Recruiters dish on ‘ghost jobs’: Why companies post them, and how to outsmart them

Either you’ve lived it, or you’ve heard about it from friends: the endless job search, featuring hundreds of applications sent. Maybe one or two companies reply . . . that end up being bots. It can feel like your résumé has been sucked into a black hole. 

And in a way, it has. 

It’s perhaps been consumed by a “ghost job”—a job listing that looks legitimate, with a full description for a role, maybe even a starting date and a LinkedIn link.

There’s a twist, though. The job isn’t real. It’s either an essentially fake listing for a job that doesn’t really exist, or the role isn’t really open. And they make up roughly 40% of job listings, according to a 2024 Resume Builder survey. 

“There may be no hiring manager on the back end, or it’s not really a position that exists,” says Brandi Britton, an executive director at recruiting company Robert Half. They’re becoming more common, and companies do this for a variety of reasons. But in a job market as miserable as this one, they can feel like a cruel trick on job applicants—which is exactly how the recruiters Fast Company interviewed for this story describe them.

“A lot of companies see this as a harmless strategy,” says Michael Baynes, cofounder and CEO of financial consulting firm Clarify Capital. His company led a 2025 survey that asked 1,000 U.S. employers why they weren’t “actively trying to fill current open job positions.” Answers included: “their company is always open to new people” (37%), “to have an active pool of applications in case of turnover” (22%), and “in case irresistible candidates apply” (16%). But frustrated job seekers feel misled. 

Why would companies bother to post jobs they’re not hiring for? And how can you spot them? Fast Company talked to several hiring professionals—who point-blank call the increasingly common practice toxic.

Read on where we’ll cover:

• How to spot ghost jobs a mile away
• Which types of jobs tend to be magnets for ghost jobs
• Why recruiters think it’s a failing strategy for both applicants and employers, but why it persists

Who’s posting ghost jobs and why?

Recruiters who spoke with Fast Company for this story say posting ghost jobs might even damage companies’ reputations with job seekers who come to find them unreliable. But that’s not stopping companies of all stripes from posting notices for ghost jobs. 

Tech, education, manufacturing, healthcare, and retail are posting the most, in that order, per Clarify Capital’s survey. But recruiters who spoke with Fast Company say it’s about equally prevalent across industries. 

“Ghost jobs are usually for roles that are more entry level, more junior, that have multiple head count, or for companies that know they’re going to be hiring tens of hundreds that year, especially with bigger companies,” says Lamar Nava, vice president of customer services at Betts Recruiting. She’s seen a lot of employers post them, particularly when “hiring took a big dip” in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns. They were either posting for roles they assumed would open back up in the future, or trying to look more like they were thriving while they were struggling.

But “pipelining for roles that aren’t open”—aka building a talent pool to potentially tap for future roles when it’s not time to actually hire—is a request Nava’s employer clients have been making for the past decade. It’s one of the most typical reasons recruiters see companies posting ghost jobs. Sometimes, Nava’s clients will fill a role and then ask her to continue sending through candidates for that pipeline, just in case they find someone really good.

“I have always been very against that. Not only is it a huge waste of time,” Nava says, “but it’s a horrible candidate experience.”

Bill Sofio, an Express Employment Professionals and Specialized Recruiting Group franchise owner, says companies create pipelines for specific roles via ghost jobs because those companies have already filled roles with overqualified candidates who they fear will leave once the job market improves. The biggest problem with this pipelining technique, says Robert Half’s Britton, is that “most companies never end up going back to that pool of candidates.” Either their priorities change, or they simply don’t have the bandwidth.

Then there’s company reputation. 

Posting lots of job openings can indicate a company’s success, either for the sake of potential candidates, or for investors. But Nava thinks it can have the opposite effect: When a role is open for so long, it can make people suspect of the company and ultimately hurt its brand. That’s despite companies posting ghost jobs to signal growth.

“They want to show the market exists [for that role], and there is a need,” says Gillian Robles, vice president of accounts and growth at Maven Recruiting, even though “they don’t necessarily have the budget or head count to hire.” 

Ghost job postings may also serve to test out the overall candidate pool. 

