You found the perfect posting. Senior Data Engineer, remote-friendly, stack matches yours exactly. You spend two hours tailoring your resume, another hour on a cover letter, and you submit — feeling good about this one.

Then: nothing. Not even a rejection. The posting is still up three months later.

There’s a real chance that job was never actually open. Recent labor market research has found that a significant share of online job postings — in some analyses, over a quarter of listings, and closer to half in tech specifically — are what’s commonly called “ghost jobs”: postings that aren’t tied to an active, fillable role.

This isn’t always malicious. Companies post ghost jobs for a range of reasons: keeping a pipeline “warm” in case someone great applies, satisfying a legal requirement to post a role externally before promoting internally, gauging market interest before committing budget, or simply forgetting to take down an old listing. Whatever the reason, the effect on you is the same — time spent applying with zero chance of a callback.

Here’s how to spot the warning signs before you invest hours in an application.

Signs a posting might be a ghost job

1. It’s been reposted repeatedly

If you’ve seen the same posting from the same company appear, disappear, and reappear over several months, that’s one of the strongest signals. A role that’s genuinely open and actively being filled doesn’t usually need to be reposted every few weeks — that pattern suggests either the role keeps falling through after interviews, or it was never seriously being filled in the first place.

2. Vague or inflated scope

Postings that combine three distinct jobs into one (“Data Engineer / Data Scientist / Analytics Manager”) or use scope so broad it could apply to almost anyone are a signal the company may not have a clearly defined, budgeted role — sometimes this is a sign they’re fishing for talent to see what’s out there rather than filling a specific seat.

3. “Always hiring” language

Some companies keep evergreen postings up permanently as a form of ongoing recruiting or employer branding, independent of whether they’re actively interviewing. Look for phrasing like “we’re always looking for great people” — treat these more like an open invitation to be considered someday, not a live opening.

4. No specific hiring manager or team mentioned

Genuine, urgent openings are usually tied to a specific team with a specific pain point (“our data platform team needs someone to own our streaming migration”). Postings that read entirely generic, with no sense of what problem this hire would actually solve, are more likely to be placeholder listings.

5. The company’s headcount doesn’t match their hiring volume

If a company with 50 employees has 40 open roles listed, something doesn’t add up. This is easy to check — cross-reference the number of open postings against the company’s actual size on LinkedIn. A mismatch this large often means postings aren’t being taken down after roles are filled, or aren’t real openings to begin with.

6. It’s been open for an unusually long time

Check the posting date. Most real, actively-hiring roles get filled or pulled within a few months. A senior technical role sitting open for six-plus months, especially at a well-known company, is worth extra scrutiny — either something is wrong with how they’re running the search, or it was never truly urgent.

What to do instead of just avoiding these postings

Spotting a likely ghost job doesn’t mean you should never apply — sometimes applying anyway leads somewhere unexpected, especially at larger companies. But it does mean you shouldn’t treat every posting as equally worth your full effort.

Triage your effort based on these signals. For postings with multiple red flags, send a shorter, less-customized application — or skip it and redirect that time toward the outreach and referral tactics covered elsewhere in this series, which tend to have meaningfully better response rates than cold-applying into an ATS.

Prioritize postings with the opposite signals: recently posted, specific team and problem described, headcount that makes sense, no history of being reposted. These are the roles worth your full, tailored effort.

Use LinkedIn’s “posted X days ago” and application count as extra signals. A posting with hundreds of applicants and no recent hiring activity from that company is a weaker bet than a fresher posting with fewer applicants.

The bigger point

None of this is about being cynical toward every company that’s hiring — most postings are genuine. It’s about protecting your time and energy in a job search that already demands a lot of both. A few extra minutes evaluating whether a posting is real can save you hours of effort that would have gone nowhere, and redirect that energy toward opportunities — and tactics, like direct outreach and referrals — with better odds.

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Not sure if the roles you’re applying to are the right fit for your background in the first place? Browse our other guides on positioning your resume for the specific role you’re targeting.