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Before 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

Before 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 ago
would 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?
- chaps 6y ago
  Imagine how quickly that sort of tool will be turned off when it makes its first mistake.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    good point!
- deleted 6y ago
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na85 6y ago
I mean that's great and all, and I'm sure you're a nice person, but irrespective of how you justify it, it's still unacceptable for a recruiter to ghost candidates. Having been ghosted a few times I now refuse to deal with recruiters whatsoever. The negative reputation that recruiters have is both entirely of their own making and entirely within their means to remedy. The fact that recruiters as an industry aren't trying to address this just drives home the perception that you see job candidates as a fungible commodity.
awillen 6y ago
Honestly, you're probably not what this is intended for. I don't consider it ghosting until I've sent more than one emails that have not been replied to (which thankfully has only happened to me once, after an interview with Uber). If you forget to follow up, and I send a polite reply which you respond to, that's understandable. But I agree that this app is not a good solution.
timvisee 6y ago
I'm afraid you're right. I had a spam problem once with an app of mine. Spammers registered accounts, put an URL in the name field, essentially allowing them to send an email to anybody starting with: Hello SKETCHY_URL, please activate your account...
- massaman_yams 6y ago
  This happens at stunning scale; there are probably several billion messages a month sent via malicious form submissions globally, by my rough semi-informed estimate. (That includes other types of abuse than the one you mentioned.) Perhaps this is bias from dealing with that kind of spam on a regular basis, but my current position is that a captcha needs to be present any web form which can even indirectly or occasionally result in an email being sent.
  - timvisee 6y ago
    I always find Captcha's a really tricky topic. Especially these days where robots have become super sophisticated on solving them. At the same time it can be super irritating, and might even block legit users. Along with that you invade user privacy with solutions provided by Google, tracking every move on all pages. But yeah, it may be nice to have the option, even if temporary, if you're experiencing an ongoing attack.
harrisonjackson 6y ago
> That's all - that's why it happens. This is pretty insensitive to the hopes and dreams you are selling to candidates when they work with you. It might be a numbers game for you, but to each of the people you are recruiting they have a lot on the line whether it is leaving a bad job or putting food on the table for their family or whatever else... edit: I'm not saying you don't care - just that it seems like an organizational issue based on the amount of deals you are managing - and the job applicants don't care about any of that.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  When I mentor college grads, I always emphasize that they should not get too attached to any one specific job listing. Like it or not, getting a job is a lot like a sales process, and you can't close every deal. Putting all of your chips in one basket is a recipe for disappointment. Regardless, about 1/3 of them fall in love with a specific job posting and lose a lot of time assuming their first choice will work out. Everyone should treat the interviewing process like a numbers game. Apply to many companies. Don't get into a position where a single company decided to pass on you will destroy your finances or make it difficult to put food on the table. Don't become emotionally attached to companies before you've been hired.
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    > Don't become emotionally attached to companies before you've been hired. The problem here is that as an applicant you're usually expected to show commitment, enthusiasm, passion for the work etc. It's very hard to work yourself up about a job without actually caring about it. The underlying enormous asymetry of power between you and the employer means that what is strictly a numbers game for them will always have at least some emotional significance for you.
    - eropple 6y ago
      > It's very hard to work yourself up about a job without actually caring about it. I'm very lucky in that my current job hits on most of my skills as well as many of my non-work interests, and that's not a job I'd have to fake anything for, but it's not as if every startup coming down the pike is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is a skill, and it is one that you can learn to be good at. That enthusiasm is just the polite enthusiasm of a sales call. It may require a few minutes of reading and thinking (because tbh I also see a lot of folks who have no idea what a company does when they go in to interview), but it is almost always either a baseline "do they get what we do here?" check (which is what you can learn and practice for) or it is a cult you should avoid.
warent 6y ago
Out of curiosity... Do you use LinkedIn a lot? I've noticed this cadence of speaking. It's like, a LinkedIn-ese. Every sentence is punctuated by a paragraph. Is that intentional or something subconsciously picked up?
- andrewstuart 6y ago
