You find a job posting that looks perfect. Great title, good company name, reasonable salary. You spend 45 minutes tailoring your resume and writing a cover letter. Then nothing — or worse, you get a reply asking for your bank details for "background check processing."

Fake job postings are more common than most people realize. Some are outright scams. Others are "ghost jobs" that companies post with no intention of filling. Both waste your time and energy.

The Most Common Types of Fake Postings

Outright Scams

These are postings designed to collect personal information, get you to pay for equipment or training, or lure you into a "business opportunity" that's really an MLM or fraud scheme.

Red flags:

- They contact you first, usually through a personal email address or messaging app

- The company name doesn't match the email domain (e.g., posting says "Microsoft" but the email is from a Gmail account)

- They ask for payment at any stage — legitimate employers never ask candidates to pay for anything

- The salary range is way above market for the role

- There's no real company careers page with the same listing

Ghost Jobs

These are real companies posting roles they've already filled, frozen, or have no budget for. Companies do this to build a candidate pipeline, make it look like they're growing, or satisfy internal policies about posting all positions publicly.

Ghost jobs are harder to spot because the company is real. But some signs help:

- The posting has been up for months with no changes

- The role description is extremely generic with no specific project or team context

- The company has a hiring freeze announced publicly but the job is still listed

- No one on the team seems to know about the opening

Recruiter Farming

Some staffing agencies post attractive jobs to collect resumes. The job may exist somewhere, but the posting is really about growing their database. You'll notice because the agency follows up asking about entirely different roles than what you applied to.

How to Verify a Posting Yourself

Before you spend time applying:

1. Check the company's actual careers page. If the job isn't listed on their website, that's a red flag. Some companies only post on their own site and authorized boards.

2. Look up the recruiter or hiring manager on LinkedIn. Do they actually work at that company? Does their profile look real — real connections, real history, real activity?

3. Search for the company on Glassdoor or similar sites. Are there recent interview reviews? If people are interviewing, the company is actually hiring.

4. Check the domain of any emails you receive. If someone claims to be from Spotify but emails you from spotify-careers-team@gmail.com, it's fake.

5. Be skeptical of urgency. "We need to fill this today" with no prior contact is almost always a scam tactic.

What ApplyBench's Trust Check Does

When you import a job posting URL into ApplyBench's analyzer, it runs an automated trust check that looks at the source quality, domain alignment, posting freshness, and whether the listing traces back to a real employer. It's not a guarantee — nothing is — but it catches the patterns above faster than checking each one manually.

If something looks suspicious, you'll see a flag in your analysis results with a plain-language explanation of why.

The Bottom Line

Not every real-looking job is real. Spending 5 minutes verifying before you spend 45 minutes tailoring is worth it every time. Trust your instincts when something feels off, and don't let a great-sounding title override your judgment.