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Anonymously call out the bad behavior of “ghosting” by recruiters
- blue547 6y agoHere are my 2 cents. In reality, this is an anonymous cyberbullying tool that you can use anonymously to attack your competitors or other recruiters. I understand the intention of that tool, and it will be great if recruiters will stop ghosting candidates because this is not OK at all. However, those recruiters who are ghosting candidates will not care, and if they get more of those emails, they will just block the email address of this app. That's my personal experience with many recruiters, even from big corps. So these tools like this one are not trying to help; they are only a way how to anonymously bully people. The only way HOW to change things is to reach the managers of those recruiters and provide feedback. If their bonuses are affected by bad feedback, they will care a lot. But if they get anonymous emails, they will just remove them because they will not care at all. That's my personal experience with those recruiters. If their salary is affected, they will care more!
- brianf0 6y agoLove the idea of reprimanding uncool behavior, but I don’t think this can truly be anonymous. The recruiter will surely have some idea of who sent the message.
- Demiurge 6y agoIt's pretty likely a recruiter has done that more than once, and the forwarded note could be made pretty vague.
- tacostakohashi 6y agoNor does it need to be anonymous. If someone ghosts you, there's no harm and nothing to be lost in politely letting them know it's not cool, and you'd be reluctant to work with them on any future positions. I have done this before, and received apologies. In general I don't have a lot of time for people wanting to do things anonymously.
- pmiller2 6y agoI'm glad you've gotten a good response. I called out a recruiter on the phone once for putting me through a bait and switch interview process. I got nothing but incredulity for my troubles. Still felt good though, and I don't care if I ever see or hear from that company again.
- edoceo 6y agoI'm actively working to improve things in the hiring space, and "ghosting" is problem that only non-payers (who are still a key-component of revenue) face. The balance is such for every gig there are at least dozens of applicants (supply) who are qualified - and this supply shifts over time - and this supply has urgent demand. Ghosting is currently not a top issue for managers or recruiters. I don't see how name-and-shame changes that at all.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoTo say nothing of whether it's appropriate or fair, "name-and-shame" can certainly change dynamics because people generally want to avoid reputational harm. That said, this service isn't actually doing that - it's sending anonymous notes to the alleged bad actor in private, which of course wouldn't have that effect.
- kache_ 6y agothe ghosting goes both ways :P
- dehrmann 6y agoI (try to) never do this. I'll ignore cold emails, but once I start taking to a recruiter, I'll tell them when I'm not longer interested.
- pmiller2 6y agoThis is exactly what I try to do. I'm sure I might have left one or two hanging accidentally at some point. OTOH, those 1 or 2 certainly never contacted me again, so I don't feel terrible about being imperfect here, as long as I don't ghost 99% of the time. I figure that probably makes me better than most candidates and most recruiters in that respect, anyway.
- st1x7 6y ago- Not in any given relationship it doesn't. You can't ghost someone that has already ghosted you. - On a systemic level, you're just propagating the same crappy behaviour that you don't like to see in other people. I don't see how that makes things better for anyone.
- umvi 6y agoI think they meant: - Candidates can decide they are not interested in the position anymore and ghost the recruiter/employer without warning Similarly, - Employers can ghost candidates and recruiters - Recruiters can ghost candidates and employers It's a ghosting triangle. Candidates probably get ghosted the most, but certainly recruiters and employers are ghosted as well.
- matz1 6y agoTrue, not sure why this a problem. I've been ghosted and ghost people all the time. If they ghosted you that simply means they are not interested enough, never put your expectation high. >moving on can be tough it can be tough but it also something that can be trained to overcome Its usually easier to change your own behavior rather than other people behavior.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI really like the idea of somehow discouraging ghosting. It happened to me at a time when I was desperate for a job change. A recruiter for RedHat strung me along for weeks before going silent. It really screwed up my job-search schedule, as RedHat was (at the time) my first choice. But I'm not sure where the best place is to apply pressure: (a) privately shame recruiters to the employers they represent, or (b) publicly shame recruiters so that employers and candidates can avoid that recruiter, or (c) publicly shame the employers who hire such recruiters. Also, the anonymous nature seems like a double-edged sword. One could imagine hoax / malicious reports being submitted by competitors and/or rejected candidates. I imagine that once that loophole starts getting exploited, employers will rightfully ignore all the reports.
- quadrifoliate 6y agoI think that (c) would be the best choice here. After all, recruiters simply facilitate a transaction between a company and a candidate. Whether or not they directly receive their paychecks from a specific company and their compensation structure, etc. is an implementation detail that is always subject to change. I see lots of people (including some commenters in threads on this article) offering the excuse "Well, you see, recruiters behave badly because the incentives set up by Acme, Inc. are such that behaving badly gets them paid the most per year". Hence, naming (and potentially, shaming) Acme, Inc. is the right thing to do here.
- awillen 6y agoIt's a great problem that you're trying to solve, but this just isn't a great solution - it's no different than getting a throwaway email and sending a message yourself. Also, depending on the size of the company, the recruiter may have a good idea of who this is coming from. A couple of suggestions: 1. Send these sorts of messages to the recruiter's boss/head of recruiting/head of HR. If the recruiter is ghosting out of laziness when they should not be, then making management aware of it will solve the problem. If the recruiter's told to do this by management, then management at least becomes aware that this policy is aggravating people. 2. Public shaming - make this a site where people can publicly name recruiters/companies who engage in this behavior. If companies see themselves incurring reputational damage from ghosting, it'll stop.