  Nothing to do with LinkedIn. I write like that online because I feel people read like that online - they more easily consume bullet point style writing than paragraphs. Dunno if that is true or not.
  - gav 6y ago
    I think of it more as a BBC thing than a LinkedIn thing: https://danielmiessler.com/blog/email-like-bbc/ https://danielmiessler.com/blog/email-like-bbc/ If you're trying to get your point across to busy people, short paragraphs help.
  - MetaWhirledPeas 6y ago
    I think you're right, but I also think it loses its punch if you overuse it. I'd suggest saving it for lines you really want to highlight.
- eplanit 6y ago
  It's become a thing over the past few months if not longer. People tell their stories in the sentence per paragraph form, thinking it adds drama, I guess. I find it a bit annoying.
- syndacks 6y ago
  It's called broetry.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I'm not a recruiter, but I've done a lot of recruiting and hiring inside of companies. Your points about the process being lumpy and drawn out is the thing that many candidates don't quite understand. Some large companies hire engineers non-specifically into large talent pools, then assign them to specific teams or positions later. If you're operating at this scale, there's no excuse for not moving quickly and following up with candidates. Most companies don't operate like this, though. They're looking for one candidate to fill one specific position, and hiring the wrong person is a costly mistake. It takes time to gather candidates for a narrowly-scoped job description, coordinate interviews that work with their schedule, get approvals, and push the hire through. Going into this, I thought communicating weekly with candidates would be a good thing, as more communication is better. To my surprise, frequent communications without progress is misinterpreted as a negative signal by a lot of candidates. I could send the most harmless e-mail explaining that we're still moving forward with the hiring process but haven't made any decisions yet, and candidates would assume this meant they were going to be rejected. Younger candidates were especially prone to over-reactions, with some of them explicitly withdrawing from the process to avoid the possibility of explicit rejection (Usually remedied with a phone call). In an ideal world we'd move as fast as possible from interview to hire. In the real world, coordinating interviews with more than 5 candidates while everyone is also trying to do their regular job duties just takes time. Still, it should be standard practice to let candidates know when the position has been filled or they have been removed from consideration. I've also noticed that expectations from some candidates, especially the recent college grads, are getting out of control. For example, I've had a few candidates get irate that our offer letters had expiration dates set 2 weeks in the future. There's a growing misconception that any expiration date on an offer is an "exploding offer" and therefore a predatory practice. I have to explain that we can't keep the position open for them indefinitely, and if they don't want the job then we can't keep our 2nd choice candidate on the hook forever.
- bostik 6y ago
  Short expiration date on an offer, coming out of the blue, makes it an exploding one. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. There is also a very easy solution. I've done my fair share of hiring. We have hiring windows too, and have to close a candidate in a reasonable time. But when we started down this path, I made sure that we explained the time frames and where they came from up front, and agreed with the candidate on a reasonable window. At the time of interviewing, which is the crucial part. That way everyone knew where they stood, and more importantly, the candidates who were in the middle of a lengthier interview process with another company could arrange the time frames to suit us. Most of the time 2 weeks was perfectly fine. Some of the candidates needed 3 weeks. One ended up requiring a month. But because the expiration windows were agreed upon together with candidates when they were still early in the process, they were not caught off guard.
dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
> AND FYI - recruiters get ghosted too by employers for various reasons. Eveyone ghosts everyone, all the time... and that's okay? I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted. It's like the proverb: "A wise man hears one word and understands two." I don't need a polite but almost always vacant pleasantry, which is what this site is saying is missing ("manners"). If I didn't get a reply, that's a lot of information already. That's all I need to know. Now, many people do want to know why they didn't get a job, what they can improve upon, etc. That's a way more relatable gripe for me. Still, everything in life is a numbers game. You'll always want to know why someone broke up with you, and part of growing up for me was realizing that you'll never find out and that's okay. EDIT: To clarify, not advocating ghosting and certainly not something I practice in my personal life. It's definitely better to be polite and direct whenever possible.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted. I don't think it's appropriate for recruiters to ghost candidates. However, I will say that I think many younger candidates really would prefer being ghosted to being explicitly rejected. The nature of interviewing means that I send a lot more rejection e-mails than offer letters. A surprising number of candidates have very negative reactions to rejection letters, from trying to argue that we've made a mistake to posting negative reviews of our company on Glassdoor or even Google Maps. People hate the feeling of rejection. I still send polite rejection letters, but I can see how jaded interviewers would err on the side of ghosting candidates to avoid possible retribution. It only takes a few serious over-reactions to make you extra careful about dealing with candidates.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- MivLives 6y ago
