How to spot a ghost job before you apply

A ghost job is a posting for a role nobody is actively trying to fill. The seat was filled and the ad stayed up. The budget was frozen. The company is collecting resumes for later. You apply, nothing comes back, and you blame your resume when the problem was the posting.

You cannot always tell from the outside. You can rule out most of them in a couple of minutes, which is a better use of time than tailoring a resume for a role that closed in spring.

Why ghost jobs exist

• The role was filled and nobody took the posting down.
• Headcount was frozen after the posting went up, and it was never formally closed.
• The company runs an evergreen posting to keep a pipeline for roles it hires all year.
• An internal candidate already has the job, and the posting exists because policy says it must.
• A job board or aggregator copied the posting and kept its copy long after the company closed the original.

The last one is the most common, and it is the easiest to avoid. When a company closes a role in its applicant tracking system, the posting usually disappears from its own career page. Copies on other sites can live for weeks. The guide on recycled job ads covers that pattern in more detail.

Signs a posting might be a ghost

• It has been up for months without changes, or it keeps reappearing with a fresh date and the same text.
• The description names no team, no manager, no product, and no real location detail.
• The title or text says talent pool, general application, future opportunities, or evergreen.
• The company has announced layoffs or a hiring freeze while the role is still listed.
• You cannot find the role on the company's own career page, only on a board.
• The apply button leads to a generic careers page or a form that will not load.

One sign on its own proves little. Plenty of real roles have thin descriptions. Two or three together are a reason to keep your effort small.

A two-minute check before you apply

1. Find the posting on the company's own career page. If it is not there, stop. That is the strongest signal you will get.
2. Look at the link. A live role on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, or Workday has its own job ID in the URL. A closed one usually redirects to the main jobs page or shows a not-found message.
3. Read for specifics: the team, who the role reports to, what you would work on in the first months.
4. Open the application and make sure the form loads.
5. Glance at the rest of the career page. A company with three openings, one of which has been up for a year, tells you something.
6. If you know someone at the company, ask whether that team is actually hiring.

Evergreen postings are not always fake

Retail, nursing, sales, and support teams often hire continuously. An evergreen posting for those roles can be a real door. Apply if you want the job, but do not wait on that application before sending others.

Why a career-page list removes most of them

JobLookout reads company career pages directly, and a role leaves the list once it is gone from the company's site. Stale copies that only live on boards never make it in. That does not guarantee every listing is an active seat, because a company can leave a role up on its own page. It does remove the biggest source of ghost jobs. Start from a title, such as Software Engineer jobs in the United States or Registered Nurse jobs in the United States, or browse every title.

What to do when you suspect one

If the role is a strong fit and the application is short, send it and move on. Do not spend an hour rewriting your resume for it. Follow up once after a week or two if you have a contact. Then put your time into roles where the posting looks maintained, and track what you sent so the same ghost does not get a second application next month.