[sershe]

How is it different in terms of breach of professional ethics than practice interviews many in tech do, never intending to take the offer? I personally have never done them (part laziness, part ethics, part lucky to have little experience of job insecurity), but have been told a few times by people that do that is stupid that I should stay sharp (and waste 5 people's time to help me for free :))

[ZuoCen_Liu]

I see the parallel, but there’s a key difference in intent and scale. A candidate doing a practice interview is often a defensive reaction to a volatile market—a way to maintain a personal skill. A company posting 'ghost jobs' is a systematic corporate strategy that pollutes market data and wastes thousands of collective hours. One is an individual trying to survive the system; the other is the system itself failing to act in good faith.