Why Do Jobs Keep Getting Reposted?

You find a job that looks like a great fit, apply, and wait.

Maybe you get rejected or never hear anything at all. You might even make it through an interview before they decide to go with someone else.

Then a few weeks later, there it is again.

Same company. Same job. Back at the top of the search results with a shiny new posting date like the last several weeks never happened.

I know exactly where a job seeker’s mind goes when this happens because I’ve seen the conversations about it:

Did they even hire anyone? Was the job fake? Why didn’t they just hire one of the 400 people who already applied?

There are absolutely some crappy reasons a company might keep reposting the same job. But there are also a lot of incredibly boring recruiting reasons that have nothing to do with collecting resumes or wasting everyone’s time.

And unfortunately, you can’t really tell which one you’re looking at from the outside.

Sometimes the posting just needs a fresh start

One of the simplest reasons a job gets reposted is because fresh job postings get more attention.

Think about how you search for jobs. If you’re looking through Indeed or LinkedIn and one posting says it was added yesterday while another has been sitting there for 30+ days, which one are you more likely to click?

Recruiters deal with a similar issue on the other side. If I have hundreds of applications attached to a posting that’s been open forever, it can make more sense to close it and start fresh than continue digging through an increasingly stale applicant pool. A newer posting gives me a cleaner group of people who are actively interested right now.

Sometimes the original posting also just…didn’t work.

Maybe the company posted a job as an “Administrative Coordinator,” but what they actually need is much closer to an “Executive Assistant.” The people searching for Executive Assistant jobs may never even click on it, while the people applying for Administrative Coordinator jobs are reading the description and realizing it isn’t what they expected.

Changing the title and reposting the job can help get it in front of people who are actually looking for that kind of work.

The job itself can change too. A hiring manager might realize halfway through recruiting that the experience they originally required isn’t as important as they thought. The schedule could change. Sometimes enough about the position changes that keeping the original posting doesn’t make much sense anymore.

Sometimes we stop recruiting for it

Hiring priorities change constantly.

A manager says they need someone ASAP, recruiting starts working on it, and then something happens internally that puts the position on hold. It could be a budget decision or simply another position becoming more urgent.

If we’re not actively recruiting for the position, I would rather close the posting than continue collecting applications from people who think someone is reviewing them.

Then two weeks later, the company is ready to hire again.

Back up it goes.

Some recruiting systems and job boards also automatically close postings after a certain amount of time or require recruiters to update them to keep them active. Sometimes what looks like a deliberate repost from the outside is literally just the system doing what the system does.

Sometimes there were TOO MANY applicants

This one feels backwards when you’re a job seeker, but sometimes a posting disappears because it was successful.

If 500 people apply to a role in a short period of time, there isn’t much reason to collect another 500 applications before reviewing the first group.

The recruiter may temporarily close the job and work through the people who already applied. If nobody works out, they reopen it and start looking again.

That does not necessarily mean all 500 people were wildly unqualified. A recruiter can send qualified candidates to a hiring manager and still have the search go nowhere. Candidates also withdraw from hiring processes all the time, and sometimes the person everyone thought would take the job doesn’t.

Hiring is collaborative, and there are a lot of things that can happen between “we have applicants” and “someone started the job.”

Sometimes they actually DID hire someone

This is probably one of the more frustrating scenarios from the outside because the company may have genuinely filled the job.

Someone interviewed, accepted the offer, and the posting came down.

Then they backed out.

When that happens, recruiters will usually go back to the other finalists first. If I had other people who made it to the final stages and were interested in the job, it makes a lot more sense to call them before starting the entire hiring process over again.

But enough time may have passed that those candidates aren’t interested anymore. They may have already accepted another job.

If the recruiter works through the previous finalists and nobody is available, up the job posting goes.

There is also a much simpler explanation that I think gets overlooked: the company might need more than one person with the same job title.

A company could hire a customer service representative from the first posting and then need another customer service representative a month later. From your side, it looks like the same job came back.

From their side, it is literally another job.

Some jobs are designed to stay open

Then there are evergreen postings.

An evergreen job posting is generally used for positions a company hires for frequently or in larger numbers. Instead of opening a brand-new posting every single time another position becomes available, they may continually collect candidates through the same type of posting.

You’ll see this more often with jobs where a company regularly needs multiple people doing the same work.

That means seeing the same posting repeatedly doesn’t necessarily mean the company has spent six months desperately trying and failing to hire one person. They may have hired several people from it already and still need more.

It also means an evergreen posting doesn’t always have the same urgency as a job tied to one specific vacancy. That’s useful context to have when you’re deciding how much energy you want to put into an application.

And sometimes the reason really does suck

I don’t want to explain away every reposted job as some innocent little recruiting quirk because sometimes the problem really is the company.

I’ve worked roles where the hiring manager’s expectations did not match the market. They wanted such a specific combination of qualifications that the person they had created in their head basically did not exist.

Or at least they did not exist for what the company was willing to pay them.

In those situations, recruiters need data. If I can show that we’ve talked to a significant number of candidates and keep running into the same issue, I have something concrete to bring back to the hiring manager. Maybe one of the requirements needs to change. Maybe the pay does.

That doesn’t guarantee they’ll change their mind. Recruiters unfortunately do not possess a magical button labeled MAKE HIRING MANAGER REASONABLE. But part of the job is identifying where the process isn’t working and pushing for changes when we can.

There is another possibility that’s worth paying attention to: turnover.

If you notice the same company hiring for the same position over and over and over again, they may actually be filling it. People just aren’t staying.

Recruiting should be paying attention to that too. If I’m constantly filling the same job because new hires leave within a month, I need to know why. There could be an issue with the job itself that isn’t being communicated during hiring, or something could be happening once people actually start.

Recruiting can’t personally fix every retention problem, but continually replacing people without asking why they keep leaving isn’t much of a solution either.

So…should you apply again?

I would.

Even if you were rejected the first time.

Something may have changed since you applied. This could even be a completely separate opening that happens to have the same job title. You really don’t know from the outside.

Worst-case scenario, they reject you again.

Repeated interest might annoy someone, but closed mouths don’t get fed. If it’s a job you genuinely want and you’re still qualified for it, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying again.

There is obviously a limit here.

If you’ve applied to the same job three times in the last month and they’ve rejected you three times, I think they’ve made their point. You do not need to keep dedicating your time to an employer who isn’t giving you any of theirs.

Especially if we’re talking about one of those applications that wants you to upload your resume and then manually type your entire resume into 47 separate boxes because apparently we have decided suffering builds character.

Try again if the opportunity is worth another shot. Just don’t let one reposted job become the job you’re waiting around for.

Seeing a job reposted only tells you that the company is looking for applicants again. There could be a completely reasonable explanation behind it, or there could be something going on with the job that would make you glad they didn’t hire you in the first place.

You probably won’t know which from the posting alone.

If you still want the job, apply again. Then keep looking elsewhere too.

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I write about hiring, content creation, internet culture, and whatever else I can’t stop thinking about that week.

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