A ghost job is an advert not tied to an active attempt to fill one immediate vacancy. It may be stale, evergreen, speculative or connected to a process whose shortlist is already settled, although the advert alone cannot reveal intent.

How common are ghost jobs?

There is no reliable market-wide rate because studies use different definitions and cannot observe a recruiter's intent from the advert alone. Stale, evergreen and speculative listings exist, but a single headline percentage is not defensible.

Why do companies post jobs they aren't filling?

Common reasons include building a candidate pipeline for the future, keeping a presence to look like the company is growing, satisfying a policy that requires roles to be advertised externally even when an internal candidate is favoured, and recruitment agencies blanket-posting to inflate their active brief count.

How do I spot a ghost job?

You cannot know intent from an advert alone. An old downstream copy, repeated agency versions or a listing absent from the employer's current careers page are reasons to verify the original before spending time on an application.

By Omar A. · September 2026 · 7 min read

Ghost jobs: why some adverts aren't actively hiring

You apply for a role and hear nothing. Sometimes your application simply wasn't selected; sometimes the advert stayed live although active hiring had stopped. The difficult part is that silence alone cannot tell you which happened.

Applying into silence is miserable. You tailored the CV, wrote the cover letter and submitted it, then received neither a rejection nor an acknowledgement. After enough repetitions, it is easy to assume the problem must be you.

Sometimes the advert is not tied to active hiring. It may be stale, evergreen or speculative, although you cannot infer the recruiter's intent from silence alone. Knowing those possibilities exist stops every unanswered application becoming a verdict on your CV.

A FirstPost graphic showing same-day source monitoring, a repost-history badge and a warning signal for repeated adverts, with a reminder that recruiter intent remains private. — FirstPost shows fresh source listings and prior repost history. The signal helps you check the role; it does not claim to read the recruiter's mind.

What counts as a ghost job

"Ghost job" is a loose term, so let's be precise. It covers a family of adverts that share one trait: there is no real, imminent hire attached to them. The main types:

Already filled. The role was real, but it closed - sometimes weeks ago - and the advert was never taken down.
Internal candidate, external advert. An employer may advertise while considering someone internally. External candidates may still be considered, and the advert alone cannot tell you the weighting.
Pipeline-building. The company is collecting CVs for a role it might open later. Your application goes into a database, not a hiring process.
The "always hiring" evergreen. Common for sales, hospitality and big graduate programmes. The advert never closes because it isn't tied to a specific opening.
Agency duplication. The same brief can appear under several agency names or requisition IDs. Several adverts may represent one underlying opening rather than several distinct jobs.

None of these is necessarily malicious, and the advert alone cannot prove which explanation applies. The practical risk is spending real effort on a listing that is not tied to one immediate, open vacancy.

So how common are they, really?

This is where precision matters, because headline numbers are often built from surveys that define “ghost job” differently and rely on self-reported intent. They cannot produce a reliable market-wide share of adverts that are inactive.

Stale, evergreen, speculative and duplicated listings do exist, but neither a board copy nor our own monitoring can reveal the recruiter's private intent. The useful response is to verify the employer's current source listing and avoid treating silence as proof of either a ghost job or a weak CV.

Why companies do it

It helps to understand the incentives, because they explain why this won't fix itself. A few drivers:

Employer presentation. An employer may be slow to remove a listing or may keep an evergreen page for recurring roles. That does not prove an attempt to look busier than it is.
Future pipeline. Some adverts collect interest for recurring or anticipated hiring rather than one immediate vacancy.
Process. An advert can remain public while an internal candidate, approval or existing shortlist is still being handled.
Downstream refresh. A board copy can outlive the employer's original because removal has to travel through another ingestion and indexing cycle.

How to spot one before you waste an evening

You cannot verify intent from the outside, but you can run a few checks before investing an evening. None is conclusive on its own; each is a reason to verify the employer source and the role's history.

An old copy remains on a downstream board. Age alone does not prove a role is dead, but check whether the employer's current careers page still lists it.
Identical copies appear under several agency names. They may represent one underlying opening rather than several separate jobs, so verify the employer and original requisition.
The advert gives little detail about the team or reporting line. That can justify more research, but it does not prove the role is inactive. Look for the current employer listing and ask a specific question if contact details are available.
Compensation is described only as "competitive". That may make the advert less useful, but it is not evidence of a ghost job. Our piece on salary transparency explains what the omission can and cannot tell you.
The application form is unusually long. Friction says something about the process, not whether the vacancy is active. Decide whether the role is worth the effort after checking the employer's current page.

The fix isn't a better filter. It's a fresher source.

Most “spot the ghost job” advice asks you to detect a dead role after the fact, often from a downstream copy whose status may lag behind the employer's page. That is useful triage, but it cannot reveal the recruiter's intent.

The cleaner move is to change where you verify the role. Check the company's own careers page before relying on a downstream copy. That page can still be stale, but it is the employer's current public version of the vacancy and removes one layer of copying and delayed updates. Our guide to monitoring careers pages covers manual checks, employer alerts, page-change tools and services such as FirstPost. FirstPost checks supported sources throughout the day, so a new matching role can reach your dashboard the same day, and the daily digest collects the latest matches without asking you to revisit every employer. Starter is free.

FirstPost also labels the repost history it has seen for the same role. That history powers a warning explaining that repeated adverts can be associated with high turnover, a perpetual advert or a hard-to-fill position. It is a useful ghost-job hint, not a claim that we know the recruiter's private intent.

What direct monitoring can't catch

An employer can still keep a filled role on its own page, advertise while favouring an internal candidate or run an evergreen listing. The source and repost signal cannot reveal that intent. They do give you something concrete: a fresher listing, visible history and less confusion from downstream copies. When a suitable role is genuinely open, finding it at that source before the queue or shortlist forms gives your application a real visibility advantage. Apply early without rushing the application.

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