- bonestamp2 6y agoAgreed. If I can tell ahead of time that the recruiter is a ghost, then I can tell them I don't want to work with them because they've got a bad reputation on the ghost-list. Like a bad yelp review, that will hopefully motivate them to change. As long as new reports keep coming in, their full history remains. But old reviews should start to fall off the ghost-list after a certain amount of time without a new report of ghosting (to reward the positive change in behavior).
- slg 6y agoIf you give people who didn't get a job the chance to anonymously trash the reputation of a recruiter, the veracity of the reviews are going to be garbage.
- traceddd 6y agoIt would be more useful to simply collect and publicize the anonymous report statistics rather than contact the recruiter. That way applicants can know whether it’s worth spending a lot of time on, and recruiters have a metric to move if they want to improve.
- Alex3917 6y agoHow commonly do candidates actually get ghosted? Clearly it happens, but this doesn't seem like a serious problem.
- Grazester 6y agoThis has happened to me in the past. It is especially annoying when it is a technical assignment given and you take the time to do it then you don't hear back from them. I should have know better because the recruiter was not very responsive from the get go(this was not some tiny start-up either). I am now of the opinion that recruiters should pay people for their time now. I will no longer be doing such recruitment exercises.
- edoceo 6y agoI've collected metrics from a few 1000 openings, analysis of recruiter data. MOST (~70%) candidates "fall off" - that is the relationship concludes with no follow-up and also no notification of "declined". Ghosting also happens from the applicants too (but much less common) ~10%
- alexfromapex 6y agoRecruiters are by far the most rude selfish people I’ve interacted with professionally. I get a sense it’s usually, but not always, younger people that weren’t able to get a more prestigious job and tend to take it out on applicants which gives them a feeling of superiority they’ve been craving.
- stormbeard 6y agoI understand the frustration with recruiters, but this is ridiculous. The vast majority of people are not vindictive enough to change professions to recruiting just so they can torture candidates. Don’t add to the toxicity of the internet with this nonsense...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jariel 6y ago"which gives them a feeling of superiority they’ve been craving." - this is projecting way too much. Recruiters deal in volume and so their work is highly transactional, not personal. If you don't get a 'yes' then it's a 'no'. They are busy, don't hate the player, hate the game.
- 908B64B197 6y agoKeep in mind that for a lot of recruiters it's a number game. They, mostly, spam mindlessly until they reach whatever quota they get. You can try and shame them but chances are they'll be at a new place spamming you again in a few months. Either that or selling used cars.
- andrewstuart 6y agoBefore I say anything - I just tried it out and it's essentially a completely open spamming system - send anything to any email address. For that reason alone it won't last. But anyhow to talk to the subject matter: I'm a recruiter. I understand the feeling that this comes from. Recruiters and recruiting don't have a great reputation in general. If you're interested in WHY ghosting happens it's pretty simple: Recruiters have a vast flow of inbound information (resumes). Recruiters are contingency paid - they only get paid if they successfully place a person into a job - this focuses time and effort down a very specific path. Recruiters manage many many recruiting processes simultaneously, each with varying likelihood of success. Employers are part of the process. The whole process is lumpy and drawn out. Eventually the recruiter gets to hear if a candidate is successful or not. I personally try to get back to anyone who does any sort of interview, because it's polite and I appreciate it cost that person time and effort. Sometimes I don't - that task falls through the cracks. That's all - that's why it happens. Perhaps some recruiters never get back to people but it's not really in their interests to behave like that. AND FYI - recruiters get ghosted too by employers for various reasons - I just try to be patient and understand and focus on the future. ALSO I'm a recruiter and also a programmer - I once got ghosted after doing 12 hours doing a coding test ... never heard from the company again. I know how it feels.
- dnautics 6y agowould a tool that helps you automatically send a "sorry you have not been considered for the job" email after X (~2-3) weeks, or even settable by client be helpful for you?
- 0xFFC 6y agoExcellent. This what I am looking for. Last month I interviewed by somebody from FortiNet in Vancouver. Long story, it was worst experience of my professional work. and the worst part is they ghosted me after it.
- GeeRep 6y agoSorry to hear about your experience.
- deedubaya 6y agoI was ghosted by a recruiter at Stripe. As in, they didn't show up to a call they scheduled with me. I emailed patio11 about it. He brought their head of recruiting into the conversation to remedy the situation. Their head of recruitment suggested we hop on a call to discuss. I can't make this shit up, but guess what the head of recruitment did? Didn't show up to the call. It's hard to imagine why recruiters get a bad shake /s
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- efwfwef 6y agoThat story is hilarious
- swozey 6y agoStripe has a serious ego problem.
- anonu 6y agoHow do you go from this story to "ego problem"? It sounds like they have other problems - but doesn't sound like ego is one of them, at least from the story.
- swozey 6y agoThis is HN. I'd wager a good portion of us have had an experience with Stripes hiring.
- marcinzm 6y agoThey simply have a lot more demand of engineers than they have supply of jobs so it's logical for them to not care about individuals.
- rightbyte 6y agoNot really. Seeming like a sitty place makes recruiting harder.
