The old bait-and-switch

A new report reveals that employers are increasingly engaging in career catfishing, leading to mismatched expectations and dissatisfaction in the workplace

IN THE PAST, we’ve written about the problem of ghost jobs — those public job postings by a real company for a position they don’t really intend to fill. Well, perhaps employers are growing a little shiftier in their tactics then, because a new report from Monster.com found that for a huge number of jobseekers, it isn’t ghost jobs that are a growing problem, but catfish jobs.

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Nearly 80 per cent of jobseekers say they had been catfished into a job that didn’t match the description. Almost half of all jobseekers say they were handed different job responsibilities, while one in five say that company culture was misrepresented. A further nine per cent said the compensation or benefits were different.

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It’s a practice that looks to be on the upswing. In 2023, hiring software firm Greenhouse found that 20 per cent of people surveyed said they’d been catfished this way, while Monster found it was much higher. “Monster’s new data may suggest the situation is worsening, and employer catfishing is becoming more common — perhaps enabled by technology, or sheer burnout among HR managers,” wrote Inc.com’s Kit Eaton.

The root of the problem is there is still a wide gulf between what candidates want and what companies are offering. “Some employers don’t want to change company practices or policies to match jobseeker expectations, but they still want to attract high-quality talent,” said Kimberley Phillips, director of the Center for Career Development at Bridgewater College in Virginia. “So, that’s where we tend to see more of the corporate catfishing coming into play.”

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It might go without saying that this kind of thing doesn’t help employee morale much, and the folks at Monster (which has a vested interest in its job board being accurate) really wish employers would cut it out. “Career catfishing is more than just an awkward mismatch — it’s a trust issue that impacts careers and businesses alike,” they said. “By prioritizing transparency and honesty on both sides of the hiring equation, jobseekers and employers can create stronger, more successful matches. Kieran Delamont