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If a job has been reposted, does that mean the company isn’t really hiring anyone for the role? This is an assumption I often hear since I run Skip, an EdTech and L&D job board. As I mentioned in an earlier Q&A with Navigate EdTech, there’s a general lack of transparency about why jobs are reposted which makes it challenging for job seekers to decipher if the role is a ghost job or if the company plans to fill it promptly. I track what happens to every job listing so if the job is reposted, I can track exactly what’s changed. I can also track what hasn’t changed – over half of jobs I track are reposted without any changes from the original posting. A quarter of reposted jobs made substantive changes (i.e. to the salary, job requirements, or travel) while the rest made minor changes (to titles, apply-by-dates or correcting typos).
While it’s tempting to group all reposted roles together, I’ve discovered that there are many distinct types of reposted roles. Every company has different reasons for reposting a role, and it can be hard to draw a clear line between a repost and a ghost job without additional context.
Here’s what I frequently see when I track reposts along with key signals, when they exist, for how to assess why the role has been reposted:
- Consistent or frequent hiring needs.
- A previous search didn’t work out.
- The company needs to clarify details from the original listing.
- Job board platform automation or optimization.
Consistent or frequent hiring needs. We see this most often with roles that serve schools or are entry level or high churn roles: Tutors, Professional Learning Specialists, Sales Development Representatives, etc. These are roles that companies hire for on a regular (often seasonal) basis, and they rarely update job descriptions each time they open a new position. Some companies will create a new job link for each new opening they have while others will leave the same link open for months (or take it down and repost it only when they have a new opening). One of the oldest jobs on our job board has hired at least three people since they originally posted the link two years ago; recruiters have told me they’re hiring a new staff member to fill increased demand (and sometimes because of promotions) when I’ve asked why the role is reposted. While it’s frustrating for job seekers to not know why the listing is being reposted, it can be an opportunity to apply with a smaller candidate pool. When companies have frequent turnover or frequent hiring, they often keep a stack of resumes they can quickly reach out to when they need to fill an opening.
A previous search didn’t work out. These types of reposts typically follow a similar pattern: a job is posted, then deleted, then reappears within 1-2 months with no changes or with very specific changes to the general requirements. The gap reflects that companies have interviewed candidates but did not hire someone. (This isn’t always their fault – sometimes they make an offer to someone who decided to leverage the offer to stay at their current company.) One job I posted recently made only a single change to the new role: they added “B2B product marketing experience” instead of the more general “SaaS experience” they’d initially included. Other times the company will increase the salary when they realize that the original salary didn’t bring in candidates with sufficient experience. One of the most common signals for this kind of repost is that the apply-by-date is extended (or removed) or that the job responsibilities/experience have been lightly edited.
They need to clarify details. A quarter of the roles we see make minor changes to the job posting after it’s been posted. Sometimes this happens when they start to receive applications that don’t reflect the experience they need – that’s when they’ll update salary, clarify location information or travel details, or the hiring manager will ask them to update a boilerplate job description to reflect their specific needs. Changes don’t always have to be substantive to trigger a “repost” flag on a job board – sometimes, they’ve just corrected a typo! Another common trend we see is companies using the same job URL for a location-based job but updating it whenever they’re hiring in a new location. One company does this for roles it frequently hires, just updating their tagline: “actively hiring in these states.”
Job board platform automation or optimization. The most frequent edit I see is a job title tweak. Sometimes these tweaks are substantive: clarifying required location or subject matter expertise, most likely in response to people applying without fully reading the job description. But more often, it reflects an attempt to “bump” their listing on a job board so that it appears to be a new role. I see some companies do this on a regular schedule, rotating between two different versions of the title, for example, Account Manager, Enterprise and Enterprise Account Manager, every few weeks. Serial reposting is another way that companies will try to increase the visibility of a role: they post a job for a few weeks or months, delete it, and immediately repost it with a new link. This makes it appear that the listing is fresh, regardless of their actual hiring status. While this is a big concern for job seekers, serial reposting accounts for less than 5% of the overall reposts we see. Other times, however, the job board itself bumps the role. LinkedIn, for example, automatically bumps a role after it’s been posted for a month. (I once saw a recruiter clarify on her own page that the company was actively interviewing for the role and had not updated the listing.) Workday, an Applicant Tracking System, will reset the date posted whenever an edit is made, even if it’s just to correct a typo.
As you can see from these examples, there are lots of different reasons for reposting a job and it’s not always easy to figure it out without knowing the larger posting history or doing additional research.
Here are some things you can do to learn more about a job postings history:
- For jobs you’re interested in, save the full job description. This way you can compare job listings to identify significant edits. Sometimes the edits tell you exactly how to position your experience to stand out, and you may be applying to a thinner pool.
- See what other jobs the company has posted. This can tell you if the department seems to be expanding, whether other roles have lingered, and if they seem to hire people regionally which can explain multiple similar listings.
- Search the company’s employees on LinkedIn. If you’re wondering if a company is serially reposting jobs versus actively hiring, see how recently the company has added new staff on the company’s employee page. (One caveat: LinkedIn relies on self-reported updates when someone gets a job so it may not be up-to-date.)
- Find the hiring manager or someone on the team on LinkedIn. When people post about an active role on LinkedIn, it’s a good sign they’re actively hiring; sometimes, though, you find that post was made three months earlier. Many employees will also share different information in a LinkedIn post than in a job description, particularly if the company reuses the same job description for multiple roles, and the hiring manager wants to emphasize their specific needs.
- Ask the recruiter. In an email or in your first screening call ask the recruiter why the role is open or when they anticipate filling it. Their answer should give you crucial information about whether they’re building a pipeline or intending to hire.
Many people avoid applying to a reposted role because they worry that the job doesn’t exist. This can give people who do apply an edge because the applicant pool is smaller but it can also be hard to spend time applying to a job if you don’t know it exists. Use the strategies above – or use job boards that do share information about posting history – to help you manage your application time most effectively.
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