Ghosted: What It Means To Be Ghosted By An Employer and How To Avoid It.
Have you ever been in correspondence with a recruiter where everything seems to be going great? You feel like you’ve been successful in the hiring process and had a great interview, but then you never hear back from them? That probably means you were ghosted.
To be ghosted, a term originally coined by the dating world is when someone ceases all communication with you without any warning and ignoring and additional communication that may come. While this typically happens in the dating world, individuals who are job searching often experience the same thing with a hiring manager.
Being ghosted doesn’t mean you put in a resume or application and never heard back, unfortunately, that pretty much happens to everyone. It’s really when a recruiter interviews you and seems interested and then never contacts you again, and ouch…it hurts.
However, this doesn’t always mean the interview didn’t go well, more than likely it did. And while sometimes it could have had something to do with the candidate, there can be several reasons why the employer decided in a different direction. They could have had an internal employee apply or be referred, they could have had a change in priorities related to the position, the recruiter could have been replaced, or the recruiter could have just dropped the ball on the process. Whatever the case may have been we have a few tips to help you avoid being ghosted by an employer in the future.
- Probably the most important step you can take is to send a thoughtful follow-up. Whether it be an email or letter, it’s important to put some thought into how you should follow-up. You’ll want to of course thank them for their time and give some more details about how you feel your addition would be valuable to the company. Maybe study some industry trends to reference and relate to. We would recommend attempting 2-3 follow-ups over the next few weeks.
- Another idea is to find a second point of contact within the company that may help. You never know if who you’ve been in contact with suddenly left the company so search on LinkedIn and the company website to see if there may be another point of contact in that department.
- Make yourself seem wanted. In a follow-up email, you may even try letting the recruiter know that you’re interviewing with some other companies, but that you enjoyed the culture, or something specific, about their company and wanted to reach out before moving on. This might give them a nudge that you’re looking to hear back from them.
When you’ve tried all of the above and you still haven’t heard back from anyone at the company, then it’s time to give up and move on. Don’t let this discourage you as it really may not have had anything to do with you as a candidate. And who knows, you may receive an out of the blue apology for not getting back sooner with an opportunity to meet again, after all, you were just ignored, but not officially rejected.
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