What is a ghost job, and how can I spot a ghost job?

First, to define a ghost job: a ghost job is a "fake" job that a company has posted but isn't actually hiring for. Why would companies do this? Mostly for four reasons: 1) for free or cheap brand marketing impressions; 2) to gather candidates for the future if they ever decide to hire for the role; 3) to look like they're hiring to impress or placate investors or employees; 4) they forgot about the job and haven't cleaned up their job postings on third-party websites.

To identify ghost jobs on third-party websites like LinkedIn or Indeed, our best tip is to look for the same job on the company's official website – if you don't find it listed there, it's probably a ghost job. The reason is because there is little-to-no marketing benefit to listing a job on your own website (site visitors clearly already know about your brand), so listing a job on your official site only makes sense if you're actually hiring for it.

Additionally, companies can pretend they were blissfully unaware about a job posted on third-party websites, or that someone posted it by mistake (or posted it without the company's knowledge). But it's impossible for a company to plausibly claim that they didn't know about the jobs that are posted on their official website, and they don't want to be seen as soliciting candidates for ghost jobs (that could damage their brand), so there's a pretty strong incentive to clean up inactive jobs and keep job postings up on their website only for truly open roles.