- hirundo 6y agoI sympathize with the recruiter in this situation, enough to understand why ghosting seems to be the rule rather than the exception. "You didn't make the cut" is a difficult conversation to have, and explaining why is worse. I feel that the healthier response is to have mercy on us both, and just move on. Same as with dating.
- yunruse 6y agoIs it such a difficult conversation? I’m sure an automated “sorry, you didn’t get the cut” would be a vast improvement over nothing. It’s easy to “just move on” when you’re in the job market, but it’s a bit annoying when you don’t know when exactly you should be doing so.
- hirundo 6y ago"it’s a bit annoying when you don’t know when exactly you should be doing so." I think that's right, and it isn't very annoying to me because of this exact rule: Don't stop the job hunt until I have one in the bag. It's easier to move on if I don't come to a rest. I've interviewed enough to have had very good ones that went nowhere and poor ones that got me hired. Having low or no expectations from any one prospect is healthy. And yeah, even sending a short thanks but no thanks form-email can be emotionally taxing.
- paozac 6y agoHow common is being ghosted by a recruiter? Is it an american thing? It never happened to me here in Europe.
- Ma8ee 6y ago[stockholm] In my last job-hunt it never happened. The recruiters I was contacted by then was very professional and all the interviews was actually quite good matches competence wise. Now lately I did the mistake to check a box in LinkedIn that I was interested in a new job, and I have been in contact by recruiters that clearly play a numbers game and try to send me on as many interviews as they can. And that becomes a waste of time when both I and the interviewer within minutes realise that either I don’t have the specific experiences they are looking for or it is a position I’m not at all interested in. And that the recruiter knew before the interview. I often don’t hear from those recruiters again until they have another interview they think they can send me on. All of this second kind of recruiters have been based in the UK, while the first ones have been physically present in Stockholm.
- GNU_James 6y agoAren't HackerNews mods shadowbanning users without notice? ProTip : they do.
- duxup 6y agoOn my last job hunt the vast majority of recruiters ghosted me. Even those promising a call back ... that day. Often I've heard time cited as a factor, but these same recruiters sometimes spoke to me for an hour. Yet even a semi impersonal email was too much to hope for I guess. I just assume at any moment any recruiter / company HR contact may be my last. Sadly it is a vicious cycle now as recruiter spam is so prevalent that now I don't have time to bother with with them or respond to them as soon as I think they're not really paying attention / holding up their end of the conversation / the job sound bad, and so forth. It's all just noise.
- rightbyte 6y agoIt is a race to the bottom. A vicious cycle of applying and recruiting being more and more spammy. If n positions consider n candidates who all apply for all the n positions we have the end game where no choices can be made and closing a position is played by dice.
- duxup 6y agoYeah that's what I fear too. It's just a super thick meta game that gets denser all the time. The 'hiring people industrial complex' is just a huge amount of work... and I'm not sure anyone is good at doing that thing, so they add more layers, more recruiters and everyone is farther from each other.
- davidg109 6y agoI don’t think recruiters are oblivious to their bad behaviour. Like someone else said, it’s a numbers game, and candidates are widgets. I choose not to deal with recruiters. Ever. I’m pretty blunt to them about it, without being rude.
- grumple 6y agoI feel bad for not following up with recruiters. They are people trying to make a living. Unfortunately most of the jobs they have just aren’t interesting or high paying enough to lure me away.
- yholio 6y agoYou don't have a relationship with the recruiter or the prospective employer. They haven't "ghosted" you, they are simply uninterested in what you have to sell, just as you "ghosted" the luxury store yesterday by looking and never buying any gold watch. You are a luxury item, many will look, most can't afford you and will settle for something inferior and cheap. You have the good stuff and you need to continue to sell it until the right customer comes along.
- kelnos 6y agoI don't think most people object too much to a recruiter simply ignoring an inbound email from someone looking for a job. Often candidates take a "spray and pray" approach anyway, and aren't expecting responses to most of their cold emails. But if there's any kind of back-and-forth at all after that, especially if a candidate has gone through a phone screen or interview, I think everyone is owed some sort of closure in the process. Just as if the candidate accepts another job, they should let the recruiter know, a recruiter should let the candidate know if they're being rejected. There's no legitimate excuse for not even sending a canned one-liner rejection email.
- renewiltord 6y agoIf I genuinely want a specific job, I'll just reroute my process through someone else. Recruiters that ghost are my competitive advantage. I can beat that barrier where others can't. Waste your time on this if you want. It won't get you closer to your objectives. When I was younger, a recruiter for interns at Nvidia ghosted me entirely. It left a bad taste in my mouth because the internship time was particularly stressful for me since I procrastinated till very late. In comparison, the Microsoft recruiter just told me that while they'd take me, they'd filled their capacity. Whether they were truthful or were letting me down nicely, I appreciated the response. But that was then. I was upset at all of Nvidia back then. But at some point, the perspective shifted. Now if there's something to get, I go take it. If the recruiter ghosts me, I LinkedIn their recruiting team, Rocketreach or PeopleDataLabs myself their emails, and use an automailer to drip them with where I'm stuck in the process. The way I see it is that punishing people is work I'd have to do to make a company more effective at something. I want a reward for that. No one will reward me for that. What they will reward me for is shotgunning everyone else. And is anyone seriously going to GDPR or CCPA me? If they tried, I'd shit on their faces on Twitter and even if they revealed the so-called underhandedness of my tactics people will remember them as the guys who ghosted someone and then sued that guy when he tried to unghost them. Hyperoptimize for your own objectives. Everyone else's problem is their problem.