  I think it depends where I am in the process and what's been said. No response what so ever to the initial contact is perfectly fine and understandable. If I'm in the second round, and you mention to email you about scheduling the third, that's pretty annoying. Or when you've received a verbal offer with no follow up in writing.
dbish 6y ago
I've worked with many recruiting teams as a hiring manager and many of my friends are hiring managers at other tech companies. We talk about how bad the current situation is across the board. The processes are all pretty similar and generally bad at treating the people being vetted well, and tracking them throughout the process to close the loop. I attribute this to a top down problem across the industry where these teams are led by the same recruiting leads who jump around companies so processes are standardized and they've convinced everyone that the current process works well. I've tried to have conversations diving into the details and looking at ways to improve this experience and recruiters are not interested, as they think the only think that matters are some specific metrics that they are measured on. I can't blame individual recruiters for this, since it's how they are measured, I can blame recruiting senior leadership who has allowed this to happen and continues to be ok with it.
joe_the_user 6y ago
I've had a zillion bad experiences in the job search world. But I just want to echo that recruiters as such aren't the problem. I'd divide the job search into two parts. 1) Send out "pings" of different sorts, get back expressions of interest of 2) Each side expresses interest, each side invests a little more in learning about the other, until things work-out or they don't. An explicit or implied "no" can happen at any point here and whether that happens by ghosting or by form-letter-level no really shouldn't matter to you. That's part you should legitimately just toughen up to even though it's challenging. A formulaic "sorry but it was great to meet and you have great skills but they aren't the skills we want" can be just as infuriating as ghosting imo. Get used to the "frenemy" relationship with your employer. Professionalism is only gloss on that, though it's a useful gloss. Lack of professionalism isn't good sign but it's just a sign. The one thing that I think people often are angry about and should be angry about, is situations where an employer sets up a situation that requires the job seeker to invest far more energy in the job-search than the employer. For example, suppose an employer sends each of a thousand applicants a quiz that takes a day to complete and then filters the best 10 results by whether some underling likes them, maybe hires someone, maybe not. That employer has wasted a lot of time of a lot of people. And that's different from a detailed onsite quiz from the people you might work with in a situation where they might indeed hire you. The company still might not hire you based on purely subjective criteria but then you've invested your time knowing there's a legitimate possibility of being hired, since they're investing their time and money so demonstrating sincerity.
deleted 6y ago
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vmception 6y ago
For you and other recruiters and anyone interested in this topic, it is important to differentiate between third party recruiters and inhouse recruiters. We are pissed at all recruiters, but when you say "I get ghosted by employers too!" its like oooh okay you are a third party recruiter..... so even less likely to know what our skillset is! Pitch forks now lit on fire.
bigmattystyles 6y ago
Is there any truth that ghosting is a strategy to avoid saying 'no' on the record. The argument is that ghosting essentially avoids any potential litigation from potential candidates saying they were discriminated against? I've always heard that, but I am not sure it is true.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
When it became evident to a recruiter I didn't like the initial compensation package offered, they immediately de-prioritized me. They somewhat at first said they'd help negotiate, but then had to tend to other things. We were so close to a deal, but my recruiter didn't want to go that extra mile. So, they made $0 since no conversion. (And I was only looking for 15% additional compensation -- I wasn't asking for the moon here). They went so far, to only drop the ball at the very end. I understand third-party (kind I was working with) and in-house recruiters operate a little differently, but I still found this surprising.
- x0x0 6y ago
  I'm an employer, and we're open with recruiters about our limits. I bet you passed the limit the employer was willing to pay.
  - jdhn 6y ago
    It would’ve behooved the recruiter to at least mention that the pay he was asking for was above the limit.
    - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      As a candidate, I don't want to prematurely limit myself on comp at the intake portion of the conversion funnel. So, the recruiter might mention a number, and I'll think to myself "that plus Y%" would do it for me. But I have no reason to say that. Who knows, maybe "that plus Y+Z%" is the firm's real upper limit. So it can't be the fault of recruiter, but also, it would be unwise for me too early on. I could give an absolute minimum, but that would be an anchor I don't want to be tied to.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Yeah, well, any recruiter can spend hours regaling you with tales of inept candidates, too :-) A recruiter is a lot like a real estate agent. Understanding how their business works and how they operate, leads to a good professional relationship with them that works for both of you.
k9000 6y ago
Thank you.
subsubzero 6y ago
> Sometimes I don't - that task falls through the cracks. That line to me is unacceptable. Your(recruiters) job is entirely dealing with people, no coding, no architecture, no design mockups, no capacity analysis or quality testing. The fact that you cannot even get the people portion right means there is alot of recruiters that should not be in that position. I get that the company itself may be somewhat to blame but not getting back to a candidate should be an offense similar to an engineer pushing untested changes to a production application blindly(meaning it should never happen).
- keyle 6y ago
  Yes I meant to secure our api but you know how things go, I got so busy and that task fell through the cracks /s
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throwaway93382 6y ago
Jumping in as a CTO and hiring manager currently spending 50% time on recruiting: We're definitely to blame as well. In the beginning, I really made an effort to be courteous and polite to every single candidate and give them their optimal chance at learning something from the interview process, but I realized that recruiting is a process that really does suck for everyone. Especially now that we're scrambling to grow, I need to constantly prioritize in order to just stay sane and get forward. If I've interviewed 10 candidates in a week and there was one or two which were really interesting, that's what I'll be focusing on first. Whether I get to write 8 rejections in detail, it doesn't matter for the company. At least in the short term. And chances are >50% that candidates don't perceive detailed and honest feedback in a good way (even with the best intentions), so I might get stuck in a discussion about details going forward when nothing changes that "no". Nothing good came from that for either me or the candidate ever. Rejections always feel like failure and honestly I hate writing them as well, as I know I'm always hurting someone. It's not a part of my job that I'm proud about (hence the throwaway too), but this is frankly my thought process around the whole thing. I've been on the other side of the table multiple times, so I know how much the candidate experience sucks, but that's how it goes. If you're searching for a job, just do yourself a favor and go broad while not taking anything too personal. It's very much in your best interest to get the bidding war for your person on, so never fall in love with any single job offer.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I think your perspective here is a clear example of how subverted and anti-human corporate growth mindset is intrinsically. It sounds like you’re rationalizing how desensitized you are behaving and scapegoating it with being busy as an excuse. Either you care and you make time to solve them problem (including by growing slower so your humanity and dignity remains intact, which sounds pretty questionable) or else admit you openly don’t care about candidates and you choose to value the marginal use of your time focused on growing the business higher than you value doing the right thing or coming up with a solution that meets some minimum level of care.
  - franga2000 6y ago
csa 6y ago
For reference, how many irons do you have in the fire at any one point in time? Both sides -- companies and applicants. I imagine this number will surprise people.
TurkishPoptart 6y ago
Can I ask you a question? Why do you write like that? Why not use sentences and paragraphs? This kind of writing reminds me of Linkedin hell.
jiveturkey 6y ago
meh to you: this is a solved problem. ticket systems that send reminders have been around for 30 years, at least. saas recruiter dashboards with candidate status for 10 years, at least. there's zero excuse for ghosting a candidate in 2020. You are just making excuses, as if the problem is intrinsic and it just comes with the territory. All of your points are true, but none of them matter! meh to the site: anonymity is pointless and makes this a spam tool, at best. i could see this working after a few iterations on it, but as it stands it's quite poor.
seem_2211 6y ago
Also speaking as a recruiter. We often get ghosted by candidates. As an industry, recruiters (myself included), need to do a better job managing rejection. But it is not as simple as name and shame.
CodeWriter23 6y ago
Maybe OP should pivot this product and make an auto-"sorry you didn't get the job" so a recruiter can click one button on a job lead and spam condolences to everyone but the new hire.
dyeje 6y ago
It's obvious you're a recruiter. When you speak in LinkedIn. One to two sentences per line.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Haha hey Andrew, long time! Speaking of good recruiters, you’re in the good books. Keep it up :)
- andrewstuart 6y ago
  Hey Alfie how goes man!
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    Crazy year :) I hope you’re doing well, and the team is going great!

