Job Verification & Methodology

Every job board makes an implicit claim: “the things we’re showing you are real.” Most never explain how they back that claim up. This page does. It’s a plain description of the checks a listing goes through before it appears on this site, what those checks can and can’t catch, and what we do when something slips through anyway.

Why methodology matters more than it sounds like it should

Job scams and stale listings both waste something you can’t get back: your time. A fake listing might waste an afternoon writing a tailored application into a void, or worse, be an attempt to extract personal information or money. A stale listing might waste less time individually, but at scale it erodes the basic usefulness of a job board — if a third of what you see is dead, you stop trusting any of it, including the two-thirds that’s genuinely live. So the verification process isn’t a compliance checkbox for us; it’s the thing that determines whether this site is actually worth your time to use.

The verification checklist

Before any listing — submitted directly by an employer, added manually by our team, or imported through a structured feed — is published, it’s checked against the following criteria:

1. A working application link

Every listing must include a link to a genuine application process on the employer’s own site or a recognised third-party application system. Listings with broken links, links to a generic homepage instead of an actual application page, or no application link at all are rejected. If a listing’s link stops working after publication (employer site restructuring, expired campaign URLs, and so on), our editorial team corrects or removes it once identified — see the reporting process below for how you can help catch these.

2. A named, identifiable employer

We require a real company name. We don’t publish listings from unnamed “confidential clients” or generic agency placeholders, because that pattern shows up disproportionately in low-quality recruitment spam and in some outright scam listings. If a role genuinely needs to stay confidential (executive search, sensitive internal restructuring), the listing needs to at least identify the recruiting agency by name and provide a verifiable link to that agency’s own site.

3. No application fees or suspicious payment requests

A legitimate UK employer does not charge candidates to apply, to interview, or to receive an offer. Any listing that asks for payment, banking details, or a “processing fee” at any stage is rejected outright and, if we can identify a pattern, reported. This is one of the clearest scam signals in recruitment, and we treat it as an automatic disqualifier rather than something to flag for review.

4. A genuine closing date

Every listing needs a specific closing date. This isn’t just an accuracy issue — it’s the mechanism that drives our entire expired-jobs system. Without a real closing date, a listing can’t be correctly marked active or expired, so we don’t publish undated listings. See our Expired Jobs Policy for how that date is used after publication.

5. Coherent, specific job detail

The listing needs enough real detail — job title, core responsibilities, location, job type — that it reads as a genuine, specific vacancy rather than a template stretched across dozens of near-identical postings. Extremely vague listings (“Multiple positions available, all industries, apply now”) are rejected as low-value even when they’re not outright fraudulent.

What happens after publication

Verification isn’t a one-time gate. Once a listing is live, three ongoing processes keep it accurate:

• Automated expiry checking. A daily process compares every listing’s closing date against the current date. Once the closing date passes, the listing’s status automatically changes to Expired — the apply button is disabled and a clear notice appears on the page. This runs without manual intervention, so there’s no delay caused by someone forgetting to update a spreadsheet.
• User-reported issues. If you find a listing that looks wrong — a dead link, a role that’s clearly already filled, incorrect salary or location detail — you can report it directly through our Contact page. We treat these reports as a genuinely important verification signal, because you’re often looking at the actual application page in real time, which is something our own periodic checks can’t replicate at scale.
• Periodic spot review. Our editorial team periodically spot-checks a sample of active listings, particularly older ones nearing their closing date, to catch problems before a user has to report them.

What verification can and can’t guarantee

We want to be precise about the limits of this process, because overstating it would undermine the trust it’s meant to build. Verification confirms that a listing had a genuine, working application link and a real closing date at the point it was checked. It does not, and cannot, guarantee that:

• The role is still open at the exact moment you click through — employers sometimes fill positions before the stated closing date without telling us.
• Every detail on the employer’s own application page exactly matches what’s shown on our listing — employers occasionally update salary, requirements, or working arrangements on their end after we’ve published.
• The employer’s own hiring process is fair, timely, or will result in a response — we have no visibility into and no control over what happens after you click “Apply on Original Website.”

In every case, the employer’s own application page is the authoritative source. Our listing is a signpost, not a contract.

How we handle listings imported in bulk

Listings added through structured CSV import or, in future, live data feeds go through the same core checks as manually added listings — working link, named employer, closing date, coherent detail — applied automatically at the point of import, with the same disqualifying rules for missing links or dates. Bulk-imported listings are also included in our periodic spot-review process at the same rate as manually added ones; we don’t treat imported data as lower-priority to check.

Reporting a problem listing

If you come across a listing that looks fake, already filled, or otherwise wrong, please tell us. The fastest way is our Contact page — include the job title and, if possible, the page URL, and let us know specifically what looks wrong (dead link, suspicious payment request, role already filled elsewhere, incorrect detail). We aim to review reported listings promptly and will remove or correct anything that fails to meet our standards. For factual corrections more broadly — including to blog content — see our Corrections Policy.

Why we keep expired listings visible instead of deleting them

Some job boards treat “verification” as synonymous with “delete anything old.” We’ve deliberately chosen a different approach: verify aggressively before publication and continuously afterward, but don’t erase a listing’s history once it closes. A clearly labelled expired listing is more honest — and more useful — than a silent deletion that leaves a broken link where a real vacancy used to be. Full reasoning on this is on our Expired Jobs Policy page.

What we specifically look for as scam signals

Beyond the core checklist above, our review process watches for a handful of specific patterns that, individually or in combination, correlate strongly with fraudulent listings rather than genuine vacancies. These include listings that promise unusually high pay for minimal stated qualifications or experience, requests to communicate exclusively through informal messaging apps rather than a proper company channel, urgency language pressuring immediate action (“apply within the hour” or similar), and requests for sensitive personal information — bank details, a copy of your passport, National Insurance number — before any formal interview or offer stage has taken place. None of these signals alone is automatically disqualifying in every context, but a listing showing several of them together is treated as high-risk and either rejected outright or escalated for closer manual review before publication.

How our review process differs for high-volume employers versus first-time submitters

An employer or recruiter who has submitted multiple genuine listings over time, with a consistent track record of accurate detail and working links, is understood to carry a different risk profile than a first-time submitter we have no prior history with. This doesn’t mean established submitters skip verification — every listing, regardless of who submits it, goes through the same core checklist described above — but a first-time submission, particularly one with any ambiguous detail, is more likely to receive closer manual attention before publication, simply because there’s no existing track record to weigh the listing against.

Frequently Asked Questions

How quickly does a job get marked as expired after its closing date?

Our automated check runs daily, so a listing is typically re-classified as Expired within one day of its stated closing date passing.

What should I do if I find a listing that looks like a scam?

Don’t apply, don’t provide any personal or financial information, and report it to us immediately through our Contact page with as much detail as you can provide. We’ll review and remove it if it fails our standards, which listings requesting payment or personal financial detail always do.

Can an employer’s listing be removed before its closing date?

Yes — if an employer tells us a role has been filled early, or if we or a user identifies a problem with the listing, it can be updated or removed ahead of its original closing date.

Do you verify salary figures independently?

We check that a salary figure, if provided, is coherent and plausible for the role and location described, but we rely on the employer for the figure itself. If no salary is provided, we display “Salary not specified” rather than estimating one.

Does verification apply equally to jobs from small businesses and large employers?

Yes. The same checklist applies regardless of company size — a small local employer’s listing goes through the same working-link, named-employer, and closing-date checks as a listing from a large national company.