- gtvwill 6y agoMan no offense but the attitude your displaying whilst shows a great level of determination....is a bit aggressive. How do you go with working on teams? lol in some of the realms I have worked in...I've done as you suggest. Been blocked by immediate superior...gone to foreman to find out what to do (aka i'd run out of jobs and my superior was too busy to give me a new one). I got fired that day on the spot for approaching my team leaders boss...4 days on the job lol.
- renewiltord 6y agoThe attitude is behind the scenes. I'm not upset about the ghosting because I've ghosted my fair share of people accidentally. The external view is very friendly, and I definitely don't apply this inside the org. Inside the org I play by the rules.
- 99_00 6y agoI don't want my impolite behaviour called out anonymously so I don't want to call out other peoples. I've ghosted all kinds of people. Including recruiters and sales people. I don't do it anymore.
- AndrewKemendo 6y agoThis will take approximately 1 minute to de-anonymize if the recruiter so chose. Might as well just send them the note yourself.
- JadoJodo 6y agoPerhaps a more productive take on this would be for a product that creates signatures that recruiters would include in their emails, such as: "Click here to rate our overall interactions during the hiring process" The surveys could be one-time use, would only allow feedback after X-weeks and would be sent to the head of recruiting weekly. This would allow a path for the potential-hire to provide feedback (good or bad) to someone other than the recruiter, but wouldn't spam the recruiter directly (like this tool would). I'm sure some would use it for "revenge", but I think the survey could account for that and it's up to the head of recruiting to filter through that anyway (i.e. sort through data on how their subordinates are doing).
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI get that a lot. As soon as they figure out that I'm over 40, I can practically hear the shredder. I won't do this, though. I don't feel that it would be particularly professional, on my part; despite the fact that their unprofessional (and self-destructive) behavior does piss me off. I just make every effort not to do that with people that I deal with. I give others respect, and don't require it in return. Recruiters, these days, are a vastly different breed from what I remember.
- trinix912 6y agoWon't recruiters just blacklist their domain if they start getting lots of these emails? While I agree that ghosting candidates is rude, this solution seems to be very easy to work around.
- macspoofing 6y agoThese kinds of services have good intentions but never even think about how their services will inevitably be used against others. There are bad actors that wouldn't think twice about ruining the career of somebody else for no reason. And even people who feel victimized may actually not be and there may be nuance if you get the full context. And what is is with this idea of destroying the livelihood of someone else because you feel slighted? Stop this nonsense.
- bernawil 6y agonever even think about how their services will inevitably be used against others. Or they know how it will be abused and want to charge for filtering the abusers. That's the yelp way.
- abalone 6y agoCan somebody explain this problem for the uninitiated? Is this just about not hearing back about the next step in the interview process or why you didn’t get an offer? I mean I think it’s pretty clear why recruiters would keep their options open up until the last second and limit information sharing. The way to respond to that is to create urgency by having multiple parallel interviews in the pipeline and letting them know your deadlines. This works like magic if you are even a moderately strong candidate. That will have about a infinitely greater effect than sending whiny anonymous emails.
- itronitron 6y agoIn my opinion to qualify as ghosting a) you need to have had some form of interview beyond the initial half-hour phone screen that went well so that b) the recruiter or hiring manager/person tells you that they are going to 'call you next week' or something similar so that the next action to take is clearly theirs, then c) you never hear from them again. I've experienced this often enough that whenever I have an interview that goes exceptionally well then I joke with my wife that I'll probably never hear from them again (and that tends to be the case.)
- abalone 6y agoRed flag for me is “next week”. That’s a really long space in between contacts. Ideally the whole interview marathon at multiple companies should be packed into a couple weeks so you can drive a bidding war so to speak. If they know you are interviewing elsewhere then it should be closer to 2-3 days max contact gap. Tip: If you don’t hear back from A, maybe you’ll have an on-site scheduled with B, and then you can ping A with that info “for scheduling purposes” and trust me you will suddenly hear back if they are interested. Again, urgency is your friend here.
- itronitron 6y agoyeah, I'm not going to play mind games with companies. I only apply to positions for which I am qualified and actually interested in having for at least two years. I don't do the 'multiple companies/competing offers' thing as I already know the value of my time and attention.
- gordon_freeman 6y agoIf OP is reading this I wanted to point to a small possible correction in your sample email link on the site: "I was so disappointed and unprofessional, I just thought you should know." I think you meant here: "It was so disappointing and unprofessional"?
- heavensgateboy 6y agoI thought that this error in the e-mail was funny since complaining to HR departments is in fact a little unprofessional. If you don't receive an e-mail back from HR or a recruiter, it means that the company wasn't interested in you. 'Ghosting' doesn't exist in the hiring world. No reply universally means that you've been turned down. Receiving a reply is an unnecessary courtesy provided by some companies. Job hunting can be daunting, but do not whinge to companies that have turned you down. They may hire you in the future.
- balls187 6y ago> I personally try to get back to anyone who does any sort of interview, because it's polite and I appreciate it cost that person time and effort. > Sometimes I don't - that task falls through the cracks. The only time I feel this is perhaps excusable is when both a candidate has fallen off your radar, AND the candidate didn't bother following up with you to ask the status.
