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Ghost job checker
Paste the link to the posting. We open it, read the real posting date straight off the page, look for duplicates, and check the thing no job board will show you: whether anyone at that company is reachable at all.
What happens when you paste a link
We open the posting ourselves, right then. Not a database lookup. A live read of the page you're looking at.
1. We read the real posting date
Nearly every job page carries structured data for Google with the true date inside it. Lever's API goes further and exposes the exact moment the req was created.
That's the date the listing can't fake.
"Posted 2 days ago" on the card means nothing when the page's own data says it went up in April.
2. We look for copies
A live search for the same role at the same company. Two or three copies up at once, with posted dates weeks apart, is the repost pattern caught in the act.
We also check our own first-seen ledger, 4,658 postings and growing. Every link anyone checks here gets added to it.
The tool gets sharper with every person who uses it.
3. We check the wording
"Talent community". "General application". "Multiple locations, all levels". These aren't vacancies. They're collectors. And on 29 July we caught a live posting whose entire description was lorem ipsum, so yes, we check for that too.
4. We check whether anyone is reachable
This is the one everybody else skips. Other checkers ask whether the posting is dead. We ask whether a human is behind it.
Our contact finder either turns up a named person at a company or it doesn't. Across the 551 postings in the Ghost Job Index, 329 of them had nobody reachable at all. That's 3 in 5.
The score, and how to read it
Every signal carries points. Ghost evidence adds. Signs of life subtract. The total lands on a 0 to 100 ghost score.
Under 25 means nothing we ran flags it. 25 to 54 means enough is off to treat it as a long shot. 55 and up means don't spend your morning on it.
Two honest caveats. A low score means we found nothing against the posting, not that the job is guaranteed real. And the result always lists what we couldn't check. A score built on two signals never dresses up as a score built on six.
How to spot a ghost job without any tool
- The date keeps moving. Same title, same company, a new "posted today" every few weeks. That's a repost cycle.
- Nobody is named. No recruiter, no hiring manager, no team lead anywhere on the listing or the careers page.
- The salary band is enormous. A range that spans two seniority levels usually means the level hasn't been decided, which means the req hasn't been approved.
- It's been open past 60 days. Real reqs close. Greenhouse's own number for dead listings sits around 18 to 22 percent.
- The description could be any company. No product, no team, no specifics. Copy that generic is written to attract, not to hire.
- Applying goes into a portal and nothing else. No confirmation from a person, no name in the reply, nothing to answer.
Knowing it's a ghost is only half of it
The other half is that most real postings still have nobody reading the inbox. Sendout filters ghost postings before it applies, then emails the hiring manager from your own address and answers the recruiter when they reply. One week free, no card.
Try Sendout freeQuestions people ask
How can I check if a job posting is real?
Check three things. How old the posting really is rather than the date it shows. Whether the same role has been posted before. Whether you can find a named person behind it.
A posting whose date keeps refreshing while the role never closes is the clearest signal there is.
What is a ghost job?
A listing that's open but that nobody is filling. Some are dead reqs left online. Some are talent pools collecting CVs. Some get reposted on a cycle to look busy.
Published estimates put the dead-listing share at 18 to 22 percent. In our own sample of 551 postings, 329 had no reachable human attached.
Is this free?
Yes. No signup either.
Type a company and a title, get the result. We don't ask for your email to show it to you.
Why do companies post jobs they aren't hiring for?
To collect CVs for later, to look like they're growing, to test what salary the market will take, and sometimes because nobody remembered to take the listing down. None of those reasons involve reading your application.
Where does the data come from?
Our own scans. We hunt jobs for the people who use Sendout. Every posting we pass gets recorded in the ledger, matched or not. The monthly numbers are published in the Ghost Job Index.
Related: The Ghost Job Index · How to spot ghost jobs · Live jobs, ghost-filtered