Knowing the signs a job posting is fake can save you hundreds of hours over a job search. With 27% of listings estimated to be ghost jobs and 75% of applications receiving zero response, the ability to quickly screen a listing before applying isn't a nice-to-have — it's survival.
This checklist organizes every major red flag into four categories: posting details, company behavior, application process, and post-application signals. Score any listing in about two minutes. If it fails multiple checks, move on — your time is better spent on real opportunities.
Category 1: Posting Details
These are the signals you can check just by reading the listing itself, before visiting the company's website or doing any outside research.
Check 1: Posting Age
- Green: Posted within the last 14 days
- Yellow: 15-30 days old
- Red: 30+ days old — real roles rarely stay open this long unless they're highly specialized
Check 2: Salary Information
- Green: Specific salary range listed (e.g., "$85,000-$110,000")
- Yellow: "Competitive compensation" with no numbers
- Red: No salary mention at all, especially in states with pay transparency laws
Check 3: Job Description Specificity
- Green: Concrete responsibilities, named tools/technologies, measurable outcomes
- Yellow: Mix of specific and vague language
- Red: Entirely generic — "dynamic environment," "wear many hats," "other duties as assigned" with no concrete deliverables
Check 4: Requirements Realism
- Green: Requirements match the seniority level and market norms
- Yellow: Slightly inflated (asking for "5+ years" for a mid-level role)
- Red: Impossible requirements — 10 years in a 5-year-old technology, PhD for an entry-level role, "expert" in 8+ tools simultaneously
Check 5: Hiring Manager or Recruiter Named
- Green: Specific person listed, or the recruiter is actively sharing the posting on LinkedIn
- Yellow: Generic team email listed
- Red: Completely anonymous — no name, no team, no contact
Check 6: "Always Hiring" Language
- Green: Specific role with a clear team and scope
- Red: "We're always looking for talented people" or "Join our talent community" — this is a resume collection form, not a job posting
Category 2: Company Behavior
These checks require 2-3 minutes of research outside the job listing itself. They're where the strongest ghost signals hide.
Check 7: Recent Layoffs or Hiring Freeze
- Green: No recent layoffs, company is clearly growing
- Yellow: Layoffs in a different department
- Red: Layoffs in the same department, or company-wide freeze with active postings — these listings are ghosts
Check 8: Open Roles vs. Company Size
- Green: Reasonable ratio (a 200-person company with 10-20 open roles)
- Red: Absurd ratio (a 50-person startup with 40 open roles, a 500-person company with 300 listings)
Check 9: Glassdoor / Blind Reviews
- Green: Recent reviews mention active hiring, good onboarding, team growth
- Yellow: Mixed reviews about hiring process
- Red: Reviews mention "hiring freeze," "posted jobs but not really hiring," or "applied internally and got ghosted"
Check 10: Listing Exists on Company's Own Site
- Green: Listed on the company's careers page with matching details
- Red: Only found on aggregator sites (Indeed, ZipRecruiter) but missing from the company's own careers page — likely scraped/outdated
Check 11: Repost History
- Green: First posting
- Yellow: Reposted once
- Red: Reposted 3+ times over several months — this role is on a ghost loop
Category 3: Application Process Red Flags
These signals emerge during or immediately after the application process.
Check 12: Application Complexity vs. Role Level
- Green: Application effort matches the role — senior positions may reasonably ask for case studies
- Red: Entry-level position requiring a 5-page writing sample, video interview, personality assessment, and 3 references upfront — excessive requirements for the role level suggest the company isn't seriously evaluating candidates
Check 13: Overly Personal Questions
- Green: Standard questions about experience and availability
- Red: Detailed questions about salary expectations at previous jobs, competing offers, reasons for leaving — data harvesting for market research, not hiring
Check 14: Interview Timeline Mentioned
- Green: "Our process takes 2-3 weeks and includes a phone screen, technical interview, and team meeting"
- Yellow: No timeline mentioned but standard process implied
- Red: No interview process described anywhere — suggests no process exists because nobody is planning to interview
Category 4: Post-Application Signals
These are retroactive checks — signals you can only observe after applying. They help you recalibrate future applications.
Check 15: Confirmation Email
- Green: Received a personalized or at least automated confirmation with timeline
- Yellow: Generic "we received your application" with no timeline
- Red: No confirmation at all — your application may have entered a void
Check 16: Portal Status Updates
- Green: Status changes within 2 weeks (even if it's a rejection)
- Yellow: Status unchanged after 2 weeks
- Red: Status stuck on "received" or "under review" for 4+ weeks — nobody is reviewing
Check 17: Role Still Posted After You Applied
- Green: Posting closes within 2-4 weeks of your application (normal cycle)
- Yellow: Still open after 4 weeks
- Red: Still open months later with identical text — confirmed ghost
The Quick-Score System
Use this simplified scoring to decide whether a listing is worth your time:
| Red Flags Found | Ghost Risk | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 0-1 | Low | Apply with confidence |
| 2-3 | Medium | Apply but set expectations low; try direct outreach to hiring manager |
| 4-5 | High | Skip the formal application; only proceed if you can reach the hiring manager directly |
| 6+ | Almost certainly a ghost | Do not apply. Move on immediately. |
Time saved: Running this checklist takes 2-3 minutes. A full application takes 30-60 minutes. If this checklist saves you from even one ghost application per week, that's 2-4 hours per month redirected to real opportunities.
Automating the Checklist
Running 17 checks manually on every listing is effective but time-consuming. This is exactly the kind of systematic analysis that technology handles well. Sovia's Ghost Score runs a weighted version of this checklist automatically as you browse job boards, analyzing 19 signals per listing and displaying a ghost probability score in real time.
The automated approach catches signals that are hard to check manually — like repost frequency across multiple platforms, company headcount-to-listing ratios, and historical hiring patterns. But even the manual checklist above will dramatically improve your hit rate.
Summary
Fake job postings are identifiable if you know what to look for. The 17 checks above — covering posting details, company behavior, application process, and post-application signals — give you a systematic way to filter ghost jobs in about 2 minutes per listing. Use the quick-score system to decide whether to apply, skip, or go direct. For automated screening, Sovia runs these checks in the background so you can focus your energy where it counts.