How to Spot Fake Job Postings: Ghost, Stale and Scam Ads

Not every job ad is a real vacancy with a real person waiting to read your application. Some are out of date, some are collecting CVs for later, and a few exist purely to take your money or your identity. The skill is knowing which is which, and it takes about five minutes of checking.

Three kinds of fake, and why they matter differently

It helps to separate what you are looking at, because the right response differs.

Stale listings are honest mistakes. The role was filled or frozen months ago and nobody took the ad down. Harmless, but you waste an evening on a tailored application that no one will open.

Talent-pool ads are deliberately vague. The company is not hiring today but wants a stack of CVs ready for when it does, or wants to look busy and growing. You might get an automated acknowledgement and nothing else.

Scams are the dangerous ones. The aim is to get money, bank details, identity documents or access to your accounts. Everything below about requests and contact methods is mainly aimed at these.

Check the posting itself

Start with the text. Real vacancies are usually a bit dull and specific. Fake or low-effort ones tend to be airy.

Look for:

• Vague duties. A real ad says what you will do in the first six months. A ghost ad says you will "drive impact across the business" and stops there.
• No clear team, manager or location. If you cannot tell who the role reports to or where it sits, be cautious.
• Pay that is missing or absurd. Plenty of genuine ads leave out salary, and in some countries employers are legally required to include it while in others they are not. Missing pay alone proves nothing. But pay that is oddly high for an entry-level, work-from-anywhere role with no experience needed is a classic bait.
• Copy-paste weirdness. Wrong company name in the body, a different job title in the heading, or a description that fits three unrelated roles.
• Poor writing from a supposedly big employer. Typos happen. A wall of them from a large firm is a flag.

Look at how long it has been up

Reposting patterns tell you a lot. If the same role appears again and again every few weeks with a tweaked title, one of two things is happening. Either the company genuinely cannot fill it, or it is a standing talent-pool ad that never closes.

Search the exact job title plus the company name and see what comes up. Check whether the same ad appears on several boards with different dates. Look at the company's own careers page too. If the role is on a job board but nowhere on the employer's site, that is worth questioning, though not conclusive, since smaller firms sometimes only use one channel.

Age matters as well. An ad that has sat open for months with no changes is probably stale. Treat anything without a visible date with extra suspicion.

For context, folioV's weekly Job Market Pulse counted 5,708 open roles across 617 companies in week 2026-W44, which is a reminder that there is plenty of real hiring going on. You do not need to chase the doubtful ones. You can read the latest Job Market Pulse for the wider picture.

Verify the company is real and the ad is theirs

This is the step most people skip, and it catches most scams.

1. Find the company's official website yourself. Do not click a link in the ad or an email.
2. Look for the same role on its careers page.
3. Check the recruiter exists. Search their name on a professional network, see whether they work where they say they do, and whether their profile has any history rather than being a few weeks old.
4. Compare the email domain. A message from a free webmail address, or a domain that is one letter off the real company's, is a red flag. Genuine recruiters usually write from the company's own domain, though agencies will use their own.
5. Search the company name with the words "scam" or "reviews" and read what turns up.

If the company is real but you are unsure about the ad, you can often ring the main switchboard or write to a general contact address listed on the official site and ask whether the role is genuine.

Watch for off-platform contact and pressure

Scammers want to move you somewhere they control, quickly. Be wary if you apply and a recruiter immediately wants to continue on a private messaging app, or if the entire "interview" happens by text chat with no voice or video.

Other warning signs:

• You are offered the job within hours without any real conversation.
• You are told the offer expires today unless you act.
• The recruiter will not give a phone number, a company address or a named line manager.
• They are vague about contract terms but eager about your start date.

Legitimate employers are rarely in that much of a hurry, and they are comfortable being checked.

Never pay, and be careful what you send

This is the clearest rule of all. A genuine employer does not charge you to be hired. No fee for training, a background check, equipment, a visa processing "deposit" or software. Be especially suspicious of anyone who sends you a cheque to buy equipment from a supplier they name, then asks you to forward part of the money. The cheque bounces later and you are out the cash.

On documents, timing is everything. Sending a CV is fine. Sending a passport scan, national ID number, bank details or a photo of your driving licence before you have a written offer and have verified the company is not. Employers do need these things eventually, for right-to-work checks and payroll, but they ask after an offer, through a proper HR process, and the exact requirements vary by country. If someone wants them at application stage, say no and walk away.

Using tools to cut the guesswork

Doing every check by hand for every listing is tiring. A couple of shortcuts can help. folioV's Job Finder pulls fresh roles from company career pages, newest first, and flags the ones that have closed, which takes care of a lot of the stale-listing problem. Its Job Evaluation gives a fit score from A to F across ten dimensions and also checks whether a posting looks legitimate, which is a useful second opinion before you spend an hour on an application.

A quick checklist before you apply

If you remember nothing else, run through these questions:

• Is the role on the company's own careers page?
• Is the recruiter a real person with a company email?
• Are the duties and the team clearly described?
• Has the ad been up for months or reposted repeatedly?
• Is anyone asking for money, or for ID before an offer?

One yes to the last question is enough to stop. For the rest, a couple of doubts just means slowing down and checking. You are allowed to be sceptical, and the good employers will not mind.