#recruiters #ghosting #jobsearch #careeradvice
Recruiters: Ghosting Candidates – A Frustrating Trend 🤔
As a job seeker navigating the competitive landscape of the employment market, one of the most frustrating experiences you may encounter is being ghosted by recruiters. You pour your time and effort into applications, interviews, and follow-ups, only to be met with silence and radio silence at the crucial stage of communication regarding your candidacy.
The Common Problem: Ghosting in Recruitment 👻
Totally serious question that I’m legitimately curious about. When you know that the candidate is no longer in the running or the decision has been made to go with someone else, Why don’t you send a boilerplate e-mail to the candidate?
I’ve spoken to dozens of recruiters, had many recruiter and hiring manager calls that account for many hours of time, only to have 95% of these recruiters completely ghost me.
Is it a time thing? Too many emails to send? Or is it more that you don’t want to deliver bad news? I’m legitimately curious as I can’t reconcile this pattern in my head. Please help me understand.
Solutions: How to Handle Ghosting in Recruitment 🌟
- Practice Empathy: Put yourself in the shoes of the candidate and imagine how you would feel if you were left in the dark without any closure. Treat candidates with the respect and professionalism they deserve.
- Communicate Transparently: Even if the news is not favorable, provide timely feedback and updates to candidates. Honesty and transparency can go a long way in building trust and maintaining positive relationships.
- Set Expectations: Establish clear communication protocols from the beginning of the recruitment process. Let candidates know what to expect in terms of feedback, timelines, and next steps.
- Follow-Up: If you do need to reject a candidate, follow up with a personalized email or call to provide constructive feedback and guidance for future opportunities.
- Seek Feedback: Encourage candidates to share their feedback on the recruitment process. Use this information to improve your communication practices and enhance the candidate experience.
Final Thoughts: Closing the Communication Gap 💌
Ghosting candidates in recruitment can have a lasting impact on their job search journey and overall perception of your organization. By addressing this issue proactively and implementing communication best practices, recruiters can foster positive relationships with candidates and uphold their reputation in the industry.
Remember, every candidate deserves to be treated with professionalism, respect, and dignity throughout the recruitment process. Let’s work together to eliminate ghosting and create a more transparent and empathetic hiring experience for all.
Not a recruiter, but I’ve heard some reasons being that they’ve decided it’s better to allocate their time to candidates that they’re focused on or it’s because past candidates have been hostile after being given the news.
You have to understand, a recruiter’s time is *precious* and *valuable* and they can’t waste their *precious and valuable* time responding to every candidate that didn’t get picked. They have far more *important* things to do.
Because a recruiter is not there for your benefit. Once the hiring manager decides to pass on you, it is easier for the recruiter to drop you all together and move onto other candidates. Is it the right experience to provide candidates? Absolutely not.
See also: UNLV shooting. It’s a safety concern for the people that already work here.
My older sister was a recruiter. I asked her the same thing as I’m in month four, searching for a job. She said, “We just get so busy, we don’t have time to get back to every candidate. Also, there have been stories of people who have been fired who end up going back to the company, threatening or even practicing violence on staff. Some companies and recruiters worry about how candidates handle rejection”.
I called bullshit on the fact that she couldn’t send out an email template to those that declined to have ATS used. Most people automatically get rejected by ATS if they don’t fit in. However, she stood her ground on being too busy due to the hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants.
Though I do understand the fear of hostility with all the violence that’s going on in the world today.
Recruiters ghost good candidates because they like you but their hiring managers don’t, or they’re too busy.
Usually, they simply never get an answer from the hiring manager about your application. They get “put that one in the *maybe* pile” so they don’t know who to decline until the role is filled, and roles for hiring managers like that take a long time to fill.
That said, recruiters also don’t want to reject you because they might be able to find a good fit for you, the candidate that impressed them, but then eventually too much time passes by. That’s why you see so many posts in here with recruiters responding insanely late with rejections or prospects, which is even worse.
Ironically, being ghosted by a recruiter may mean that you’re a good candidate, or y’know, close to it. Also ironically, it may mean the recruiter has gone to bat for you over and over again, without success.
Agency recruiter. Can’t speak on anything but my own experience, which is at a small agency. Bigger agencies are the ones that tend to be the churn and burn places where recruiters are blowing through people for numbers.
Personally, I try to always send a rejection if I’ve spoken to them about a job. There’s just no way to do it for every application I get due to the sheer number. If I don’t email someone a rejection, it’s one of two things – either I completely forgot (I try not to but no one’s perfect, definitely have missed a few), or I was specifically instructed not to by my boss or the HM, which means the HM is allegedly supposed to handle it. From there it’s out of my hands. As for automated – I have an ATS with my company, but it’s lowkey shit and I’d rather just use a manual email template.
Genuinely could just be a matter of being overloaded at work. This is the first job I’ve had where I’m actually working my entire shift, which is usually longer than 8 hours, sometimes even at home after. I constantly have things to do and have so much to keep track of. Only reason I’m writing this now if bc I’m waiting for a call back and don’t wanna start something else and be interrupted.
1. Lack of an ATS from smaller firms
2. You’re working on hundreds of roles and talking to hundreds of people so it’s hard to keep track at times
3. You send out a mass rejection only to have the selected candidate back out and have to go back and tell people the rejection email was sent too soon
4. Mutual annoyance when candidates ghost the recruiter by not showing up to a scheduled interview so they reciprocate
5. The hiring manager takes too long to respond and some times you just don’t have updates including a rejection
6. Candidates demanding more feedback compared to a generic email and not taking rejection well.
Simple: because a search isn’t done until it’s done. And even then it may not be done.
Candidates decline offers. New hires don’t show up. People get canned or walk in the first month for dumb reasons.
If you’ve got a “decent” candidate on the bench, that saves you a few weeks of rebooting the search process. Without the drama of re-approaching people that you’ve formally declined.
This isn’t a recruiter problem, this is a candidate problem. Apply, interview, move to the next. Keep doing that until you’ve got an offer. As long as the application is still alive, there’s still a tiny hope of a call back at zero cost to you. Seriously, not getting called back is all upside for a candidate if you keep your ego in check.
I was a recruiter for 10 years. The only reason a rejection email isn’t sent out is because they can’t be bothered and they do not care about the candidate.
Recruiters only care about money, the next fee. If they can’t make money from you, they won’t bother. Sending out a rejection email makes them nothing, therefor, they rarely do it.