Free Ghost Job Checker: is that posting even real?
Up to 40% of postings are never filled. Paste a job description and get an honest read, with the reasons shown. Free, no account.
Also free: score your résumé with the full critique shown.
What a ghost job is, and how to spot one
A ghost job is a posting that is not attached to a real, active hire: an evergreen req kept up to collect résumés, a role already filled but never taken down, or a listing that never had a budget. Up to 40% of postings may never be filled. These are the signals the checker weighs, with its reasoning shown.
Time live
A role that has been reposted repeatedly or left open for months with no sign of closing is more likely collecting applicants than hiring one.
Vague specifics
No team, no manager, no concrete scope, just boilerplate that could belong to any company. Real openings tend to describe real work.
Source
A posting on the company’s own verified career page (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, SmartRecruiters) carries more signal than the same listing re-posted across aggregators.
Compensation
Missing pay, or an impossibly wide range, can signal a posting that is not tied to a specific, budgeted role.
Pipeline language
Phrases like "always hiring" or "future opportunities" often mean talent-pipelining rather than an open seat to fill now.
Scam markers
Off-platform contact, or requests for money or personal details, are surfaced separately and first. A scam is fraud, which is a different and more urgent problem than a ghost.
Ghost jobs, the honest answers
A job posting that is not connected to a real, active hire. It may be an evergreen listing kept up to gather résumés, a role that was already filled but never removed, or a position that never had budget approved. It looks real, but applying to it goes nowhere.
Estimates vary, but a large share of postings, by some measures up to around 40%, may never result in a hire. That is why filtering for real roles before you spend an hour on an application matters so much.
Check how long it has been live, whether it describes specific work and a real team, whether it lives on the company’s own career page, and whether the pay and scope are concrete. The checker weighs these signals for you and shows the reasons, so you decide with the evidence in front of you.
No. You paste the posting text, that is all. We never ask you to log in to anything, and we do not store passwords or session cookies for any job board.
No. It is a risk read with the reasons shown, not a verdict. Use it to prioritize: spend your effort on the postings that look real and active, and approach the high-risk ones with more skepticism.
A ghost job is usually a real company’s posting that is not tied to an active hire. A scam is outright fraud, designed to extract money or personal information. The checker keeps them separate and surfaces a possible scam first, because the right response to each is different.