- aejnsn 6y agoWhat’s the difference in a human trafficker and a recruiter? Traffickers are more honest. Had a recruiter from a Valley newcomer disappear on me for ~10 days, after having talked offers and how impressive the interviews had been. Then she called back out of the blue wanting to negotiate salary. I gave her my ask, and she wanted to low-ball, and then I gathered the VP, for whom I would be working, called BS on my ask, even though it was market rate and a bit lower than what a Valley resident would command. More radio silence. I had two much better offers and little pressure. It kept feeling like timed negotiating tactics to me. Finally they presented me with a dumpster of an employee stock program offering to make up for their salary hair-splitting. I would have been more impressed if they’d given me an actual Monopoly board game with it, at least then the Monopoly money would have been tangible. Then I caught this recruiter in a lie about part of the company’s “newly conceived” ESP conditions. I backed away for a couple days, and hashed out the worst thing I could do in light of the employer/recruiter wasting my time and scheming. Give that recruiter a dirty yes. So I dragged them out telling them I was taking the job for over a week and to expect the offer letter as soon as I thought on it more. I never signed further, slowed any responses, and then I just stopped responding. Even got some angry text messages from the recruiter screaming, “TELL ME WHY!” The worst kinds of people, and you will find no sympathy from me.
- slg 6y agoOr to put this story another way, you were the second choice for a position that paid below market rate. The first candidate likely dropped out after receiving the poor offer which explains the 10 day delay. You took the below market pay as a personal insult and decided to be a jerk to the recruiter/company. I don't say this as an insult or an accusation. I am simply pointing out that we often judge others based on a lack of complete information. It isn't necessarily fair to blame recruiters for every indignity that occurs during the recruitment process. Inherently almost everyone who interacts with a recruiter comes away feeling disappointed and slighted. It is a tough job.
- aejnsn 6y ago> we often judge others based on a lack of complete information Assume the same.
- amingilani 6y agoI was ghosted by a recruiter 8 months into a process, but I still got the job, including a visa sponsorship. I've tried running startups so I know how much work recruiting is. The recruiter made an effort to stay in touch with me but for reasons unknown to me I stopped getting replies. I'd put months of effort into getting positive signals from a company I really wanted to work with, and I noticed that they actively monitored their Glassdoor. I left a detailed message on the situation I was in. I wasn't rude, I didn't throw a tantrum because I didn't know how the situation the recruiter was in. It's possible they were in a bad life or organizational spot and didn't know what to do. People are humans. But it was my last effort before I moved onto something else. That message was picked up by someone senior in the org, and they explained that even though they wanted to hire me, I wasn't as far along in the process of getting hired as I thought. This was a bit sad to me, but they referred me to another recruiter that would be handling my case. I decided to work with them nonetheless, since I really liked that place. It took about 6 months from that initial email to me getting a visa, just as COVID-19 began to impact borders. If it had been another company, I would likely have given up. But, humans are humans and unfortunately recruiting, especially from overseas, isn't an area with the best experience.
- RocketSyntax 6y agoI had a recruiter schedule a time w me for the next day and then not show up plus not respond. Maybe they got fired? Doubtful.
- qaq 6y agoFor some reason this very US centric problem. Was really surprised how screwed up and inefficient the whole things is in US.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoGhosting is bad, but please do not use anonymous tools like this. Part of being a professional is learning how to communicate, even when the other party is not acting respectfully. It's entirely appropriate to send a follow-up e-mail, from your own e-mail account, asking about the status of a job opening. However, using anonymous tools like this is extremely unprofessional. Leaning on anonymity to vent frustrations is a bad habit to get into. Furthermore, it's usually not hard to figure out which candidate sent these things. Don't think that this is a way to communicate anger without burning bridges.
- quadrifoliate 6y ago> However, using anonymous tools like this is extremely unprofessional. I agree that this is not the correct tool (I think an anonymous Glassdoor-like approach would be the best); but completely disagree that "using anonymous tools is extremely unprofessional". At least in the US [1], there is a severe asymmetry regarding candidates and job opportunities. Large corporations control access to decent healthcare, for one thing. Also, you can be fired at any time, for any reason in the majority of positions. There is little to no social safety net to protect a person when they get fired. Given this kind of an asymmetrical environment, anonymity helps restore the balance. The candidate doesn't have to risk their entire livelihood every time they make a statement about how they were badly treated by a company. And on a deeper level, what is "professional" anyway? 20 years ago we were told that you should wear only suits and ties to the office because "that is professional". Today you would be laughed out of several tech companies for saying that. Similarly, being kinder to people and stricter to corporations is a direction that professionals in the US software industry seem to be taking, and I think we are better for it. Maybe in 20 more years it will be seen as basic "professional" courtesy to your fellow software developers to leave a rating on a hypothetical RateRecuiters when you finish any interview process! -------------------------------------------- [1] I think your statement about not seeking anonymity would apply far more in European countries or other places where there are strong laws protecting labor, and a robust safety nets.
