#JobSearch : Fake Job Postings Are Becoming a Real Problem. Question: Do You Know How to Spot a Fake Job Post?

Lots of job seekers have a story about the postings that linger online but never seem to get filled. Those so-called ghost jobs—the roles that companies advertise but have no intention of filling—may account for as much as one in five jobs advertised online.

That’s according to an analysis of internal data by Greenhouse, a hiring platform that examined its clients’ job postings and hiring action over the past year. Greenhouse and LinkedIn recently have begun tagging job listings as verified to give workers better information amid the rash of ghost listings.

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The listings are dispiriting for workers, leading many to distrust potential employers and make a difficult process feel rigged against them.

Using data that Greenhouse collects from its clients who hire in technology, finance and healthcare, among other sectors, Greenhouse figured out that between 18% and 22% of jobs advertised in 2024 were appeals for new workers that never actually got filled.

“It’s kind of a horror show,” says Jon Stross, the company’s president and co-founder. “The job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.”

Companies have a number of nefarious and normal reasons for posting not-quite-real jobs. They may want to suggest they’re growing even when they aren’t, or may keep postings up in case they get a candidate who’s too good to pass up.

The postings add to a confounding market for workers. Economic data is pointing to healthy hiring—including a robust jobs report that showed the 256,000 new jobs were added in December. At the same time white-collar workers say it’s harder to get hired and blame everything from artificial intelligence to tighter budgets.

Greenhouse can see behind the curtain on its clients’ hiring because its software is used to create job descriptions and post them on corporate websites and job boards like Indeed. Greenhouse can also see when a job is posted and who, if anyone, is hired. (Stross notes most of Greenhouse’s 7,500-plus customers, which include J.D. Power, Major League Baseball and HubSpot, don’t post ghost jobs. Or at least not too many of them.)

Still, nearly 70% of companies using Greenhouse posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of last year. And 15% of companies were regular offenders, with one in every two jobs they advertised languishing with no hire. The industries with the highest percentage of ghost jobs were construction, the arts, food and beverage, and legal.

Frustration builds

Serena Dao started searching for a job last January, months before her May graduation from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. A scientist by training, she hoped getting an M.B.A. would propel her into nontechnical management roles in healthcare or the climate-technology industry.

Out of more than 260 applications, she received 124 rejection letters and ultimately never heard back from 116 companies, including several where she had already made it through two or three rounds of interviews, flown in to meet with executives or tackled take-home assignments that required several hours of work.

She wondered whether some of those job listings were real. And after putting in the work for other companies’ vetting processes, she said she didn’t appreciate getting ghosted.

She made it to five final rounds with no offer. Her breakthrough came thanks, in part, to her network. Dao applied online for a position with The Engine, a Boston-based startup incubator spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After Dao did her initial rounds of interviews and assignments, a managing partner of a firm where she did a fellowship went to an Engine event and spoke highly of her to one of the hiring managers.

“People want a candidate that is at 120%, not even 100%,” she says. “I’m really happy and lucky to be there.”

Networking may be more key to landing a job than at any point in recent history—and it has to be more than transactional, says Glen Loveland, a senior career coach with Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management who worked in human resources with Disney.

“Authentic relationships are the bedrock of sustainable success. The days of simply uploading résumés to job boards and hoping for the best are rapidly fading,” he says.

How to spot a fake

There are many reasons why companies post jobs they never fill, recruiters, executives and human-resource professionals say.

To spot a fake job, look for listings without timestamps, posted months ago, or not appearing on the employer’s website. Consider calling the employer directly for more information

Some companies pause hiring when they lose a contract or are worried about the economy, and many job ads live online long after the role is filled. Ghost jobs could be advertised to comply with federal law, which requires certain roles to be posted publicly, after an external job candidate has already been presented by a recruiter, or an internal hire has been flagged for promotion.

Some staffing agencies also post jobs that don’t really exist so they can go to a company and pitch their services by showing off a great portfolio of talented people who could be hired.

To give applicants better information, Greenhouse rolled out badges that attest clients have demonstrated they are responsive to job seekers, which means they fill almost all roles and write rejection letters instead of ghosting candidates. And late last year, LinkedIn started tagging job listings on its site as “verified” when it is confirmed the role is real, says Rohan Rajiv, LinkedIn’s head of career products. As of late Friday, more than half the jobs advertised on LinkedIn were listed as verified, the company said.

There is no perfect way to discern whether you’re pondering a ghost job, says Peter Duris, chief executive of Kickresume, a website that uses AI to tailor résumés to job requirements. But if the listing doesn’t have a clear timestamp or was posted months ago, be cautious. Most jobs are filled faster than that.

Ads on job boards like Indeed that don’t appear on the employer’s own website are also suspect. Duris advises calling the employer directly.