How to tell if a job posting is fake

Red flags in the posting itself

Most fake postings share a handful of textual tells. Read the listing carefully before you do anything else.

• Vague job title paired with an unusually high salary range, such as 'Administrative Assistant – $80,000 to $120,000 per year' with no explanation of why the pay is that high.
• No named hiring manager, no team description, and no mention of what the company actually does.
• Grammar and spelling errors throughout, especially inconsistent capitalisation or phrases that read as machine-translated.
• Requirements that do not match the role, for example a data entry job asking for a degree and five years of experience, or the opposite: a senior engineering role with almost no requirements.
• The posting asks you to apply by emailing a Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook address rather than a company domain.
• Urgency language such as 'must start immediately' or 'only two spots left' with no posted closing date.
• The listing was posted and then reposted repeatedly over several months with no changes, which often signals a phantom role kept open to collect resumes.

Red flags in the application process

Legitimate employers do not ask for sensitive personal information before an interview, and they do not ask you to pay anything at any stage. If the process feels unusual, stop.

• You are asked for your Social Security number, Social Insurance number, National Insurance number, or Tax File Number on an initial application form.
• The recruiter contacts you within minutes of applying and immediately moves to WhatsApp, Telegram, or another messaging app.
• You receive a job offer after a single chat-based interview with no video or phone call.
• The company asks you to buy equipment, software, or a background-check service upfront and promises to reimburse you later.
• You are sent a cheque to deposit and asked to forward part of the funds, which is a classic overpayment scam.
• The 'interview' consists entirely of questions sent over text with no human interaction.

How to verify a company in five steps

Before applying to any posting that raises even one flag, run through this verification process. It takes about ten minutes.

1. Search the company name plus the word 'reviews' on Google, Glassdoor, and Indeed. A legitimate employer will have some history, even if it is mixed. Zero reviews for a company claiming to have hundreds of employees is a warning sign.
2. Go directly to the company's official website by typing the domain into your browser rather than clicking a link in the posting. Check that the domain matches the one in the job listing exactly. Scammers use domains like 'amazon-careers.net' instead of 'amazon.jobs'.
3. Look up the company on LinkedIn. Check when the company page was created, how many employees are listed, and whether those employees have real work histories. A page created last month with ten connections is suspicious.
4. Search the job title and a phrase from the posting in quotes on Google. If the same text appears on multiple unrelated sites or under different company names, the listing has been scraped or fabricated.
5. In the US, check the Better Business Bureau. In Canada, check the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. In the UK, check Companies House to confirm the company is registered. In Australia, check the Australian Business Register. If the company cannot be found in the relevant registry, treat it as unverified.

Phantom postings from real companies

Not every fake posting is a scam. Phantom postings come from real, legitimate companies that list roles they have no immediate intention of filling. They do this to build a candidate pipeline, satisfy internal HR requirements, or gauge market salary expectations.

Phantom postings are harder to detect because the company is real. Signs include a role that has been listed for more than 60 days with no updates, a job description that is nearly identical to one posted a year ago, and a recruiter who responds to your application but cannot give you a timeline or a hiring manager's name. If a role has been open for three months at a company that is not obviously growing, ask the recruiter directly whether the position is actively being filled before you invest time in a tailored application.

What to do if you already applied

If you submitted an application and later suspect the posting was fraudulent, act quickly.

• If you provided a Social Security or equivalent number, place a fraud alert with the major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion in the US; Equifax and TransUnion in Canada; Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion in the UK; and Equifax and illion in Australia.
• Report the posting to the platform where you found it. LinkedIn, Indeed, and Seek all have reporting tools. This helps remove the listing for other job seekers.
• Report to the relevant authority: the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov in the US, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at antifraudcentre.ca, Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk in the UK, or Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au in Australia.
• Change the password on any account that uses the same credentials as the email address you used to apply.
• If you sent money, contact your bank immediately to attempt a reversal.

How to focus your effort on postings worth applying to

One practical way to reduce exposure to fake or phantom postings is to apply primarily through employer career pages rather than aggregator sites, since scammers rarely replicate the full application infrastructure of a real ATS like Greenhouse, Lever, or Workday.

Break-In Bad's AI agent Omar reads each posting in full, including location, visa requirements, time zone, and seniority level, and scores it against your profile before you spend any time on it. Postings that score below 45 percent are flagged for improvement first rather than immediate application. When you do apply, Omar submits through the employer's own ATS and sends you a screenshot as proof the application went through, so you know the role and the system are real. That paper trail also helps you track which postings were genuine if a question arises later.