Our analysis of 14,000+ candidate reports reveals the industries and companies with the highest ghost posting rates — and how to identify them before you apply.
You found a job posting that looks perfect. The title matches your experience, the salary range is competitive, and the company is one you've researched for months. You spend three hours crafting a tailored application, hit submit — and never hear a word.
Six weeks later, the same posting reappears. You apply again. Silence.
This is the ghost posting problem, and it's worse in 2026 than it has ever been.
A ghost posting is a job listing that exists on a career site without any genuine, active hiring intent behind it. Companies post them for a range of reasons: to build a passive candidate pipeline, to signal growth to investors, to satisfy internal HR requirements, or simply because no one remembered to take down a role that was filled months ago.
The result for candidates is the same regardless of motive: wasted time, false hope, and no response.
Ghost postings are distinct from jobs that go on hiring freezes after you apply — though those cause similar harm. The defining characteristic is recurrence: a ghost posting reappears repeatedly because the underlying role is never genuinely filled.
After analyzing more than 14,000 candidate reports submitted to The Respect Index, three signals consistently predict whether a posting is a ghost:
Repost frequency. The single strongest indicator. Roles that have been reposted two or more times — without any verified "offer" outcomes between them — have a ghost rate above 78% in our dataset. Companies with high repost counts rarely, if ever, extend offers from those specific postings. The position either doesn't exist in any near-term hiring plan or is being held open indefinitely as a resume harvesting tool.
Outcome distribution. Legitimate active postings generate a range of outcomes: some candidates are rejected with feedback, some advance to final rounds, some receive offers. Ghost postings produce a flat outcome profile dominated by "no response" and "posting disappeared." When a role has 20+ reports with zero offer outcomes, that's not a competitive posting — it's a placeholder.
Process duration vs. termination point. Candidates who do get responses from ghost postings are often advanced just far enough to feel invested — a phone screen, a first-round interview — before the process stalls without explanation. Our data shows that ghost posting processes terminate at the first or second round at a rate 2.4× higher than genuine hiring processes.
Ghost posting rates vary significantly by industry. In our current dataset, Finance and Enterprise Software consistently post the highest ghost rates, with over 40% of reported roles showing three or more repost events. Healthcare Tech and Legal follow closely.
Clean Energy and Education show the lowest ghost posting rates, likely because hiring in those sectors is driven by specific project and grant timelines — when the funding is there, the role is real.
Company stage matters too. PE-backed companies and large public enterprises account for a disproportionate share of ghost postings, possibly because their job boards are maintained by central HR systems that don't automatically archive unfilled roles.
Every job posting in our system is assigned a repost count based on how many times an identical or near-identical title appears at the same company within a rolling 12-month window. When a posting reaches a repost count of 2 or more, we flag it with a ghost posting disclosure and surface it on our Ghost Postings Tracker.
We also calculate a Ghost Score for each company — a 0–100 composite that weighs no-response outcomes, repost frequency, and process termination patterns. Scores above 60 indicate a company with a systemic pattern of candidate disrespect that goes beyond any single role.
No system eliminates the time cost of job searching, but you can reduce wasted effort significantly:
The data is there. The patterns are consistent. The only variable is whether you check before you apply.
Every report submitted to The Respect Index improves the accuracy of these scores for every job seeker who comes after you. If you've experienced a ghost posting — or any hiring process worth documenting — submit a report. It takes four minutes and your identity is never stored.
See which companies have the highest ghost posting rates.
Open Ghost Postings Tracker →The Respect Index editorial team analyzes hiring and separation data submitted by verified candidates across the US. Our research draws on 14,000+ firsthand reports to surface patterns in ghost posting behavior, recruiter conduct, and separation practices. We publish data as we see it — without editorial bias toward any company.
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