Company Posts Job Opening, Forgets To Remove Competitor's Name From Copy-Pasted Description
Writing job descriptions is tedious. We get it. Research shows that the average job description takes 2-4 hours to write from scratch when done properly—researching requirements, defining responsibilities, crafting compelling language, optimizing for SEO, ensuring compliance.
So naturally, hiring managers take shortcuts. One common shortcut: find a similar role at a competitor, copy their job description, and tweak it for your company.
Usually this works fine. You change the company name, adjust a few details, and boom—instant job description.
But what happens when you forget the most important part—changing the company name?
The Setup: A Rushed Job Posting
Let's call this company "TechCorp" (name changed). Mid-size SaaS company, about 500 employees, growing fast, hiring aggressively. They needed to hire a Senior Product Manager for a new product line launching in Q2.
The VP of Product asks the hiring manager to "get a job description posted ASAP so we can start sourcing candidates". Deadline: end of day. Time available: 2 hours. The hiring manager has 3 other meetings scheduled.
Rather than writing from scratch, the hiring manager does what many hiring managers do: searches LinkedIn for "Senior Product Manager" job postings at similar companies to use as reference.
They find a perfect match at "InnovateLabs" (name changed), a direct competitor with a nearly identical product and company size. The job description is well-written, comprehensive, and hits all the right notes. It's basically exactly what TechCorp needs, just with a different company name.
The hiring manager copies the entire job description into a Google Doc. The plan: change company names, adjust a few details, and send to the recruiter for posting.
Here's where it goes sideways.
The Copy-Paste Job (Emphasis On The "Paste" Part)
The hiring manager does a find-and-replace for "InnovateLabs" → "TechCorp" in the main body of the job description. They adjust the benefits section to match TechCorp's actual benefits. They change the location from San Francisco to Austin. They tweak the product details to match TechCorp's product line.
It takes 30 minutes. Feels efficient. Looks good.
The recruiter is also slammed. They skim the job description, confirm it looks professional, and immediately post it to all job boards and the company careers page. Total review time: 3 minutes. No additional editing or proofreading.
The job goes live at 4:47 PM on a Wednesday.
By 5:30 PM, it's been viewed 2,400 times on LinkedIn.
By Thursday morning, it's been viewed 18,000 times.
And that's when the emails start coming in.
The Candidates Notice What TechCorp Didn't
Email #2, Thursday 10:14 AM: "Just wanted to give you a heads up that your job posting for Senior PM still has your competitor's name in multiple places. Might want to fix that. LOL."
Email #3, Thursday 11:02 AM: "Is this role actually at TechCorp or InnovateLabs? The job title says InnovateLabs but it's on TechCorp's careers page. I'm genuinely confused and don't want to apply to the wrong company."
The recruiter sees these emails and panics. They pull up the job posting. Sure enough, the opening line reads: "Join InnovateLabs as a Senior Product Manager and help us revolutionize [product category]!"
There are at least 4 other references to "InnovateLabs" scattered throughout the description. The hiring manager's find-and-replace missed them because they appeared in different contexts—"InnovateLabs team," "at InnovateLabs," "InnovateLabs' mission," etc.
The job has been live for 18 hours. It's been viewed 23,000+ times on LinkedIn, Indeed, and TechCorp's careers page.
The Internet Has Opinions
Top comments:
"If this is how much care they put into recruiting, imagine working there."
"InnovateLabs should sue for trademark infringement. TechCorp is literally advertising themselves as InnovateLabs." (This comment is hyperbolic but gets 1,200 upvotes anyway.)
The Scramble To Fix It
Thursday afternoon, TechCorp's talent acquisition leadership holds an emergency meeting. They immediately take down the job posting from all platforms—LinkedIn, Indeed, careers page, everywhere.
The Competitor Gets Involved (And It's Awkward)
InnovateLabs—the company whose job description was plagiarized—notices the viral posts. Their marketing team sees an opportunity. They post on LinkedIn:
The Aftermath: Expensive Lessons
Immediate impact:
- TechCorp's job posting was viewed 47,000 times before removal—most of those views after the error went viral
- 127 people applied—many just to comment on the error in their cover letters or ask clarifying questions
- Reddit post reached 400K+ views, LinkedIn discussions reached 200K+ views, various Twitter threads and newsletter mentions pushed total awareness to 1M+ people
Long-term consequences:
- TechCorp's employer brand suffered. Glassdoor ratings dropped 0.3 stars over the following month with multiple reviews mentioning "lack of attention to detail" and "copying competitors"
- Application rates for other TechCorp job postings decreased 18% in the following 6 weeks compared to previous periods
- The hiring manager and recruiter both received formal written warnings in their HR files
- TechCorp implemented a new job posting approval process requiring 3-person review before any posting goes live
- The Senior Product Manager role took an additional 6 weeks to fill because the viral incident scared off some qualified candidates who didn't want to join a "disorganized" company
The Lessons: Proofread Your Job Postings
Don't plagiarize competitor job descriptions: It's lazy, potentially illegal (copyright issues), and as we've seen, incredibly easy to mess up. Write your own descriptions. Use competitor postings for inspiration and benchmarking, but write original content.
If you do copy, proofread obsessively: If you're going to use a template or copy sections from another source, review it 3+ times specifically looking for remnants of the original source. Have someone else review it too—fresh eyes catch mistakes you'll miss.
Find-and-replace isn't foolproof: Automated find-and-replace misses variations, context-specific uses, and non-standard formatting. Manually read the entire document after using find-and-replace.
Implement a review process: All job postings should be reviewed by at least 2 people before going live. One person to write, another to review for errors, accuracy, and compliance.
Your job postings represent your brand: Candidates judge your company based on the quality and professionalism of your job postings. Sloppy job descriptions signal a sloppy company.
The Bottom Line
A rushed copy-paste job turned into a viral employer brand disaster because nobody took 5 minutes to proofread the job posting.
The role took 6 extra weeks to fill. The company's reputation took a hit that lasted months. The competitor gained free marketing and dozens of additional applicants.
All because someone hit "copy-paste" and forgot to finish the edit.
The moral: Slow down. Proofread. Have someone else review. And for the love of everything holy, if you're going to copy a competitor's job description, at least change their name to yours.
Otherwise, you're not recruiting for your company—you're accidentally recruiting for theirs.
Sources:
- Reddit: r/recruitinghell - Company Copies Competitor Job Posting Fails Edit
- SHRM: Job Posting Plagiarism Competitor Name Inclusion Examples
- ERE: Job Description Plagiarism Competitor Job Postings 2025
- Glassdoor: Job Posting Errors Candidate Confusion Examples
- LinkedIn: Viral Recruiting Mistakes Reputation Impact 2025
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