Have you ever attended a job interview only to be met with silence afterwards from the company you hoped to work for?
Then you have been ghosted. The term is often associated with dating, but the phenomenon is also common in recruitment at both small and large companies.
Jesper Magnusson, CEO of outplacement company Makio, estimates that around one in four of the candidates Makio meets have experienced this kind of silence after a job interview.
- We see ghosting at every level. It happens to applicants who are not invited to interview, but unfortunately also to candidates who have been through several interviews and then receive neither a rejection nor a response to their enquiries. It even happens at senior level, where a recruitment agency or headhunter is managing the process. There is far too much indifference towards applicants, he says.
The fact that companies stop responding to candidates they have themselves invited for interviews surprises occupational psychologist Ditte Darko. Candidates have invested time and expectations in the process, and without an answer they may start looking to themselves for an explanation.
- I think it is a form of disrespect. You are not acknowledging the time they have invested. As an applicant, you can be left feeling badly treated and as though you were not even worth a reply. A process like that says a lot about the manager or workplace that treats candidates in this way, she says.
Makio helps around 2,000 people move forward in their careers every year, and according to Jesper Magnusson, the silence often begins once the company regards the task as completed because it has found the right employee.
- You identify three or five people you want to interview, but once you have found the right candidate, everyone else suddenly becomes uninteresting. That is where the human element is overlooked, and people end up being treated badly, he says.
Ditte Darko believes the poor reputation that can result from treating applicants this way may ultimately have negative consequences for the company itself – particularly in parts of the country where major corporations are typically less present and where a bad reputation can therefore have a more direct impact.
- You never know where people will end up. Suddenly there could have been an opportunity for a partnership that is turned down because you treated someone badly in the past. The candidate you ghosted could be the right person next time – or could later become a customer or business partner, she says.
