What is 'career catfishing' and why are Gen Z doing it?

A study has found that it takes between 100 and 200 applications to receive a job offer these days. So why would anyone apply for a role, get through the interviews, land the post, but then… never turn up?

The trend, known as "career catfishing", is a curious new office shift that sheds light on how younger people feel about the treatment they go through during the recruitment process.

Professional ghosting

Catfishing, where someone pretends to be someone else online, is a "well-known" practice in the dating world, said Forbes, and one sometimes used by financial con artists, too.

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Now, the "same concept" has "quietly slipped" into the jobs market, said RTE, and it's pretty simple: "you apply for a job, you land a job, accept the offer" and then disappear before your first day.

A survey found that 34% of Gen Z jobseekers have indulged in this form of professional ghosting, but they're not the only ones: 24% of millennials, 11% of Gen X and 7% of boomers have also done it.

"What’s happening with Gen Z and their approach to work is pure chaos", Yakov Filippenko, CEO and founder of recruitment website Intch told Personnel Today. And because "work itself" has "turned into a meme", Gen Z "treats it that way".

The prominence of Gen Z among career catfishing statistics may offer a "negative view" of younger jobseekers, making people think they "lack professionalism" and "dismiss conventional employment norms", said RTE. But they also offer a "snapshot" of the "frustration" young people face in finding jobs.

Long and dispiriting 

Recruitment has become a "labyrinthine, opaque and time-consuming" process, said The Guardian. In the course of a "long and dispiriting" recruitment format, applicants may have "got a better offer" or "simply changed their minds".

They don't feel they "owe prospective employers anything" because they feel they've been "treated very badly by them".

The complexity of finding a job is partly because a significant number of positions being advertised don't exist – they're "ghost jobs", or openings posted by companies to make it appear they're recruiting and "therefore growing". Or they're sometimes posted to "keep their present employees on their toes".

In a mirror of career catfishing by job applicants, there's a swing known as "professional ghosting", when companies put hopefuls through "multiple interviews", sometimes even making job offers, before "abruptly ending all communication".

If these trends collide, it sounds like the future might see "ghost employees for ghost jobs".