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For Business Owners & Hiring Managers
Ghost jobs waste real people's lives. Millions of hours of preparation, travel, and emotional labour are spent every year on job applications that were never real. This ends with a decision — yours.
This manifesto is a public commitment to transparent, respectful hiring. Read it, share it, and hold your own hiring process to it.
40%
of companies posted a fake job in the past year
ResumeBuilder.com, 2024
61%
of job seekers were ghosted after an interview
Greenhouse, 2024
50%
of hiring managers post jobs just to build a talent pool
Clarify Capital, 2023
A job posting is a promise. It tells a real person that there is a real opportunity waiting for them. We do not publish roles to build a talent pool, appear to be growing, or satisfy investor optics. If we are not actively hiring for a position, we do not post it.
Every person who applies deserves a response. We send a decision — acceptance, rejection, or a clear timeline — within 14 days of their application. Silence is not a hiring strategy. It is disrespectful.
Asking a candidate to prepare for, travel to, and participate in an interview creates an obligation. We provide feedback or a decision within 5 business days of the final interview. Ghosting a candidate who completed our process is unprofessional and harms our reputation far beyond any single hire.
We remove or pause job listings the moment a position is filled or paused. A posting that stays live after a hire is made misdirects applicants and damages trust in the labour market. We use our ATS properly or we do it manually.
We do not post roles to gather market intelligence, collect competitor resumes, or benchmark salaries without intent to hire. Candidates are not market research subjects. Their time, effort, and personal data deserve to be treated with integrity.
Candidates should know what a role pays before investing time in our process. Withholding compensation information wastes everyone's time and signals we have something to hide. We publish a range — and we honour it.
A five-round process for a junior role is a red flag. We design our hiring process to be the minimum viable process needed to make a confident decision. We do not add rounds to look thorough. We do not assign unpaid work without paying for it.
If a role is on hold, we say so. If priorities changed and we paused hiring, we inform candidates immediately. We do not leave people in limbo for months. The truth, delivered promptly, is always better than comfortable silence.
Ghost jobs erode employer brand at a time when candidate trust is at an all-time low. Your reputation as a place people want to work is built or destroyed in every hiring interaction — not just on your careers page.
Candidates talk. Reviews on Glassdoor, LinkedIn comments, Reddit threads, and now platforms like Ghost Jobs Index mean that deceptive hiring practices are increasingly public. The cost of one dishonest job posting is measured in employer brand damage, not just wasted applicant time.
Honest hiring is also faster and cheaper. A clear process with timely communication reduces no-shows, improves offer acceptance rates, and attracts candidates who are genuinely aligned with your culture. It is not just the right thing to do — it is better hiring.
If you believe in honest hiring, share this page with your network. Post it on LinkedIn. Send it to your recruiter. Put it in your company handbook. The more employers who commit publicly, the better the job market gets for everyone.
Report the company anonymously. Your report warns the next applicant before they waste time on a fake job.
Report a Ghost Job