Improve It · UX case study · LinkedIn
September 2026 — If LinkedIn has fixed this since, good.
Ghost jobs
27% of job listings on LinkedIn aren't real. Companies post them to impress investors, harvest resumes, and make employees feel replaceable. Here's a system that fixes it without breaking LinkedIn's business model.
The solution
Three layers, one goal
High fidelity
What it looks like inside LinkedIn
Click any job card to see its detail view.
Mobile — click a job to see the detail
Desktop — click sidebar jobs to swap the detail panel
The problem
They know what they're doing
The Congressional Research Service published a formal report on ghost jobs. Companies post them to signal growth to investors, make employees feel replaceable, pretend they're open to external hires when they've already picked someone internal, or vacuum up resumes for openings that don't exist yet. 62% said fake listings were specifically created to make employees feel replaceable.
72% of job seekers say the process negatively affects their mental health. 86% said being ghosted left them feeling depressed. And here's the structural part: when a company closes a role in their ATS, LinkedIn can take 24–72 hours to update — or never update at all. A listing marked "just posted" can already be dead at the source.
Competitive audit
Greenhouse did the hard thinking. It's in the wrong place.
What they got right
Where it falls short
Why companies opt in
Make transparency worth their time
Success metrics