and then the onsite round is scheduled. This could take another 1-2 weeks.

The onsite round will have multiple interviewers. This means more people to collect feedback from which likely increases delays in getting that. A debrief is normally scheduled with everyone who interviewed them. But let's say one week to gather this and make a decision.

An offer is made. It takes some time to prepare and get sign off. There will be time to discuss with the recruiter to explain the details, plus some time needed for negotiation and thinking it over. This could be another 1-2 weeks.

Additionally, some candidates may want to ask for more time during these phases in order to prepare better or align their schedules. This pushes back the process for all other candidates if the company is hiring for a specific job in order to give all candidates a fair assessment against the pool.

Adding this all up, we arrive at 6-10 weeks.

It can move faster than months, of course, when everyone's willing to prioritize it. But as anyone who's worked in hiring can tell you, the set of people who want hiring to move faster is much larger than the set of people who are willing to accept inconvenient interviews and fill out their feedback promptly.

Companies feel like they have no choice, for two reasons:

1. Jurisdictions where workers must give minimum notice periods before leaving their prior employer - the worker accepts a competing offer, gives notice, waits out the notice period, then starts. And many workers often ask for additional unpaid time between jobs before starting (since no vacation days have been accrued yet at the new job).

2. Hiring happens by committee. In most companies, job candidates must be interviewed by, at the absolute minimum, an HR screener, the hiring manager, and the hiring skip-level; and usually also by people who will be peer teammates, plus an HR "culture" interview. If you need to pass a committee of 3-6 people, interviews must be scheduled with each member of the committee; at one committee member per week, that is 3-6 weeks.

6 weeks (1.5 months) plus background checks plus getting pay packages approved plus 30 day notice periods plus two weeks unpaid vacation is, yes, a multiple month endeavor at minimum to fill a role. The only way to fill a role within a week is to grant full hiring autonomy to the hiring manager and only hire people who are currently unemployed (and therefore have no notice period or desire to take more unpaid time before starting), which in most companies beyond early startup size, is a complete non-starter.

It may sound like I'm blaming candidates, and sometimes it might be fair to, but this is also a problem caused by companies not investing in training and hiring junior level employees, which means that people who are unqualified feel forced to apply for more senior roles, as those are the only roles hiring. It's honestly shocking how many candidates I've interviewed in my career who don't even meet the basic bar for the role they've applied for, and are essentially just hoping to get lucky and snag a high-paying tech job even if it ultimately results in them being terminated, they can collect a check for 3-9 months without delivering.

Mass applications, AI cheating, fraudulent representation (e.g. saying you are person X but are actually interviewing on behalf of person X who you are not), lying on resumes and in screeners, and even nation state attacks on hiring (see North Korea trying to farm tech jobs for money to get around sanctions), it's not great on the hiring side either.

Any manager will tell you, they’d rather not go through the long hiring process.

IMO the reason it takes longer now is because multiple people are getting interviewed simultaneously.

Considering job postings are getting 10x more resumes than before, I'm not surprised companies are hedging their bets and interviewing way more people for the same position.

It would be genuinely shocking to me if someone came up with evidence that the majority of jobs on job sites were made by companies that actually intended to hire the best candidate that applied through that site!

I've also caught a few people using LLM cheating software accidentally revealing it.

Business doing good doesn't automatically mean populations of humans are doing good themselves.