Why does HR / hiring manager ghost applicants? Let’s be professional and give a nay or yeah….

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Putting together a “Burn Black” of bad recruiters/companies that do this would be beneficial. But they couldn’t find out of course…

been a hiring manager a lot over the last year. in a lot of cases, the hiring manager/process may be the holdup in communications. Not always, but it can happen. And as a smaller company with a small HR department trying to fill numerous positions, it'd definitely challenging.

From my perspective, applicants should not feel awkward about checking in. Especially if it has been an extended silence.

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It's true. For HMs, there's usually very little pressure from above to fill the role, but there's plenty of requests for other things. No one but the candidates and the HM have a sense of how long things have dragged on. The result is the HM prioritizes the daily fire drills and procrastinates on the hiring process.

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Recent IconRecent

They’re humans.
They’re busy.
They’re busy humans.

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About 25% of candidates respond to an auto rejection with a request for feedback or a further presentation (and not always a polite one) about how they actually would be the best person for the job. I might have time to send an auto response. I unfortunately ( in the case of feedback requests) don’t have the time or energy to continue the convo once the auto-rejection is sent.

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The beauty of technology is that we’ve reached a point in our lives where this process can be automated. As soon as a hiring manager clicks “no” on a candidate then the system the company uses can easily send the candidate a rejection email. It’s not hard and saying the people are busy is nothing but an excuse. All of this can be done by simply clicking a button

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1000% agree! and it doesn’t take that much tech to do either..

Busy? Try working and triaging a cyber attack… LOL

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This is a huge discussion on LinkedIn. And even though it's talked about a lot it never changes.

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Funny thing…. I went through 4 rounds of interviews… even interviewed with CEO and CFO. The HR director was trying to speed up my process then all of a sudden she says that she’s out on vacation and will continue upon her return. I found this odd. She even sent a note that I’d be getting an offer upon her return and to follow up with her in Two weeks. I followed up and her note started with “unfortunately”, which I already knew it wasn’t great news…. She had informed me that my role couldn’t be supported. Highly waste of time and unprofessional!

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In my hiring experience, a lot of applicants are 'maybes.'

As the interview process progresses with your top picks, some will be weeded out or picked off by other opportunities. You don't know how far down the stack you'll have to go, or what unexpected curveballs will come your way, which makes me as a hiring manager hesitant to reject a 'maybe.' I might need them later.

Sure, some roles have hundreds of applicants, but I've also seen a number of spots that get less than 30 applicants, which makes rejecting those 'maybes' even riskier.

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Listen. It happens.
There are multiple roles. We have standard templates that are sent out once the role is filled but sometimes it takes some time to get to that point.

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They're waiting on someone else to give them an answer.

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Send them an email... "hey bro/sis, yay or nay? "

You'll get an answer.

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That’s all I’m asking…. No communication will not fly in any other department .. but it’s ok for HR to do this…. Red flags…

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Why do people confirm an interview and then don’t show?

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This!

It’s not ghosting if you haven’t communicated in person yet. If you just applied and haven’t heard anything that is not ghosting

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Nitpicking on the term used. Classic deflection.

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Maybe they got hit by a bus on the way to work and you are their unfinished business. Please contact their colleagues to finish your interviews so they can pass on

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Huge HR field day, the chaperones weren't watching as it all unfolded.

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Because most hiring processes are delegated to recruiters now. And recruiters don’t get paid to follow up with rejected candidates. They get paid to bring in new employees. It all just comes down to money at the end of the day.

And while all these companies could potentially automate a process to send dozens of reject emails every day, this also costs time and money to setup the infrastructure and some would argue that it’s not worth the effort.

Personally, I’m frustrated too and I don’t agree with this mindset. But I also understand that companies are unwilling to change because to them, there are no obvious consequences to ghosting applicants.

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Many companies have policies against giving a formal no.

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Yes. Because some candidates get really offended when you tell them the truth about their interview and might try to turn it around on you. Even if you were trying to be genuinely helpful. Most people are cool but you just need to encounter that one crazy to ruin your desire to make that extra effort.

I made this mistake early in my career. Internal candidate asked for feedback on the interview. I said she should focus her answers more on suggesting positive solutions for the company so they will be impressed with what she could offer. She called me a racist and said I was discriminating against her and other people of colour. She was Portuguese - I’m Asian (LOL) and half the people at the company were POCs.

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It’s a problem for sure

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Old school problem, but yet ever other department needs to evolve,

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I think they are incredibly busy. Unless they’ve got the infrastructure in place to do this, I can imagine that they are swamped with finding people, scheduling, etc.

Usually though if you reach out to them, they will respond.

Infrastructure ? Email template for each role .. take about 2 minutes ..

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Blame online applications that allow candidates to flood the applicant pool and overwhelm recruiters.

What would happen if LinkedIn capped applicants at... 5 apps/day? 10 apps/day?

Applicants would be more thoughtful about what they apply to. Recruiters would have a smaller, more qualified pool, allowing them to fill roles faster with less flaky hires.

Applicants would be better informed about the companies they're applying to and better able to keep track of their interviews... seeing problems here a lot recently when interviewing candidates who know next to nothing about my company, and in later rounds, end up asking me the same question I've already answered several times: too many irons in the fire.

They're protecting themselves from complaints and lawsuits. If they ghost, people can't accuse them of unfair practices. Companies institute HR policies to protect the company.

I think there’s always been a disconnect between what creatives think recruiters do and what they actually do. I no longer believe anyone who says that they’re candidate-focused; they are not IMO out scouring the glove for what would be the best fit for Person a. They are trying to fill whatever open roles they can as easily as possible.

I’ve done enough hiring to know that there is a mountain of resumes for every posting; people with 6 months experience applying for CD, roles etc. I’m sure it has led to a much less personal approach to the whole thing.

It also is a fucked situation when you keep not getting hired and you never get any feedback on why, due to policies and legal concerns or just busyness.

I think I forgot to make a point here— basically just saying, ghosting sucks and is also understandable. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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