The Flypaper Job Description
I was surprised to note this morning that Google registers no hits for the phrase “flypaper job description” (nor for several variants), which is a phrase I’ve used off and on for a while. So, here’s my minor contribution to the vocabulary of the tech startups world.
A flypaper job description, or flypaper job posting, is a listing designed to attract potential candidates to a company even though there’s no open req for that position - i.e. no formal plan exists to hire for the position advertised. Frequently used as a group, one might list a collection of flypaper job descriptions from entry-level developer to senior architect, so that a range of potential candidates trolling a company website might consider inquiring or sending in a resume.
One purpose behind the flypaper job description is to snare that one in a million candidate who the company would hire no matter what - the person who happens to be the domain expert in the field, or the guy who studied under the guru at Caltech who invented the original widget, or .. you get the idea.
These “fake” job postings may also be used for the secondary purpose of making a company look more successful than it is (“we’re hiring!”), and in rare cases, to sow a little misinformation in a competitive feint. (Job postings frequently betray new projects starting up, or underlying technologies used at a company.) Sometimes you even snare a resume from an employee at a competitor.
A more passive flavor of this practice involves simply being slow about removing job descriptions for positions already filled or no longer needed - under the theory that there’s no harm in collecting more resumes that you might want to use later.
Flypaper job descriptions are quite common among tech startups. I’d venture to guess that if you click through to the ‘Jobs’ or ‘Careers’ pages of the 200-odd tech startups in Seattle, as many as half of the jobs posted have no true open hiring requisition behind them. I suspect this practice is frowned on by HR professionals, and it’s certainly questionable from my reading of employment law - but it’s all over the place.
So, is there another term for this practice that is more common than mine? Let me know in the comments if you know of another.
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