Time to read: 3 minutes

Hey Reader,

It's a tale as old as time...

Someone finds a great posting, tailors the CV, writes the cover letter, and applies for the job.

Three weeks of silence later, they find out the company froze hiring in June and never removed the job postings.

📊 What's going on?

Per Greenhouse data, 18 to 22% of job postings are classified as ghost jobs, roles never really open, and almost 70% of the companies on the platform posted at least one in a single quarter, as Greenhouse's president mentioned in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January 2025.

A November 2025 analysis in the Columbia Law Review measured the collapse in plain numbers: ten postings produced about eight hires in 2019, and about four by 2024.

Greenhouse also reports that three in five candidates have suspected coming across a ghost job.

So what do you do when so many doors lead nowhere?

You learn to identify them.

⏰ The 15-minute check

Here's what you can do to avoid the ghost jobs:

1. Find the posting's real home (3 minutes). Follow the listing to the company's own careers page or hiring system. A role that exists there is a role that someone usually maintains. Ashby has reported that 82% of the jobs listed on their platform led to an actual hire.
2. Read the eligibility line before anything else (1 minute). "Remote" with a US-only clause hidden in the fourth paragraph of the posting could cost you an hour of applying for more suitable positions. Read the fine print and, if your country misses the list, close the tab and move on.
3. Check the salary signal (1 minute). A posted range means that the role has been budgeted. A hidden number means lots of interview rounds before you learn the actual range, and undisclosed compensation is one of the recurring tells in the ghost-job research.
4. Check the company's status (5 minutes). Recent news, recent layoffs, headcount direction on their LinkedIn page. A company that cut a department in July is unlikely to fill the same seats in August, regardless of what the posting says. Tracking layoffs and a quick news search can reveal this faster than many might think.
5. Know the world the company lives in (ongoing, 5 minutes a day). This is huge. When you already know a sector is expanding, a company just raised capital, or an industry is removing roles, you can quickly judge whether that job posting is real or not. Market awareness is extremely important, and an additional benefit for you is that your interview answers get sharper.

On that last one: five minutes with a good morning briefing is a nice habit to incorporate in your journey as a professional regardless of whether you're currently looking for a job or not. This edition's sponsor happens to be the one over 4 million people use to learn what could be impacting their career.

⚙️ One more thing

The catch with the fifteen-minute check is the same one I keep running into myself: doing it properly for every role takes a lot of time. So I'm building something that finds the remote jobs which are actually hiring, instead of doors that lead nowhere. The full reveal will be happening in the next few weeks, and you'll be hearing about it first.

Until then, the checklist above is a great method you can start implementing to avoid ghost jobs.

A favor before you go: hit "reply" and tell me whether you've encountered ghost jobs before. I'd love to hear from you!

Talk soon,
Alex

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