Ghost Interviewer’s Data Harvest Spurs Petition to Ban ‘Non‑existent’ Job Ads

Charlie Maclean found herself in a virtual interview with a glowing green screen that asked for her employment history. She quickly realised she was talking to a bot, not a hiring manager.

The bot demanded her salary history, preferred commute distance, and even a photo of her favourite cheese. When the call ended, she knew her data had been sent to a cloud‑based analytics server.

She has since launched a petition to Parliament demanding that employers provide a physical address or a verified link before inviting candidates to interview, effectively banning ads for jobs that do not exist.

The petition has already attracted over 4,000 signatures from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and has prompted local start‑ups to rethink their hiring pipelines, with some offering paper‑based interviews for the record.

Industry insiders say the only way to avoid a virtual interview is to apply through a physical advert in the New Zealand Herald or to submit a résumé to a recruiter with a real phone number.

Maclean urges job seekers to keep personal information private and to double‑check that any interview request comes from a legitimate source—preferably a human.