How to tell if a company is actually hiring
The surest way to tell whether a company is actually hiring is to skip the job boards and read its own career site. Job boards and aggregators can keep showing roles long after a company stopped filling them. The company's applicant tracking system, such as Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby or SmartRecruiters, shows what it lists right now, and often when each role was posted and which team it sits on. If several roles went up in the last 30 days across real teams, the company is hiring. If the same few roles have sat there for months, be skeptical.
For a recruiter, this matters more than it sounds. A company with forty open listings may have posted most of them months ago. Pitching that account on the count alone can waste your time.
Why job boards mislead
Some postings were never meant to be filled. Greenhouse calls these ghost jobs, "positions advertised with no intent to hire." It also shares a number from its own platform: in any given quarter, 18 to 22 percent of the jobs posted on Greenhouse are classified as ghost jobs (Greenhouse blog, 2024 State of Job Hunting report).
Employers admit to it too. In a May 2024 ResumeBuilder.com survey of hiring managers, 40 percent said their company had posted a fake job listing that year, and 3 in 10 said their company had one active at the time (ResumeBuilder.com). That's a survey of what people reported, not an audit of postings, so treat it as a sign of the problem rather than a precise rate.
Then there's plain staleness. Aggregators copy listings from many places. When a company closes a role, the copy elsewhere doesn't always go away. The company's own board is where it gets removed first.
Find the company's own board
Most companies run their careers page on an applicant tracking system, or ATS. The quickest way to find it: go to the company's careers page and click Apply on any role. The address you land on usually gives it away.
Common patterns:
- Greenhouse:
job-boards.greenhouse.io/{company} - Lever:
jobs.lever.co/{company} - Ashby:
jobs.ashbyhq.com/{company} - SmartRecruiters:
careers.smartrecruiters.com/{company}
The company slug is often the company name, but not always. If clicking around doesn't find it, a Google search limited to one of those sites usually does. DorkJobs has a free tool for that on its home page, which lets you search ATS boards with Google dorks.
Fresh versus stale
Once you're on the board, read it like a timeline, not a total.
Posted or updated dates. Some boards show when a role was posted or last updated. Many don't. Where you can see a date, it helps. Just don't over-read it. An old date doesn't mean the role is closed. A new date doesn't mean it's urgent, because an edit can refresh it.
Job IDs. Most ATS links end in an ID. If the same title keeps coming back with a new ID, the role may have been reposted rather than freshly opened. That can mean a hard search or a role that never quite gets filled. Either way, it's worth a question.
Roles that sit for months. If you check an account now and again a few weeks later, and the same handful of roles is still there with nothing new, that tells you something.
There's no fixed age where a posting becomes stale. Teams and roles differ too much. Patterns tell you more than any single date.
A three-check routine
You can run this by hand in a few minutes per account.
- Count recent roles. On the ATS board, how many roles went up in the last 30 days? A steady trickle of new ones is a better signal than a big pile of old ones.
- Check the teams. Are the new roles on one team or several? Roles across engineering, sales and operations suggest broad growth. Several roles on one team can mean a new group is being built, which is often a good opening.
- Compare with the job board. Take the role that caught your eye on a job board. Is it still on the company's own board? If not, the company has likely moved on, whatever the aggregator shows.
If all three look good, you have a fair reason to reach out. If none do, the account can probably wait.
When the hand check stops scaling
Three checks are easy for five accounts. For fifty, it turns into a part-time job, and you'd want to repeat it often.
That's what the DorkJobs recruiter report is for. You paste one career-site URL per line, and DorkJobs shows exactly which ones it can cover. The report gives you a current hiring roster plus roles posted in the last 30 days. Coverage today includes Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters. The report is free and sent by email.
You can pick the type of report, too: a full hiring roster, cleared roles or security hiring.
One honest note: the roster reflects what DorkJobs has seen on each board, so treat it as a starting point and glance at the company's board before a big pitch. If you want the manual method for a single account, see how to see all open jobs at a company.
FAQ
What is a ghost job?
Greenhouse describes it as a position advertised with no intent to hire.
How can I tell if a job posting is old or reposted?
Go to the company's own ATS board. Check the posted or updated date if one is shown, and watch for the same title coming back under a new job ID.
How do I find which ATS a company uses?
Click Apply on the company's careers page and look at the address. Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters boards are easy to spot.
Is a company hiring if it has many open roles?
Not necessarily. Look at how recently roles went up and how many teams they cover.
What does the DorkJobs recruiter report cover?
A current hiring roster plus roles posted in the last 30 days, for companies on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters. The report is free and sent by email. Your list is checked for coverage first.
Check your target accounts
Tracking more than a few target accounts? Paste their career-site URLs and see which ones DorkJobs can cover. The report is free and sent by email.