Jobily trust signals
What is hiring confidence?
Roughly 56% of Canadian jobseekers say they have applied to a job that turned out not to be real. Hiring confidence is our attempt to hand that time back — a score on every posting that estimates whether someone is genuinely hiring.
Complete posting
Pay, timing and detail are all there. Little left to guess at.
Some gaps
Parts of the posting are missing. Worth a quick check before you invest hours.
Sparse posting
Little to go on — often no pay, no detail, or listed more than once. Confirm with the employer.
Why we built this
A job application is not free. It costs an evening — tailoring a résumé, writing a cover letter, preparing for a conversation that in some cases was never going to happen. Multiply that across a months-long search and ghost jobs are one of the most expensive things about looking for work in Canada.
Job boards have historically had no incentive to point this out: more listings looks like more inventory. We would rather show you fewer postings you can trust than more you cannot. Hiring confidence is that trade made explicit, and you can always switch the hidden ones back on.
It sits alongside the other thing we think Canadian jobseekers deserve by default: knowing what a job pays. Ontario’s Working for Workers Act now requires salary ranges on postings, and we flag every listing that does not have one.
Common questions
What is a ghost job?
A ghost job is a posting that is not attached to a real, open vacancy. Some are left up to collect résumés for later. Some exist to satisfy an internal policy when the role is already filled. Some were genuine months ago and nobody took them down. From the outside they look identical to a live opening — which is what makes them so costly.
What does the hiring confidence score measure?
It measures how much evidence there is that a posting is attached to an active search. It is not a measure of how good the job is, how well you would fit it, or whether the employer is reputable. A great employer can post a job that scores low simply because the listing is thin and old.
How is it calculated?
Every open job is scored out of 100 from signals already in our data. Postings gain confidence for things like a published salary range, a recent posting date, a detailed description, an employer who replies to the people who apply, and evidence that the employer has hired recently. They lose confidence for things like sitting untouched for months, being reposted repeatedly, having no way to reach the employer, or describing pay only as "competitive". We do not publish the exact weights, because a public formula is a formula to game.
What do the three levels mean?
High means the posting shows several signs of an active search — apply with confidence. Medium means some signals are missing; the role may well be real, but it is worth confirming before investing hours. Low means most signals are absent or point the wrong way; check directly with the employer first.
Why are low-confidence jobs hidden by default?
Because the whole point is to give you your time back. Low-confidence postings are unticked in the search sidebar by default, and you can turn them back on with one click — the count beside the checkbox always shows exactly how many you are choosing to skip. We hide nothing you cannot immediately see and undo.
Does a low score mean the job is fake?
No. It means the posting is missing the signals we can check. An employer new to Jobily has no reply history with us yet, and a listing imported from elsewhere often arrives without a salary or a company profile. Those postings score lower without anyone doing anything wrong. Treat a low score as a prompt to verify, not as an accusation.
Can an employer improve their score?
Yes, and the things that raise it are the things that make a posting better anyway: publish a salary range, write a real description, keep the listing current, complete your company profile, and reply to the people who apply. Nothing about the score rewards gaming it.
How often is it updated?
Scores are recalculated on a rolling basis throughout the day, so a posting that goes stale drifts down and one that is refreshed climbs back up. A job showing no indicator at all simply has not been scored yet — that is a gap in our coverage, not a verdict on the job.