Field Note 011
The Number That Should Change How You Search
Built around the same ideas: paste a job description, see who actually decides the hire. grapevines.ai/intel
Roughly 30% of job postings are ghost jobs: listings that aren't attached to an active hiring process. The company is "building a pipeline," the role was already filled internally, or the posting was left up after the search closed.
If you're applying to 100 roles, approximately 30 of them were never going to hire someone from the applicant pool. You're spending time and emotional energy on positions that don't exist in any meaningful sense.
Ghost jobs are one more reason the volume approach fails at senior levels. When you're applying broadly, you can't distinguish between a real search and a phantom one. When you're targeting narrowly and doing account-level research, the signals become more visible: Is the team actually growing? Has the hiring manager posted about the role? Are there recent hires in adjacent positions?
The antidote to ghost jobs isn't more applications. It's better intelligence about which searches are real.
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