Ghosting During The Hiring Process
Are you still waiting for that one company’s response to your application for your dream job?
Have you ever started correspondence with an employer, feeling good as you navigate through the process, and then suddenly there’s radio silence?
How many times has a potential candidate with high potential stopped communicating altogether?
Well, these are all signs that you have been ghosted! And what could be a better time to discuss ghosting in the hiring process than during the holiday season?
What Is Meant By ‘Ghosting’ During The Hiring Season?
Ghosting behaviors originated in the 2000s in the sphere of dating etiquettes driven by social media. The newly coined term gradually made its way into HR literature when candidates or employers started disappearing from one another. Post-pandemic and during the fear of recession, the practice has led to menacing results for all parties involved.
It literally means disappearing without a trace, dishonoring a promise made to either arrive for an interview or cease correspondence altogether about a job offer. Ghosting is also very common in the realm of freelancers and the gig economy at large.
The behavior may have been prevalent prior to 2020, but the pandemic has accelerated its growth to a dangerous level. HR managers often scramble in the search of potential candidates with a knack for punctuality and an inherent sense of accountability. The potential candidates share similar sentiments.
What Does Ghosting Say About An Employer?
Employers mostly ghost an applicant for three main reasons:
The role has been filled by a more pliable applicant.
The salary expectations exceed the company’s budget.
The third-party recruiter is unaware of the hiring process within the company.
The hiring process is a significant representation of your company culture. Statistically, 77% of applicants believe that the treatment received as a job applicant is closely related to the treatment received by the employees.
Portraying a culture of ignorance, miscommunication, and lack of accountability through ghosting a potential asset to your team would come to haunt you at a later date. It damages the brand and reduces referrals from within the organization. A satisfied job applicant could someday become an ideal customer too, so the trail of loss continues.
In most cases, when an HR manager feels that the candidate’s skill and/or persona does not match the memo, they disappear from the scene without any feedback or reasons for setting the applicant aside. The lack of constructive criticism is debatable, but the loss of a polite notice is often begrudged by applicants.
There is no denial in the fact that interviews and hiring at large is a tediously complicated process but that does not account for the dwindling etiquette employed by headhunters.
HR managers need to understand one thing:
You cannot just up and leave a conversation without informing an applicant, even if their resume does not line up with the specifics you had in mind while structuring a generic job description! Informing them is the least you could do!
How Does It Impact A Potential Employee?
It is evident that ghosting has detrimental effects on a person’s emotions and mental health. It leads to diminished confidence in one’s abilities and also puts a damper on their initiative toward applications. It leaves an aftertaste of mistrust.
While it is evident that ghosting damages all stakeholders, the question here is why it persists.
Is The Loss Of The Human Touch Responsible For The Rise In Ghosting?
The pandemic has digitized a major chunk of our lives. This includes working from home, digital recruitment, education, and whatnot! Ghosting in romantic relationships has existed for over a decade in social media-infused situations but the era of Easy Apply and Zoom Interviews has certainly reduced commitment on both ends. The human touch of speaking in person and reading the body language were cues that helped everyone in the process.
While previously, a job applicant had to work consistently to find a good job and actively appear for an interview, the constant bombardment of new job offers, applications and ads via LinkedIn, Indeed, and other platforms has made it difficult for each party to find the right match.
As the market continues to suffer from uncertainties, an effort is required on both ends of the spectrum to limit ghosting from becoming a standard practice.
How To Handle Ghosting As An Employer?
Employers need a robust hiring process that ensures expectations and possibilities are clearly communicated. Here are a few ways employers can refrain from ghosting:
Invest in Candidate Relationship Management or an Applicant Tracking System. Automated responses to rejection are far better than utter silence.
Optimize the hiring process via better timelines that can be given to an applicant that qualifies for the initial screening.
Ensure personalized communication for applicants in the later or last stage of hiring.
As a company, you must keep a positive image that does not hamper the candidate’s confidence and leaves them satisfied despite the imminent rejection.
How To Handle Ghosting As An Applicant?
Candidates are often overwhelmed by the sense of dejection but a calm and calculated approach can help them combat this challenge.
Initiate the conversation yourself. Drop a message to follow up and let them know that you have not lost interest yet.
Reassess the situation if you’ve been left on seen after the initial correspondence. You must read the room before taking things further.
Try building a connection instead of vying for the job. If the HR manager does not necessarily answer your question about qualifying for the next batch of interviews or tests, try to engage them in conversations via hiring platforms.
This bonus tip can amp up your chances of landing a better job in the future. The HR manager would also get a positive impression that can come in handy much later.
Final Takeaway
Ghosting has definitely become a trend in the time of swiping right and left. But it is not something to be sustained in the long term, especially for HR management. Companies need a well-planned infrastructure and employees need the initiative to bridge the gap.
As digital media continues to grow, you can no longer disappear without a trace. An industry-wide structure can play a critical role in keeping the ship aboard!.
