A ghost job is a posting for a role the company has no plan to fill soon. Roughly one in five listings fits that description: Greenhouse classifies 18 to 22 percent of the jobs posted on its platform in any given quarter as ghost jobs. You can usually spot one in about two minutes, before you spend an hour tailoring a resume for it.
This guide covers why companies do it, the nine signals that give a posting away, and what to do when you find one.
Why companies post jobs they don't fill
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Nobody posts a ghost job by accident. Resume Builder surveyed 1,641 hiring managers in May 2024 and found that 40 percent of companies had posted a fake job in the past year, and 30 percent had one live at the time of the survey.
The reasons they gave are more mundane than sinister. Sixty-seven percent said the postings make the company look open to outside talent. Sixty-six percent wanted to suggest the company is growing. Fifty-nine percent were collecting resumes for later. And 63 percent admitted the postings exist to make overworked staff believe help is coming.
Add two more that never show up in surveys because nobody thinks of them as fake. Evergreen roles: a company that hires 40 sales reps a year keeps one "Account Executive" listing open permanently. And compliance postings: some employers advertise a role publicly even when an internal candidate has already been chosen, because policy says they must.
The result is the same for you. The posting is real, the hiring manager is real, and the job is not available this month.
How long ghost jobs stay up
Age is the single most useful signal, so it gets its own table. The same Resume Builder survey asked how long fake postings stay live.
| Time the posting stays live | Share of companies |
|---|---|
| Less than a week | 6% |
| A few weeks | 28% |
| About a month | 31% |
| About three months | 19% |
| About six months | 7% |
| A year or more | 9% |
Read the bottom three rows together: 35 percent of fake postings sit for three months or longer. A real vacancy with a budget behind it rarely survives that long without either filling or being pulled.
The nine signals
No single one proves anything. Three or more, and you're probably looking at a ghost.
1. The posting is older than 30 days
Most boards show the original post date if you look for it, and LinkedIn labels a listing "reposted" when it has been refreshed. A role that has been open for six weeks at a company that gets hundreds of applicants is either not a priority or not real.
2. It has been reposted more than once
Reposting resets the date without changing the intent. If you saw the same title, the same copy and the same team three months ago, treat it as an evergreen listing.
3. No salary in a state that requires one
This is the clearest tell in the US. Colorado, California, New York, Washington, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington, D.C. all require a pay range in the posting itself, with employer-size thresholds that vary by state. A company that hires seriously in those places has someone making sure the range is there. A Denver or New York City posting with no range means nobody checked it, and nobody checks a posting they don't plan to hire from.
4. The duties are vague
"Drive cross-functional initiatives" and "support business goals" are placeholder text. A manager who needs someone next month writes about the actual backlog: the migration, the territory, the three direct reports.
5. No team, no manager, no product named
Real postings leak specifics: "You'll join a team of six reporting to the Head of Growth." Ghosts read the same for every department.
6. The same title is open in five cities
One role, five locations, identical copy. That is a pipeline posting, not five vacancies.
7. The company just announced layoffs or a freeze
Search the company name in a news tab before you apply. Listings often stay live for weeks after a hiring freeze because nobody is assigned to take them down.
8. It lives only on aggregators
A real role sits on the company's careers page and gets pushed to at least one board. A listing you can only find on scraped aggregator sites may have closed months ago at the source. Check the careers page first.
9. Nobody at the company has mentioned it
Recruiters and hiring managers share real openings on LinkedIn because they want them filled. Silence around a supposedly urgent role tells you something.
Paste a suspicious listing into the ghost job detector and it checks the posting date, repost history, salary disclosure and vagueness for you, then gives the listing a score.
What to do when you find one
Apply anyway, but cheaply. Greenhouse's survey of 2,500 workers in the US, UK and Germany found that three in five candidates suspected they had met a ghost job, so you can't avoid them entirely, and a resume sitting in a pipeline sometimes turns into a call six months later. Just don't spend your best hour on it. Send your standard resume, skip the custom cover letter, and move on.
Ask the recruiter one question. If a recruiter or hiring manager is named, send a two-line message: "Is this role actively interviewing right now, and when do you expect to make a hire?" A real vacancy gets a real answer within a day or two. Silence, or "we're always looking for great people," is also an answer. The email writer drafts a polite version if you'd rather not start from a blank screen.
Set a time budget. Decide how much effort a listing earns from its score. Fresh, specific, salary shown, recruiter named: full tailoring, maybe 45 minutes. Two or three signals: standard resume, 10 minutes. Four or more: skip it, or apply only if the form takes one click.
Whatever tier a job lands in, make sure the resume you send actually parses. A quick ATS check takes a minute and matters far more for the real listings than for the ghosts.
Where salary laws make ghosts easier to spot
Salary transparency laws don't ban ghost jobs. They force a company to commit to a number, and companies that aren't really hiring tend to skip that step.
In the US, the twelve jurisdictions listed under signal 3 require a range in the posting. Thresholds run from a single employee in Colorado and D.C. to 30 employees in Minnesota, and Delaware joins the list in September 2027, according to the same Jackson Lewis summary.
In the EU, the Pay Transparency Directive gives applicants a right to pay information before employment and bans questions about salary history. Member states had to transpose it by 7 June 2026, so expect ranges to become standard on European postings from this year.
Outside those jurisdictions, a missing salary tells you less. Lean on the other eight signals.
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FAQ
What percentage of job postings are ghost jobs?
The best platform-level figure is Greenhouse's: 18 to 22 percent of postings on its system in a typical quarter. Employer surveys point the same way, with Resume Builder finding that 30 percent of companies had a fake posting live in mid-2024. Call it one in five and you won't be far off.
Is it a waste of time to apply to a ghost job?
Not entirely, as long as it costs you almost nothing. Pipeline postings do sometimes convert when a budget opens up, and your resume is already in the system. The mistake is spending 45 minutes tailoring for a listing that shows four of the nine signals. Send the standard version and spend the saved time on a fresh posting.
Why do companies repost the same job every few weeks?
Usually to keep it near the top of search results without committing to a hire. Some are evergreen roles that fill continuously. Some are placeholders for headcount that was promised but not yet approved. Either way, a listing you have seen three times in three months is not urgent for the company, so it shouldn't be urgent for you.
How do I check whether a job posting is still open?
Find it on the company's own careers page rather than on the board where you first saw it. If it isn't there, it has probably closed. If it is, note the post date and, where a recruiter is named, send the one-line question about interview timing. That combination settles it in a day.
