My dad was an IT manager back in the 1980s, for a Fortune 500 company. He said it was a common end-run around certain compliance requirements. Like, if they had a candidate that they knew they wanted to hire for a position, but that required a public posting to ensure that hiring, in general, was fair to everyone, they would post the opening in the classified section of the Wall Street Journal, knowing that no one in their right mind would look there for job postings.