How long does it take to hear back after applying?
Half the job postings we watched come down were removed within 25 days of the date the employer’s own careers page gave for them — and a quarter were still up after 47 days.
That is a posting lifespan, not a reply time. We can’t see whether anyone answered you, and neither can any other site: replies happen inside an employer’s inbox. What we can do is tell you whether the thing you applied to still exists.
What we can actually measure
These come from watching public careers pages every day and recording the day each posting stops appearing. Because we hold the employer’s own posted date and the day it went, the age is measured end to end rather than from whenever we started looking.
The spread is the part worth sitting with. A 25-day median sounds like a tidy answer until you notice that 11.0% of postings came down inside a week and 44.4% had been up for a month or more when they went. There is no “normal” hiring clock to be behind.
The posting is still up. Does that mean anything?
Less than people hope, in both directions. Right now 55.2% of the 542,271 postings we track have been listed 30 days or longer, and 20.0% have been listed 90 days or longer. A listing that is still live three weeks after you applied is completely ordinary and is not evidence about your application either way.
The one reading it does support: if a posting has been up dramatically longer than typical, the employer’s timeline for that role is probably longer than the posting implies — whatever the reason. You can check any specific posting with the tool below, or see the full distribution on how long job postings stay listed.
What to do with this, briefly
The generic advice is generic for a reason and we won’t pad it out: follow up once, in writing, after a week or two; keep applying while you wait; and don’t read a silent inbox as a verdict on you.
The one thing this site adds is a fact you can actually check rather than guess at — whether the role you applied for is still being advertised, and for how long it has been.
Is the posting you applied to still up?
Paste the link to a job on the employer’s own careers page to see how long it has been listed, counted from the employer’s posting date. No account needed.
What this doesn’t tell you
This is not a reply time. We measure postings on public careers pages. We have no visibility into applications, recruiter inboxes, or applicant tracking systems, so nothing here can tell you when — or whether — a particular employer will get back to you.
Long-lived postings are under-counted in that 25-day figure. We only see removals that happened inside our observation window, which currently runs July 24, 2026 to October 25, 2026. A posting that stays up for two years is invisible to that measurement until the day it comes down. Read 25 days as a floor on typical lifespan rather than an estimate of it.
A removal is not a decision. When a posting disappears we know the link stopped resolving. We do not know whether the role was filled, cancelled, paused, or moved to a different board.
Related questions
- How long job postings stay listedThe full distribution of posting age across every board we crawl, with the industry breakdown.
- Why am I not hearing back from jobs?How much of what is listed right now has been listed for a very long time, and what that does and does not explain.
- What does it mean when a job posting is taken down after an interview?How old postings are when they come down, how often they come back, and why removal is not a decision.
- How can I tell if a job listing has been reposted?How to check whether a listing came back as a new posting, how often a new one with the same title follows, and what that can't tell you.
- How can I track a company's job listings?Its careers site, its page on Zeltru, following it for new postings, and watching a job you applied to.
- How many applications does it take to get a job?We cannot answer this one, and we say why. What we can show you is the size and staleness of what is listed.
- Does the date on a job posting mean what it says?Most boards publish the date a listing went up. One publishes the date its record was created, and we mistook the two on our own homepage.
- How can I find when a job was first posted?Where to look for a posting's date, what that date can and can't tell you, and how to check how long it has been up.
- What does it mean when a job posting stays up for months?How long a posting has been listed can be measured. Why it is still up cannot. Here is the duration, and where the line sits.
- How long does the hiring process take?Posting lifespan is a floor on hiring time, not a measure of it. The difference matters and is explained.
- What can a job posting's age tell you?Why a posting is still up is not observable from a careers page. How long it has been up is. What the duration data supports, and what it does not.
- Why is a job still posted after I was rejected?How long listings stay up before they come down, measured, and why a listing that is still up says nothing about your application.
- How long should a job posting stay up?There is no standard. What employers actually do, from the postings we watched come down, without a recommendation.
- Which US states have the most job postings?Active postings by state on employers' own careers sites, with a link to every state's job board.
Or look up a specific employer: browse the companies we track, open the job posting checker on its own page, see the longest-listed postings, or read how these numbers are produced.