- Bakary 6y agoAs someone not in the tech sector this feels unintentionally amusing. I can imagine a tech worker getting their first ghosting and being so shocked as to create this service. But for most workers ghosting is the norm so it would be absurd to use this service for each of dozens/hundreds of ignored applications. For most people, companies coming to YOU with an offer is a complete pipe-dream. Recruiters can ghost en masse for the same reason that attractive women on dating apps can be extremely and sometimes arbitrarily selective. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the objective behind the service but I just feel it lacks some degree of perspective. It's yet another indication of how gaping the chasm between the 9% and the 90% is becoming.
- kelnos 6y agoFrankly I look at it the opposite way: that it's sad that people in non-tech fields are so used to being treated like garbage that it's accepted as the norm, and no one bats an eye. Social norms are only norms if there's a mechanism in place to enforce them. Often that enforcement comes in the form of shaming people who violate the norm. If non-tech people are willing to continue to get treated poorly in this manner, I guess that's up to them, but I would rather work in a field where people show basic respect for each other. I know we all have a long way to go for that to be a universal thing, but stuff like this is a nice small step.
- Bakary 6y agoFundamentally it's the economic reality that determines norms. In demand people are tautologically treated well. It's relatively easy to negotiate when you have bargaining power. A tech worker can simply tweet or post on HN and something will happen. Just look at Timnit Gebru or the poster in this very thread who petitioned a high-ranking employee at Stripe. For non-tech people this is inconceivable science-fiction. For them, regaining bargaining power implies mass unionization and social unrest. If your status is strongly diluted the response has to be proportionally strong to have any effect. It has happened before multiple times, which is the reason we can work 8 hours a day today and have some standard of rights as opposed to say the 19th century. Technically you are quite correct: it's up to non-tech people to decide to be treated better. But the reality behind that phrase hides a far more complicated reality than the mere words would imply. Just saying that you'd "rather work in a field where people show basic respect" completely elides the reality of the situation. It's like telling a trucker who just got automated "Well just learn some code and work harder, buddy!"
- paul7986 6y agohuh ... why not do this for women and or men who ghost you in dating? If your not a good fit for a job or romance that's life!
- diogenescynic 6y agoRing Central put me through 8 rounds of interviews and then ghosted me. I sent two follow up emails and and never heard back. The job is still posted and they never even bothered to send a generic “thanks but we went with another candidate” email. If you treat prospective employees like this, word does get around....
- GeeRep 6y ago8 rounds then radio silence? Bummer that happens so often, that's the type of stuff that needs to aired.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- choppaface 6y agoThe technical hiring process is so poor because feedback is shared so unfairly. Hiring managers and recruiters get to see panel feedback, offer numbers, reference details, comms, etc ... Most ICs on the hiring panel don't get to see any of this. Even the candidate is left out in the dark in many areas. To level the playing field, get rid of the information arbitrage. If you're an IC on a panel, ask for contextual details before giving your final vote. Follow up and see where the candidate went 6-12 months after the interview. Try to give candidates constructive feedback if you can. Candidates can't do much here unfortunately. But the hiring managers of tomorrow are often the ICs of today. The path towards removing bias in hiring starts with being a more proactive interviewer.
- nowherebeen 6y agoInstead of sending out email, there should be a website that rates HR at tech companies. Whether they post fake jobs, slow response, no-show, are rude, or ghost candidates. This helps developers prepare themselves for what to expect if it happens to them. They should be rated on how professional they are. Similar to how customer service representatives are surveyed after calls. Hopefully, this will educated all developers on which companies to avoid and which to ramp up their expectations.
- jimbob45 6y agoIt’s nothing for these recruiters to auto-send an email to everyone that didn’t get the job when the listing closes. Indeed/Monster do it by default. The way I see it, recruiters want to string you along just in case their first picks don’t work out and to prevent you from realizing that you probably need to be looking for gainful employment elsewhere. This is on the more benign side of what recruiters get away with. You can sue Oracle for ageism, sexism, etc. You can’t reasonably sue JobsToday! because you wouldn’t get anything out of them and another recruiting firm would just pop up in its place. It boggles the mind that we allow companies to offshore their discriminatory hiring practices to recruiters. That’s fine. Once the broader public becomes aware of recruiter abuse, I imagine they’ll get legislated or regulated out of existence.
- ivanche 6y ago"See the worst-offending companies by name". Um, how? The only thing you can do is click the "Let's go" or "Get started" button, and they both lead to the same form which starts with "What is the first name of the ghoster?"
- GeeRep 6y agoWhen there's a critical mass of users of the site and multiple messages being sent to folks at the same companies again and again, the plan is to put together a "naughty list" to display, by company not individual. Also a lot of folks are using it to just mess around, so there's a good bit of manual data cleaning necessary too!
- zomg 6y agowhy be anonymous? that is so juvenile. :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- locusofself 6y agoSlightly off topic, but I recently went through my most challenging interview cycle and for the first time in my life I did a lot of interviews that I was not hired for. It was very exhausting and I was pretty down about it for several months (luckily I was employed still). Most recruiters I worked with ghosted. I interviewed at one of the big companies and did not get the job, but I remembered one of the hiring managers I met during the interview process and followed up with them on LinkedIn and ended up getting another interview for a similar role and got that job.
- MrPatan 6y agoDon't take it personally. People are busy and have their own problems. Sales is a numbers game, just assume you didn't close it and move on.
