👻 Ghosting - from the recruiter’s perspective

🙅🏻‍♀️ First I’ll start by saying that ghosting is not okay. I agree, as a recruiter, that candidates deserve to know what decision is being made on their candidacy.

💡 Second, let’s define ghosting. Ghosting is when both parties have exchanged communication and one suddenly goes silent, even after multiple follow-ups. It’s not ghosting if you messaged a recruiter on LinkedIn with your resume and you just never heard back.

🐢 Third, there’s a difference between ghosting and a delayed response.

Remember, these are reasons why ghosting is happening, not excuses 👈🏼

➡️ Recruiters are overloaded.
I’ve been recruiting for 8+ years and this is the craziest I’ve seen the market. Recruiters are taking on more and more positions. Sometimes their companies also don’t have the additional headcount to bring on more recruiters. So whomever the recruiter is, that’s the one handling recruitment + additional projects & tasks.

➡️ Their systems have limitations.
I’ve used many tools and ATSs in my career and there’s not one I can claim is perfect. There are systems out there that just don’t have the capability to help recruiters be more efficient. And when it comes to even sending automated messages to let a candidate know they are passing, sometimes that isn’t possible.

➡️ Recruiters are getting directions from their hiring managers.
Recruiters have become strategic partners with their hiring managers and are moving away from being order-takers. There is an internal stakeholder partnership that plays a huge role in how recruiters handle the process. Sometimes the recruiter is behind on giving an update to a candidate because they’re still gathering information from their hiring managers.

➡️ The recruiter is human.
I’ve been accused of ghosting. I wrote a decline email to a candidate, got distracted by something, and forgot to hit send. 3 weeks later the candidate emailed and said they were upset that I would ghost them. I swore I sent my message letting them know our decision, but the message was still sitting in my drafts. Sometimes there’s a lot going on, that recruiters forgot. Sometimes they make mistakes and didn’t hit send.

These are the reasons I’ve seen and experienced the most. Again, these are not excuses and I’m not here to disclose this information to make you agree it’s okay. I hope this gives some insight from someone who’s on the other side of the process.