Zombie job postings on Indeed

[bcla]

I was curious about new jobs (you never know if the right opportunity might come along) and came across something on Indeed using a location and keyword search. I saw something that piqued my interest. It wasn't one (their primary model these days) where they had a direct application through Indeed to the employer, but one of the older style where they're just an aggregator. Back then they had made money with premium listings where paid listings got placed near the top and/or otherwise featured. This listing I saw said it was 30+ days old. It even contained a staffing contact and mailing address to send in applications.

Since I was curious (wasn't going to take the job) I investigated further. It took me to the company's website that said "Copyright 1999" at the bottom. The website was encoded in old fashioned HTML with none of the embedded content seen in most modern webpages. I looked up the company's history, and the company was acquired in 2000. So for more than 20 years the company website has been up with the same information that got scoured by Indeed. I'm kind of surprised since I thought that someone would still need to pay for website hosting.

Back when I was looking for a job, one of the things that I kept on seeing was "new" listings for a company that I knew had gone out of business. That was more recent, but it seemed odd that it wasn't somehow cleaned up.

 

[NotUrsula]

There are also a HUGE number of scam job listings on Indeed. I know someone who learned the hard way that while Indeed is fine for finding listings, best practice is to then go directly to the company website to apply, by looking it up yourself, NOT by following a link to it in the Indeed ad.

 

[bcla]

There are also a HUGE number of scam job listings on Indeed. I know someone who learned the hard way that while Indeed is fine for finding listings, best practice is to then go directly to the company website to apply, by looking it up yourself, NOT by following a link to it in the Indeed ad.

The listing I saw directed applicants to the company's website. That's how I figured out how outdated it was. I haven't seen a website so basic in a while. It was pure old-fashioned HTML and everything loaded extremely fast. I'm not sure who would still be paying for it.

 

[DCLPrincess]

I'm disappointed. I thought they were actually hiring zombies.

 

[bcla]

I'm disappointed. I thought they were actually hiring zombies.

You can actually use "zombie" as a keyword. One listing say they don't want a zombie while others mention zombie themed parties. The security job mentions something about being prepared for a "zombie apocolypse".

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=zombie&l&sort=date

 

[NotUrsula]

The listing I saw directed applicants to the company's website. That's how I figured out how outdated it was. I haven't seen a website so basic in a while. It was pure old-fashioned HTML and everything loaded extremely fast. I'm not sure who would still be paying for it.

There is a fair chance that if you got there by following a link, it might not have actually been the company website, or the company itself is not real (or not real now.)

Did you try also doing an independent Google search to get you there?

 

[bcla]

There is a fair chance that if you got there by following a link, it might not have actually been the company website, or the company itself is not real (or not real now.)

Did you try also doing an independent Google search to get you there?

I started looking into the website more including a WHOIS check. It looks like the current registration was made in 2004, although the company was defunct by then. Then I started looking around again and noticed a few things. Just entering the domain name got to a page that said that it's a new site, although it's still pretty basic. Then is shows three links to versions of the company website in 1998 to 1999, as well as a link to a copy of the press release about the company being acquired. I now notice they had used an oddball directory name in the URL.

So apparently this was just someone's project to archive this company's rather limited web history. Also - nothing was modified with a message that this data was just an archive.

 

[Grumpy_Dad]

I'm kind of surprised since I thought that someone would still need to pay for website hosting.

It is not uncommon for old pages or even old web sites to stay up well past their expiration date. Two things usually come into play. First, many times it there is a great rush to get something posted to a website, but no one is responsible for taking it down. Second, if a company or some corporate relative is still in business, web hosting, domain renewals and related expenses will get paid automatically, either without thinking or because there is a fear that taking it down will be disruptive. On the site I worked on we just did an inventory of published pages and discovered over 200 that were published in 2012 and 2013 and haven't been touched since.

 

[LuvOrlando]

This isn't the only weird thing I noticed the last time I was looking.

It also seems like sketchy groups use legitimate jobs as bait to get job hunters to go through them for both collecting info on people and acting as a go between, I'd imagine to collect fees of some kind but what they want to do with the stuff on a resume I can only imagine. When I first moved to my town a local neighbor creep (didn't know he was a creep at first) offered me an introductions for a job with my resume, then I never heard back so it was just a way to dig into my life - so ewww. I was suspicious so I listed "info will be shared upon contact" for stuff like salary etc but still, I later learned this guy did this to all the new female neighbors.

If I create a job search in indeed or something I notice my emails gets swamped with jobs from other supposed agencies but when I research each agency in email it's always some sort of a scam with complaints of wasting people's time and such. Easier to just use Indeed as a filter and going to the individual organizations separately.

 

[bcla]

It is not uncommon for old pages or even old web sites to stay up well past their expiration date. Two things usually come into play. First, many times it there is a great rush to get something posted to a website, but no one is responsible for taking it down. Second, if a company or some corporate relative is still in business, web hosting, domain renewals and related expenses will get paid automatically, either without thinking or because there is a fear that taking it down will be disruptive. On the site I worked on we just did an inventory of published pages and discovered over 200 that were published in 2012 and 2013 and haven't been touched since.

The one I saw looked like it was someone's project. I'm still not sure how it's paid for. It could just be a free (or cheap) web hosting service that doesn't have an issue since it's not a high bandwidth/high traffic website.

What the heck - this is it. It was the former Alantro Communications in Santa Rosa, California. They were bought by Texas Instruments back in 2000. It was kind of weird because a lot of the same technical terms were used back then as today.

http://www.alantro.comhttp://www.alantro.com/ti.html
This looks like it's been archived because I can't find anything similar from Texas Instruments. They did make it look like the current TI press releases with a "Copyright 1995-2020" message which seems made up. It looks like a composite of the original press release and what a current one would look like.