- hogFeast 6y agoI was ghosted by a company which filled their careers page with stuff about how great they were as recruiters, how they championed diversity, how they looked at every person as an individual and, of course, how great it was of them to keep you informed at every stage of the process and tell you after each stage what was happening. I will admit: this was one of the rare occasions in which I lost my temper at the mundane eccentricities of how some companies operate. It wasn't the ghosting, it was the occupation of the moral high ground whilst rolling around in the gutter with everyone else. I did not get a reply.
- devy 6y agoThe site mentions about calling out companies who ghost candidates too, so I am offering my view from the employer's perspective. The hiring managers could be interviewing dozens if not hundreds of candidates - sometimes they are genuinely busy and they literally cannot spend countless hours to respond to every candidate they've spoken to tell them "No, we've passed on you". Ghosting also happens in both way - as a hiring manager, I've had a many times where I had to reach out to the candidate patiently waiting for their response to the next round or getting back to me for a coding exercise with no response (the bad ones) or a "sorry, I forgot to tell you that I got the job already." Finding a job is a lot like dating, it takes 2 parties to make it work. So just like ghosting in dating scene, ghosting in hiring process will always exist, it's not a technology problem but it's a human behavior problem. By the way, anonymously calling out the other party of ghosting is even worse IMO.
- kelnos 6y ago> The hiring managers could be interviewing dozens if not hundreds of candidates - sometimes they are genuinely busy and they literally cannot spend countless hours to respond to every candidate they've spoken to tell them "No, we've passed on you". Yes, they can spend that time, and no, it would not be "countless hours". I'm not even saying that recruiters must respond to every cold email they get with a resume. But if there's been any back-and-forth at all, the candidate is owed some kind of response, period. > Ghosting also happens in both way - as a hiring manager, I've had a many times where I had to reach out to the candidate patiently waiting for their response to the next round or getting back to me for a coding exercise with no response That's also shitty, and candidates shouldn't do that. But "candidates are disrespectful so I can be disrespectful too" is not an excuse. > Finding a job is a lot like dating No, it's not. Finding a job is a business transaction, while dating is a social/romantic activity. And for the record: ghosting in dating sucks too. Basically your argument boils down to "we're too busy, and everyone else is disrespectful in other parts of life, so this is fine". Not buying it.
- xenocyon 6y agoI've been a hiring manager as well, and I've never failed to inform interviewees waiting for a response. Treat it as an important priority, not an afterthought.
- karaterobot 6y agoI don't care whether I'm being ghosted or not. When I was applying for jobs, all I wanted was feedback about why I wasn't being hired. Applying for jobs is a black box: you do a bunch of work, something happens, and you have no idea why, so you have no way to improve. I wanted someone to say "you misspelled something in your cover letter", or "you were standoffish in the interview", or "there were several qualified candidates, we hired the one with the most experience", or even "we didn't like your stupid face". If that's too much work, send me a form letter: "Rejected for reason 13B: poor personal hygiene or fashion sense". Literally anything. Anything. I understand that companies feel that giving feedback opens them up to potential litigation or bad publicity, but I would happily have signed something to remove their liability. I would have sign an NDA to prevent me from publishing. I just want some data.
- ergocoder 6y agoNDA or any contract can't prevent discrimination lawsuit... Reward is small. Risk of trouble is very large. Being sued is extremely time consuming.
- colmvp 6y agoI have friends who got rejected by FAANG companies and got precise feedback as to why they didn’t get hired, specifically from the interviews. And recently, I’ve been rejected by multiple companies in the interview process and all of them said why they rejected me. If I had to guess, most of the time it’s that telling people why they didn’t even get an interview is time consuming and not all that productive. But telling people why they didn’t get hired following interviews makes sense since the candidate made a substantial effort to get there.
- ergocoder 6y agoJust wait for one lawsuit. It will happen. Then, everyone will be forbidden from giving feedback.
- ergocoder 6y agoWow, wtf. I don't understand why people are so upset of being ghosted to the point of shaming the others. Recruiters are human and have their own priorities and lives. Just take the hints and move on. It's not that hard. I'm convinced people who are upset by ghosting are probably not happy people because they are likely to be upset by every insignificant things. These people are probably not great at doing business as well.
- swozey 6y agoYeah, when businesses are shut down throughout the world and people are being evicted and living off of their 401ks why would you be concerned about a potential paycheck possibly coming. Very insignificant, jobs are.
- ergocoder 6y agoI know. Recruiters are often the first ones to be laid off. They are also one of the lowest paid occupations in tech companies. I feel sorry for them that they are also shamed for being laid off and unable to reply to emails. I actually know one FB recruiter that left and just stop replying to my email. Just move on. You are not the only person who has the problems.
- burnthrow 6y agoAgreed. I rather they ghost and save my time. Once I accept an offer I pretty much ghost everyone else.
- frompdx 6y agoSpeaking from experience, it's a bad idea to allow emails to be sent from your platform to a third party with any form of dynamic text from a text field on a web page. I can't see this lasting long term in its current form. I had a form readers of my blog could fill out to contact me. It asked for their name and email address. After they submitted the form I sent them a nice automatic reply along the lines of: Hello <name>, Blah blah blah. Thanks, frompdx This was integrated with my personal gmail account. One day I woke up to a ton of bounced emails. Checking my sent folder, a ton more didn't bounce. The name field was enough for a spammer to co-opt my contact form into a spam mailer. Regardless, I think this is needlessly passive aggressive and not a good way to handle something like this in general. For one, I think there is a good chance the recruiter will still know who sent the message. It's a small world. Why burn bridges? I know how it feels to never get a reply back. Yes it is frustrating. I just don't think this is the solution to the problem. Someone being unprofessional to you is not justification to be unprofessional to them. Reputation is a two way street. Don't let others catch you on the wrong side of the road over something like this.
