About The Hiring Index

What we are

The Hiring Index is a hiring accountability and intelligence platform that tracks how companies treat job seekers and employees — from first application to final separation. We publish confirmed, user-submitted reports on hiring practices, ghost postings, and workforce separations. We also operate the largest free job tracker with hiring accountability data attached — over 11,000 active listings across 1,588 tracked companies, each showing ghost rates, response times, and WARN Act filing history.

Why we exist

Ghosting, phantom job postings, eight-round interview processes with no offer, layoffs with no notice — these are not rare exceptions. They are widespread practices that cost job seekers time, money, and dignity. The Hiring Index exists because employers have had accountability-free hiring practices for too long. We are changing that.

How it works

Job seekers submit reports about their hiring experiences through a multi-step verified submission flow. Reports are confirmed via email verification and weighted by credibility — email-confirmed reports carry 5x the weight of unverified submissions. Companies receive four sub-scores: Communication (how well they keep candidates informed), Transparency (timeline clarity and role accuracy), Efficiency (process length and unpaid work requirements), and Respect (overall candidate experience rating). Sub-scores combine into an overall Hiring Experience Score using sparse scoring — unanswered questions are excluded rather than penalized, so partial submissions still contribute meaningfully to company scores.

What we track

We track hiring practices at 1,588 companies including S&P 500, Fortune 500, and high-growth startups. We monitor 49 recruiting firms. Our job tracker indexes over 11,000 active job listings from Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, and other sources. We track WARN Act layoff filings across California, Texas, and New Jersey — 2,835 filings on record — and cross-reference them against active job postings to surface companies hiring while simultaneously executing layoffs. The Separation Index at theseparationindex.com tracks workforce separation practices separately.

Our principles

We publish what people report. We do not remove reports because a company finds them unflattering. We protect the anonymity of every report submitter. We apply the same standards to every company regardless of size, industry, or advertising budget. We are not a consumer reporting agency and our data may not be used for employment screening decisions. Our WARN Act data is sourced directly from state labor agencies and published with full DOL attribution. All job listing data is sourced from public job tracker APIs. We do not scrape LinkedIn or use data sources that prohibit external use.

Who built this

The Hiring Index was built by a team of communications and technology professionals who experienced firsthand how companies treat candidates during hiring and separation. The platform is operated independently with no advertiser relationships or employer funding. The Hiring Index and The Separation Index are both operated by The Respect Index, LLC.

Contact

General inquiries: hello@therespectindex.com · Press and media: press@therespectindex.com · Legal: legal@therespectindex.com · Privacy and data requests: privacy@therespectindex.com

Our current scoring system grades company-level hiring processes

Individual employees are not identified in our current scoring system — scores describe company-level hiring processes, not specific recruiters, hiring managers, or employees. Reports or forum posts that name individual people are rejected or removed. All scores, grades, and public data on this platform describe company-level behavior: hiring practices, process quality, ghost rates, and separation handling. This is both a design principle and a moderation rule enforced at submission and in the community. If you were hoping to review a specific recruiter by name, our Recruiter Accountability page covers professional conduct — not personal information.

Our Independence Charter

No company, advertiser, recruiter, or investor can change a score or suppress a report on this platform. Our Independence Charter sets out exactly what we will and will not do:

• No payment influences a grade or score. Certification and award fees buy display rights only.
• We do not sell "featured employer" placements that affect scores.
• We do not remove email-confirmed reports because a company complains.
• We do not suppress a company profile because it scores poorly.
• We publish our methodology and update it when it changes.