{"id":619772,"date":"2026-10-03T21:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T21:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/619772\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T21:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T21:38:11","slug":"job-seeker-calls-for-ban-on-ghost-interviews-that-harvest-data-for-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/619772\/","title":{"rendered":"Job seeker calls for ban on ‘ghost’ interviews that harvest data for AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting across from the AI interview agent, Charlie Maclean tried to put her best foot forward, but it was awkward.<\/p>\n

“It had specific questions,” she said, but it was nothing like connecting with a potential employer face-to-face.<\/p>\n

“It would sort of pick up on a key word or something that you’ve said, [like] ‘Hey, that’s good experience in project management – tell us more about it’.”<\/p>\n

Answers were timed, Maclean told RNZ, leaving little room to consider a response.<\/p>\n

“You’re not really able to take a second to think mid-sentence because it will just assume that you’re finished and then cut you off and on to the next bit.”<\/p>\n

It was a jarring experience, which became more strange after the initially very eager company ghosted her<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Do you know more? Email: mary.argue@rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n

Maclean is now sounding the alarm about companies that post prolifically on sites such as LinkedIn, advertising remote roles with attractive salaries.<\/p>\n

\"Charlie<\/p>\n

Charlie Maclean fears she unwittingly handed over her data to a company that used it to train AI.<\/p>\n

Supplied<\/p>\n

After some digging online, she fears the company that sent an AI agent to interview her was simply after her personal data to train artificial intelligence – a potential scam or so-called “ghost” job, a scenario where a company advertises for a role it has no intention of filling.<\/p>\n

The experience has prompted Maclean to launch a petition to Parliament explicitly banning such job advertisements.<\/p>\n

‘Data is king’<\/p>\n

Senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Victoria University Ben Walker doesn’t have “case-closed” evidence of phantom job listings but feels there is enough online commentary to suggest advertised roles by certain companies were spurious.<\/p>\n

Companies under fire in online message threads for suspected data harvesting have not responded to RNZ’s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

While recruiters RNZ contacted had not come across ghost jobs in New Zealand, they had heard of such practices.<\/p>\n

One recruiter, with almost 20 years experience, said companies posting fake jobs to harvest candidate data was a new con for the industry and had been a topic of discussion among colleagues overseas.<\/p>\n

Chief executive of Tribe Group recruitment agency Bruce Pilbrow found the scenario plausible, and said it would be an effective way to gather core information.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot happening in the AI space and the online space in the sense of harvesting information,” he said. “Data is king.”<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

Andrew Lensen, senior lecturer in artificial intelligence at Victoria University.<\/p>\n

Supplied<\/p>\n

Fake job listing or not, Victoria University senior lecturer in artificial intelligence Andrew Lensen said there was growing concern about where personal information ended up.<\/p>\n

CVs and cover letters contained potentially valuable data, he said, including a person’s name, educational background and even an address.<\/p>\n

“It’s your career history, it’s what you’ve learned, the skills you have, and we often don’t think about it that carefully but that is a lot of information.<\/p>\n

“If it is going into any sort of database or system that could be used for things like AI in the future, then I think people are quite rightfully getting more and more concerned about how the data is being used and where it’s going.”<\/p>\n

Rapid recruitment a red flag<\/p>\n

In her months-long search for work, Maclean said she came across a handful of companies on LinkedIn – a professional networking platform – advertising remote jobs with inflated salaries that seemed to “go nowhere”.<\/p>\n

According to Walker, an intense recruitment drive could be a red flag.<\/p>\n

“Where it’s a company that you’ve never heard of suddenly doing those sorts of things, it potentially raises a few question marks and alarm bells about whether the jobs are legitimate or whether they may be a cover or some means to another end.”<\/p>\n

As a global platform, LinkedIn differed greatly from job sites such as SEEK and Trade Me, he said, and in his opinion it had undergone a transformation in recent years: “People talk about the slopification of LinkedIn.”<\/p>\n

In response to questions from RNZ, a LinkedIn spokesperson said the company was investing in free verifications for jobs, recruiters and company pages, and that every job must be authentic and accurately represented.<\/p>\n

Neither SEEK nor Trade Me considered ghost jobs to be a material issue on their sites, citing the financial commitment to advertise a role, verification processes, and the ability for job seekers to report suspect listings.<\/p>\n

A petition and a warning<\/p>\n

Maclean has since found work but the process was demoralising to the point that she almost forgot what she was good at.<\/p>\n

“Jobs that I was really keen on I even took to sending people cupcakes with a little QR code in the icing, literally just to cut through the noise to get a phone call.”<\/p>\n

The exhausting process, in addition to her experience with the suspect company, has prompted a petition to Parliament to see ghost jobs explicitly banned, in line with crackdowns overseas.<\/p>\n

“It’s incredibly difficult out there.<\/p>\n

“I can’t fix that for people but this seems like a really easy one … at least the things that you do put the effort in [for] should be real.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sitting across from the AI interview agent, Charlie Maclean tried to put her best foot forward, but it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-619772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}