Expired Jobs Policy

Every job on this site eventually closes. What happens next — on most job boards — is that the listing either vanishes without a trace or keeps quietly accepting applications for a role that stopped hiring months ago. We think both of those outcomes are worse than the alternative, so we do something different, and this page explains exactly what and why.

The short version

When a job’s closing date passes, we don’t delete it. We mark it clearly as Expired, disable the apply button, and keep the page permanently accessible at its original web address. Underneath, we show a set of currently active jobs that are genuinely similar, so the page still helps you even though the original vacancy is gone.

Why we don’t delete expired listings

Deleting a page the moment a job closes is the industry default, and on the surface it looks tidy. In practice, we think it causes three specific problems.

Broken links break trust

People share job links constantly — in a WhatsApp message to a friend who might be interested, in an email to themselves as a reminder, saved in a bookmarks folder labelled “apply this weekend.” If that link returns a 404 error a month later, it doesn’t just fail silently — it actively damages the sense that this site is a reliable place to come back to. A clearly labelled “this job has closed” page respects the fact that the link was shared in good faith.

Deleted pages erase useful information

An expired listing still tells you something real: what a specific company was paying for a specific type of role at a specific point in time, what qualifications they asked for, whether a particular employer tends to hire for this kind of position repeatedly. If you’re researching a company before an interview, or trying to understand typical requirements for a role you’re considering, a six-month-old expired listing can be more useful than nothing — deleting it throws that information away for no real benefit.

A dead end is a wasted opportunity to help

If you land on an expired job page — because you found it through a search engine, an old bookmark, or a shared link — the worst possible outcome is that you hit a dead end and leave. The best outcome is that you land on a page that’s honest about the original role being closed, and immediately shows you other genuinely active opportunities that match what you were looking for. Deleting the page forecloses that second, better outcome entirely.

What actually happens when a job expires — step by step

1. The closing date passes. Every job listing carries a specific closing date set by the employer or our editorial team at the time of publication.
2. An automated check runs daily. A background process compares every published listing’s closing date against the current date. This isn’t a manual task someone has to remember to do — it runs on its own schedule, so the delay between a job actually closing and our site reflecting that is typically under 24 hours.
3. The listing’s status changes to Expired. This status flag — not the underlying listing itself — is what changes. The job’s title, description, requirements, and history all stay exactly as they were.
4. The page updates automatically. A clear “Job Expired” notice appears near the top of the page, stating the closing date that passed. The “Apply on Original Website” button is replaced with a disabled “Applications Closed” state — you’ll never be sent through to apply for a role that’s already closed.
5. The listing drops out of default search and browse results. Expired jobs are automatically excluded from the homepage, the main job search, category and location listings, and any “recommended” or “related jobs” block anywhere on the site. An expired job will never be surfaced as if it were a current opportunity.
6. The page itself stays live, permanently. The original URL keeps working. If it’s indexed by a search engine, or bookmarked, or shared, it will continue to load and clearly explain its own status.
7. Related active jobs are shown instead. Underneath the expired notice, we display a set of currently active roles matched by shared category, location, job type, and company — not just a generic “browse more jobs” link, but genuinely similar opportunities that are still open.

What “expired” does and doesn’t mean

An Expired status means the listing’s stated closing date has passed according to our records. It’s worth being precise about what that does and doesn’t guarantee:

• It does mean we will not send you through an active apply link for that role, and it will not appear in any current job recommendations.
• It does not necessarily mean the role has actually been filled — some employers close applications on schedule regardless of whether they’ve made a hire yet. We simply follow the closing date we were given.
• It does not mean the company has stopped hiring altogether — many employers we work with post similar roles repeatedly, which is exactly why we show related active listings from the same company where available.

Search engines and expired listings

We handle expired job pages carefully from an SEO and structured-data standpoint, because misrepresenting a closed role as open — to a search engine or to you — isn’t something we’re willing to do for the sake of a few extra clicks. Expired job pages retain accurate structured data reflecting their real closing date, so search engines can correctly understand that the position is no longer accepting applications, while the page itself remains indexed and accessible as a legitimate, honestly labelled piece of content rather than being artificially kept looking “fresh.”

Why we think this approach is better for job seekers, specifically

It’s worth stepping back from the mechanics and stating the actual point plainly: the entire reason for this policy is that your time is worth protecting. A job board that quietly lets you apply to closed roles, or that vanishes its history the second a listing ages out, isn’t optimising for your experience — it’s optimising for looking tidy or for keeping stale content indexed. We’d rather be upfront that a role is gone, immediately show you what’s genuinely still available, and let the historical record of past listings remain useful to anyone doing research, rather than researching a company’s hiring patterns being made artificially harder because we deleted the evidence.

What we ask of you

If you ever land on a job page marked Active that you have independent reason to believe has actually closed — you applied and were told the role was filled, or the employer’s own site no longer lists it — please let us know through our Contact page. Closing dates come from the employer or from public postings, and while our verification process (see our Job Verification & Methodology page) catches most inconsistencies, a report from someone who’s actually gone through the application process is one of the most reliable signals we can act on.

Expired jobs and your job search history

One underappreciated benefit of not deleting expired listings is what it does for your own ability to track your own job search over time. If you’ve bookmarked or been sent a handful of listings while researching a career move, being able to revisit them later — even once they’ve closed — lets you see the fuller picture: which companies were hiring for what, at what point, and how requirements or salary bands for a given type of role have shifted over the months you’ve been looking. Deleting listings the moment they close would quietly erase that record for you, which is a real cost even though it’s not the first thing most people think about when they first read a policy like this one.

How this policy shapes the rest of the site

This approach to expired jobs isn’t an isolated feature bolted onto an otherwise typical job board — it shapes decisions across the whole site. It’s why our related-jobs recommendations are built to actively exclude anything expired rather than simply hoping stale listings don’t surface (see how we handle intelligent, active-only matching by category, location, job type and company on our About page). It’s why our homepage and search results default to showing only active roles, with expired jobs excluded from the count of currently available positions. And it’s why our blog content, when it links through to specific job opportunities, only ever points toward genuinely open roles rather than anything that’s since closed. The expired-jobs approach described on this page is a single policy with consequences that reach into nearly every part of how the site actually works.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will I ever be able to apply for a job marked as Expired?

No. Once a listing is marked Expired, its apply button is permanently disabled on our site. If you believe the role might still genuinely be open despite the stated closing date having passed, you would need to check directly with the employer through their own careers page.

How quickly does a listing get marked Expired after its closing date?

Our automated check runs daily, so the change typically happens within 24 hours of the stated closing date passing.

Why does an expired job still show up when I search Google?

We keep expired job pages live and indexable rather than deleting them, because the page still provides honest, useful information — clearly labelled as closed — along with links to genuinely active similar roles. Deleting it would just leave a broken link where useful context used to be.

Can an expired listing come back to Active status?

If an employer reopens or extends a role, the closing date can be updated, which would restore it to Active status. We don’t do this automatically or speculatively — it happens only when we have a genuine update from the employer.

Do expired jobs count in your total “active jobs” number shown on the homepage?

No. Any job count displayed on the site reflects active listings only, recalculated to exclude anything past its closing date.