Is this company hiring or is it a ghost job?

There is no public database of “intent to hire,” but repost churn, expired apply links, and ghost-likelihood scores are practical proxies. When in doubt, apply only after a trust scan and a direct check on the company’s official jobs page.

The strongest public evidence is convergence. If the role appears on the company’s own careers page, in their applicant tracking system, and on their company profile, and the dates roughly agree, something real is being coordinated. A role that exists only on an aggregator, with no trace on the employer’s own domain, is the weakest version of the same claim.

Look at hiring behaviour rather than the single advert. Are other roles being posted and then disappearing, which suggests requisitions actually close? Has this listing been reposted repeatedly with an unchanged description? A company that opens and closes roles is running a live process; one where everything stays up indefinitely may not be.

People are better evidence than pages. If the listing names a hiring manager or team, check whether that team has recently added anyone in an adjacent role. Growth in the surrounding team predicts that this role is fundable far better than the advert itself does.

You can also just ask. A short, specific message to someone on the team asking whether the role is actively interviewing gets answered more often than people expect, costs nothing, and gives you a direct answer where everything above is only an inference.

For market-wide context, see the JobiQueue Ghost Job Index methodology and weekly stats.