What to Check Before You Apply Through a Job Board

You have found a role that looks perfect. The title matches, the salary is right, the company sounds interesting. You spend an hour tailoring your CV and crafting a cover letter. You hit apply. And then — nothing. No acknowledgement, no rejection, no sign that anyone on the other end is actually hiring.

There is a good chance that job was never real.

What is a ghost job?

A ghost job is a posting that appears on a job board but does not represent a genuine, currently open vacancy. There are several reasons they exist:

• Pipeline building. Some companies keep roles posted permanently to collect CVs for future use. They are not hiring now — they want a pool of candidates ready for when they are.
• Already filled internally. The role went to an internal candidate or a referral, but the posting stays live because nobody took it down. Or, in some cases, because company policy requires external advertising even after the decision has been made.
• Market testing. The company is exploring whether they could hire for a role at a given salary or level. They are not committed to filling it.
• Employer branding. Active job listings make a company look like it is growing. Some organisations keep a healthy-looking careers page as a signal to investors, clients, or competitors.

From the recruiter side, I have seen this first-hand. I have worked with hiring managers who have had roles posted for months with no intention of reviewing applications until a budget was signed off. It is frustrating when you know people are spending real time and energy applying.

The checklist: 7 things to check before you apply

You cannot eliminate ghost jobs entirely, but you can dramatically reduce the amount of time you waste on them. Before you invest in a tailored application, run through this checklist.

1. When was it posted?

Check the posting date. If a role has been live for more than 30 days, proceed with caution. Most genuine vacancies — especially at the mid-level and above — receive enough applications within the first two weeks that they do not need to stay open for months. A role that has been posted for 60 or 90 days is either unfillable, not a priority, or not real.

Exception: highly specialist roles in niche fields can legitimately take longer. Use your judgement.

2. Is the company actually hiring?

Go to the company’s own careers page. If the role is listed on Indeed or LinkedIn but not on their website, it may have been filled already — job boards are often slower to remove listings than the company itself.

3. Has it been reposted?

Search the job board for the same role at the same company. If you see the same job title appearing every few weeks with a fresh posting date, that is a strong signal of pipeline building, not genuine hiring. Real vacancies do not reset their clock every fortnight.

4. Is the salary listed?

UK legislation is moving toward mandatory salary transparency in job postings, and for good reason. Roles that list a salary range tend to be further along in the approval process. A posting with no salary, no range, and “competitive” in the compensation section is not necessarily a ghost job — but it does suggest less rigour in how the role has been defined.

5. Is there a named hiring manager or recruiter?

Genuine, urgent vacancies usually have a real person attached. If the posting lists a hiring manager by name, or a recruitment contact you can reach, that is a good sign. If it is a faceless “apply here” form with no indication of who is on the other end, it is harder to verify.

6. Does the company have recent hiring activity?

Check Glassdoor or Indeed for recent interview reviews. If candidates are reporting interviews from the last few weeks, the company is genuinely active. If the last interview review is from six months ago but they have 20 roles posted, something does not add up.

7. Can you find the role in more than one place?

Cross-reference. Is the role on LinkedIn and on the company’s own careers page? Is it on multiple job boards with consistent details? A genuine vacancy tends to appear in multiple places with matching descriptions. A ghost job often exists on one board only, or shows different details across listings.

What to do if a listing looks suspicious

You have run through the checklist and the role feels questionable. That does not mean you should ignore the company entirely. It means you should change your approach.

• Apply directly through the company website. If the role is real but stale on the job board, a direct application through the company’s own system is more likely to be seen.
• Reach out to the hiring manager on LinkedIn. A polite message saying you have seen the role and would like to check it is still active is perfectly reasonable. It also demonstrates initiative.
• Check with the recruiter. If an agency is handling the role, call them directly. A real role will have a real person who can confirm the details and the timeline.

Protect your time and energy

A tailored CV takes time. A thoughtful cover letter takes energy. Both are finite resources when you are job hunting, and spending them on a posting that leads nowhere is genuinely demoralising.

This is not about being cynical. It is about being strategic. The job market rewards quality applications over quantity — ten tailored, well-targeted applications will outperform a hundred generic ones every time. But that only works if the roles you are targeting are real.

Run the checklist. Check the posting. Then, when you are confident the role is genuine and worth pursuing, put your best application in.