No vaccine required: Some companies using new tactics to fill open positions

Some companies on Indeed.com are advertising their open positions as a “no vaccine required” job.

The new tactic comes as employers are having to decide between a COVID-19 vaccine mandate or regular testing, and their decision will determine their pool of candidates.

"Part of the reason of having the testing option in place is companies think that, by not requiring a vaccine mandate, they’ll be able to access all those people in the labor market who don’t want to get vaccinated," said Brian Kropp, the chief of research at Gartner Inc.

Kropp said about 25 percent of the workforce in the United States is not vaccinated.

​​"There’s actually a lot of people out there that you can potentially tap into from a labor perspective market by not having a vaccine mandate," said Kropp.

Some of the job postings advertising as “no vaccine required” were positions in health care in Charlotte and at Prana Health in Sanford. The open jobs included a medical assistant and an allergy nurse.

"I didn't notice them in the health care field," said attorney Katie Abernethy. "I'll be honest, my initial reaction was, well, that's kind of ingenious."

A spokesperson for Prana Health told WRAL News the company did not post the listings and doesn't know who did. The postings were taken down shortly after WRAL asked about them on Wednesday.

"It could just indicate someone from their community relations team saw it and said, 'Hey, this is not a message we want out there,'" said Abernethy.

Abernethy added that people are having a difficult time finding jobs that don’t require a vaccine.

"[I get] calls from people who are very well educated, very well experienced, who work for companies that are subject to the vaccine mandate and are just absolutely, positively opposed to getting the vaccine," she said.

Meanwhile, Kropp said both companies and employees will have to be much more transparent about their requirements, and there could be even more “no vaccine required” job postings in the future.

Right now, the Biden administration's vaccine mandate is working its way through the courts.