Ghost Job Detector: Find Fake, Stale and Closed Job Postings

Some job postings stay up long after the job is filled, or were never meant to be filled at all. This actor checks job postings from Indeed scraper results and gives each one a ghost risk score from 0 to 100, with the reasons spelled out.

What it checks

Signal	Points	How it is checked
Closed on the employer's own site	60	Opens the job's application link (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, Dayforce and others). If the employer's page is gone or says the job is closed while the job board still lists it, that is a zombie posting.
Posted a long time ago	10 to 35	30+, 60+, 120+ and 365+ days since the job was first published
Re-posted	10	First published long before it was refreshed on the job board
Same job posted many times	10	Same employer and title 3+ times in your search
No pay range where the law requires one	10	CA, CO, WA, NY, IL, MD, MN, HI, VT, MA, NJ and DC require pay ranges for most employers
Employer not named	10	No employer name, or "our client", "confidential company"
Very short description	5	Under 150 words
"Talent pool" language	15	"talent pipeline", "future openings", "evergreen role", "no current opening" and similar

Risk levels: high 60+, medium 30 to 59, low under 30.

The employer-page check reads only text people can see on the page. Many career sites carry "Page not found" inside their code on every page, so a naive check calls open jobs closed. Phrases like "open until the position is filled" are not counted as closed either. Ashby career pages are checked through Ashby's public job-board API.

Example

On 300 real Indeed postings (data scientist in San Francisco, remote software engineer, customer service in Sacramento):

• 5 high risk: all 5 were confirmed closed on the employer's own site (the page returns "not found") while still listed on Indeed. Four came from one company and had been up 68 days.
• 71 medium risk: mostly postings up for over 180 days with no pay range in California.
• 224 low risk.
• 182 employer pages were confirmed open; 113 could not be checked (applies on Indeed, or the employer site blocks automated visits).

How to use it

1. Run an Indeed scraper. Best: Indeed Jobs Scraper by valig, which includes both the original publish date and the date on Indeed. Indeed Scraper by misceres works too.
2. Open this actor and pick that run's dataset under Indeed scraper results.
3. Optional: set Minimum ghost risk to 30 or 60 for a short list.

Output

{
  "title": "Customer Service Manager - US",
  "company": "Eco Global",
  "location": "Sacramento, CA",
  "ghost_risk": 90,
  "risk_level": "high",
  "why": "employer page gone (HTTP 404); first posted 68 days ago; no pay range, though CA requires one for most employers",
  "posted_days_ago": 68,
  "first_published_days_ago": 68,
  "employer_page": "closed",
  "same_job_postings": 1,
  "salary_listed": false,
  "description_words": 374,
  "job_url": "https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=...",
  "apply_url": "https://jobs.dayforcehcm.com/..."
}

employer_page is closed, open or unknown.

Good to know

• A high score means "look closer before you spend time applying", not proof. Some long-running postings are real (large employers hiring for the same role all year).
• Pay-range laws have employer-size thresholds and exceptions, so a missing range is a signal, not a legal finding.
• Remote jobs without a state are not checked for pay-range laws.

Pricing

You pay per job checked. Run it with no input to score a small built-in demo sample for free.

Made by KodaBloom LLC. Questions: info@kodabloom.com