- esosac 6y agowhy would you go to such lengths to not tell someone how you feel directly?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- __sy__ 6y agoGhosting candidates is really crappy and I think somewhat of a reflection of a company's internal culture/style. I'm one of the co-founders at Seam (YC S20) and we try to NOT be that. Specifically, this past fall, we received probably 200+ engineering applications and we genuinely try to respond to every single one. At times, it's exhausting and time consuming, especially when there are other pressing things to handle. I'll admit that we are not always perfect either (and I am genuinely sorry if you haven't heard back from us yet!). Yet our philosophy/culture is simple: always be gracious and grateful that people think enough of Seam to want to come work with us, and the best way to show it, is to spend a few minutes getting back to them with yes/no + reasons for passing.
- kelvin0 6y agoRecruiters are caught between a rock (potential employer) and a hard place (recruiting prospect). They are also 'blind' in a sense, since most recruiters have very little idea what to look for in a candidate other from the usual signals (resume, buzzwords, git repo and other wonky metrics). I can't image how difficult it must be for them, and would be helpful if they could educate the uninformed of the challenges and potential frustrations. If that was well understood by candidates, I think they would be much less hurt by an occasional 'ghost' ..
- pdovy 6y agoI don't like this solution either, but kind of weird to see defending / explaining away ghosting as normal in some of these posts. When I'm involved in the hiring process I've always approached it from the angle that you want to leave a good impression with the candidate regardless of whether you hire them or not. Careers are long, word gets around, and you'll reject way more candidates than you hire.
- RIMR 6y agoJust used this tool to send a bunch of death threats and insults to myself to see if anyone programmed a content filter to prevent abuse. Spoiler: They didn't. This thing is gonna become a spam proxy before the end of the day.
- chrismcb 6y agoI can understand ghosting from the ceo of a small company, or anyone in a small company. But I don't get it from a recruiter, especially an independent one. You would think they would want to stay buddy buddy with people who might make them money. Just because company a doesn't give me a job didn't mean company b won't.
- CodeWriter23 6y agoPerhaps it is good manners to close a loop that resulted in a dead end. But I honestly don't think anyone owes me anything, not even a "we're sorry". I seem to be lacking a certain sense of entitlement I guess.
- turing280 6y agoSystematic or a policy of ghosting is terrible - yes. The other consideration is that some recruiters are handling up to 60 (or more) jobs with hundreds of applicants each. And all of those people are at different stages with different roles and different questions, etc. Sometimes ghosting may be a very understandable human error and there should be some room in this conversation for that too.
- paul_h 6y agoI was ghosted for many months this summer by a company for a Head of Software Engineering role. I had been referred in by friends/ex-colleagues who worked here "Paul would do great things here" type of thing. One has left. I'm checking on the other before I name names. I completed an entire day of back to back Zoom interviews in March, thanked all the interviewers by email, saying "I'm looking forward to the next steps". There was a bunch of people on their side scheduling everything for me including dropping for flights and hotel (which the canceled and swapped for zoom a day or two before). Those were not recruiters as such, but admin assistants, directors and a CIO. I sent another "catching up" email with the director who was charged with handling my candidacy. I got a reply in June just under three months from the interview day. > Apologies for the slow response. Things have certainly gotten crazy since > we last spoke! I managed to get out of <interview-city> and have been > on lockdown at my home in <home-town> with my family. Hope things are well > for you. > > As for the head of software engineering position, we have moved forward > with a different candidate. I hope we can stay in touch and work together > on something in the future. In the meantime I'd gently nudged the two that referred me in as to what expectations I could have as a candidate and they were embarrassed. There's only so much you can do in this situation. You know, to a great degree those that refer people in have to recuse themselves. I've been ghosted a few times since too. The above story is the max effort on my part to get to the ghost outcome. I'd be keen on a site that was an agreed policy on candidate handling. Each time there's a candidate that gets put forward something that private key encrypted gets written to a public ledger ($1 charge to recruiter). Each time there's progress another record is written. Ghosting means no updates. The Ledger service will notify all parties of updates. Any of the parties could disclose the key to make all the records public. There's be terms and conditions for that. The candidate can pay a second fee - say $10 - for a review of the record and a change in the status of the recruiter. The recruiter can protect themselves from shitty clients with "sorry paul, I've heard nothing new from <client> re your candidacy. Each candidate/candidacy has a state "explicit rejection" or "effectively ghosted". That bit not encrypted. The recruiters get a badge they can use that makes it clear what their stats are. There's some privacy concerns too for that service - how can the legal entity not monetize & not leak the bits that should remain private. In summary I'm thinking about something that's different to ghostreply.com which is like the "Just a Tip" site & email service from the 90's.
- avipars 6y agoI wish this would be automated...
- seesawtron 6y agoEasy way for the host to collect emails for spamming?
- GeeRep 6y agoBtw this is up on PH now https://www.producthunt.com/posts/ghostreply https://www.producthunt.com/posts/ghostreply