Ghosting A Prospective Employee

Why ghosting is not a good idea and how it could affect your company’s reputation.

Ghosting is becoming more and more common in our personal life – in dating and in relationships for various reasons but it is starting to become common in a professional capacity.

I’m sure ghosting is not something that happens all the time in your organization, but here is what some reputable sites identify:

Trying to Attract a Candidate to Work for You? Chase Real Connections

• Building real relationships can help you avoid Ghosters in the first place
• You’ve scheduled an interview with someone? Call them prior (or send an email) to ensure they know how much you are looking forward to meeting them. This is also a way to confirm the interview without asking them if they are coming.
• Pursuing in-person connections, like information interviews over coffee, is important. Alumni associations, family, friends and LinkedIn are all great ways to make good connections

Are you the Ghoster?

• Any communication is better than none.
• If you’ve scheduled an interview with someone – show up. Your integrity is on the line.
  • If you ghost on an interview with a prospective candidate, they have friends that likely will hear about it. Just think about their circle of friends (and so on, and so on)
  • Online platforms like Glassdoor can quickly share poor candidate experiences and taint your company’s good name (and/or yours)
• If you have decided to go a different route, be sure to let all other parties know

Understand the implications of Ghosting after an interview

• Delaying to get back to a candidate after an interview, within a reasonable timeframe, that can be shared through social media everyone knows everything these days
• Don’t ghost your recruiter by not providing feedback on a candidate you’ve interviewed, that delays their communication with their candidate, which directly affects your reputation (as an employer) and the recruiter’s brand. If this happens too often, the recruiter can and will move on quickly to the next possible client.
• The Globe quotes a retail recruiter as saying, “The economy is such that the candidate is king. So if you want better behaviour from the candidate, you need to provide a better candidate experience”
  • The idea here is that candidates have started to take a page out of the client’s handbook. Since, historically, there is little to no feedback after interviews with unsuccessful candidates, candidates are now taking the power back and not bothering to show up to interviews.

We could all do better. Let it start with you!