A couple of years ago, in the tech space, Nava says, “people would post to test out potential salaries for specific areas . . . just see what their talent pool would look like.” Now, she adds, there’s so much technology that can do that for companies—like websites that offer salary benchmarking tools—that ascertaining possible ranges through job postings ranks among the least efficient ways to get that information. 

Still, some hiring managers, particularly newer ones at smaller companies with fewer resources, may post jobs to simply scope out the candidate scene. 

“They post a ghost job to potentially see: What is out there? How do I look for this? What should I price this at?” Robles says. They want to see what’s out there “before engaging with candidates.”

Sometimes, companies list ghost jobs as a signal for current employees—particularly underperforming ones. “They throw the job posting out there while the underperforming employee is on a performance improvement plan,” Sofio says. While he interprets that as companies hedging their bets, others see it as an explicit threat to employees—as in, you’d better shape up because you’re replaceable. 

Lastly, certain companies or scenarios necessitate posting jobs that a company’s already hired for. For example, says Britton, some government entities “are required to post to make sure they consider all applicants” and to show they’re recruiting from a diverse pool, even if they’re not. In situations where companies want to hire someone specific from abroad, who would join with an H-1B visa, they’re obligated to post that role to the job market in the U.S. to prove that it’s specialized enough to necessitate hiring from abroad.

How do you spot a ghost job?

Fortunately for job seekers, there are a few tells that a post for an open position isn’t real. 

Look out for “long-running job postings with no updates, or postings that appear and disappear all the time,” Sofio says. That may seem obvious, but Robles cautions that a job that’s been up for six months could mean two things. “It could be an evergreen posting, or it’s a stale job,” she says. If it’s “evergreen,” it doesn’t mean it’s not a ghost. It could represent wishful thinking—the company wants to always be hiring for that position, so they leave up the posting even when hiring has come to a standstill. 

“Vague” job descriptions, says Britton, can also mean a posting is fake, as can ones with start dates from a few months before the time you’re seeing it. (An August start date listed on a post that’s up in October constitutes a red flag.)

Some signs point to real jobs. On LinkedIn, for example, you can see if a job has been “promoted,” meaning a company spent extra money to get that post in front of more candidates. “You wouldn’t necessarily do that if this is a ghost job,” Robles says. 

She adds that “clear next steps” in a job posting is a positive sign. “Is there a specific hiring manager tied to the job posting?” she says. “If there’s no contact information, to me, that’s a red sign.”

Lingering specters

That said, some ghost jobs even lead candidates to interviews. Even if there are no plans to hire, they could sometimes just take advantage of the growing candidate pools they create.

In that case, candidates should ask their employer contacts why the position is open, how long they’ve been looking to fill it, and what they’re not seeing, but would like to see, in the candidates who have applied. Questions that drill down on these specifics, says Robles, can help reveal to candidates whether companies have a “real need” or if they’re being “wishy-washy.” 

Overwhelmingly, recruiters who spoke with Fast Company felt that posting ghost jobs was bad corporate practice. 

“You’re not only frustrating a whole bunch of people,” says Sofio, “but those people talk to the people you’re trying to attract.” 

Nava calls it “cruel” to job seekers, who are in a vulnerable position. Despite job seekers voicing frustrations over nonresponsive job postings, some signs point to the practice letting up. 

New Jersey, Kentucky, and California have all introduced legislation that would require companies to remove inactive job postings or disclose if a posting is for a future opening. Plus, Clarify Capital saw the rate of employers who kept job postings active for more than 30 days go from 68% in 2022 to just about 33% in 2025.

Robles advises optimism. With companies using more tech like AI to search through candidates’ résumés, they might have an easier time returning to those pipelines their ghost job postings filled that they previously didn’t have the bandwidth to meaningfully explore. In other words, ending up in a ghost job-fueled talent pipeline may not be as hopeless as it once was.

“Technology tools can pull your application again to the surface when needed,” she says of the increasing use of AI in hiring.

Perhaps, then, unlike a ghost job that was never really real—your very real application comes back from the dead.

“If you encounter a ghost job,” notes Robles, “maybe it comes back around.”

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