Is That Security Job Listing Real?

Job searching for a new role is a frustrating and time-consuming endeavor in the best of circumstances. You can find yourself spending untold hours searching online job boards belonging to aggregators, companies, and recruitment firms. Electronic application forms, countless emails and phone calls round out the experience.

One of the questions we most often hear from job seekers is “Was that job posting real?” Depending on where they saw the listing posted, the answer can be complicated.

Companies often have minimum posting requirements even if they have already identified a candidate. The job gets published with the intention of allowing previously identified candidates to register with the organization’s online system and formally apply. This step facilitates the internal Human Resources management systems to process, document and generate offer letters and initiate background investigations.

Unfortunately, in an aggregator job board environment where information is constantly scraped, these pro forma listings appear as if they are new jobs. Postings are then continually scraped and re-scraped which means the listing the company intended to run for three days can continue to live online for months even though it has been removed from the company’s career portal.

This is one reason we encourage job seekers to go to an employer’s website and not rely on the various third-party job boards or newsletters. While not perfect, it is a better way to validate whether a job is real. Legitimate companies do not post positions that have not been approved or funded. Their listings generally reflect active external search efforts.

The secondary reason to validate that a job is real is to prevent your personal data from being captured under false pretenses. It can be tempting to apply for a great sounding job even though you can’t validate it. However, that may result in your information being collected and used by someone other than you intended.

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