dnautics 6y ago

would 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?

chaps 6y ago
Imagine how quickly that sort of tool will be turned off when it makes its first mistake.
- dnautics 6y ago
  good point!
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na85 6y ago

I mean that's great and all, and I'm sure you're a nice person, but irrespective of how you justify it, it's still unacceptable for a recruiter to ghost candidates. Having been ghosted a few times I now refuse to deal with recruiters whatsoever. The negative reputation that recruiters have is both entirely of their own making and entirely within their means to remedy. The fact that recruiters as an industry aren't trying to address this just drives home the perception that you see job candidates as a fungible commodity.

awillen 6y ago

Honestly, you're probably not what this is intended for. I don't consider it ghosting until I've sent more than one emails that have not been replied to (which thankfully has only happened to me once, after an interview with Uber). If you forget to follow up, and I send a polite reply which you respond to, that's understandable. But I agree that this app is not a good solution.

timvisee 6y ago

I'm afraid you're right. I had a spam problem once with an app of mine. Spammers registered accounts, put an URL in the name field, essentially allowing them to send an email to anybody starting with: Hello SKETCHY_URL, please activate your account...

massaman_yams 6y ago
This happens at stunning scale; there are probably several billion messages a month sent via malicious form submissions globally, by my rough semi-informed estimate. (That includes other types of abuse than the one you mentioned.) Perhaps this is bias from dealing with that kind of spam on a regular basis, but my current position is that a captcha needs to be present any web form which can even indirectly or occasionally result in an email being sent.
- timvisee 6y ago
  I always find Captcha's a really tricky topic. Especially these days where robots have become super sophisticated on solving them. At the same time it can be super irritating, and might even block legit users. Along with that you invade user privacy with solutions provided by Google, tracking every move on all pages. But yeah, it may be nice to have the option, even if temporary, if you're experiencing an ongoing attack.

harrisonjackson 6y ago

> That's all - that's why it happens. This is pretty insensitive to the hopes and dreams you are selling to candidates when they work with you. It might be a numbers game for you, but to each of the people you are recruiting they have a lot on the line whether it is leaving a bad job or putting food on the table for their family or whatever else... edit: I'm not saying you don't care - just that it seems like an organizational issue based on the amount of deals you are managing - and the job applicants don't care about any of that.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
When I mentor college grads, I always emphasize that they should not get too attached to any one specific job listing. Like it or not, getting a job is a lot like a sales process, and you can't close every deal. Putting all of your chips in one basket is a recipe for disappointment. Regardless, about 1/3 of them fall in love with a specific job posting and lose a lot of time assuming their first choice will work out. Everyone should treat the interviewing process like a numbers game. Apply to many companies. Don't get into a position where a single company decided to pass on you will destroy your finances or make it difficult to put food on the table. Don't become emotionally attached to companies before you've been hired.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  > Don't become emotionally attached to companies before you've been hired. The problem here is that as an applicant you're usually expected to show commitment, enthusiasm, passion for the work etc. It's very hard to work yourself up about a job without actually caring about it. The underlying enormous asymetry of power between you and the employer means that what is strictly a numbers game for them will always have at least some emotional significance for you.
  - eropple 6y ago
    > It's very hard to work yourself up about a job without actually caring about it. I'm very lucky in that my current job hits on most of my skills as well as many of my non-work interests, and that's not a job I'd have to fake anything for, but it's not as if every startup coming down the pike is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is a skill, and it is one that you can learn to be good at. That enthusiasm is just the polite enthusiasm of a sales call. It may require a few minutes of reading and thinking (because tbh I also see a lot of folks who have no idea what a company does when they go in to interview), but it is almost always either a baseline "do they get what we do here?" check (which is what you can learn and practice for) or it is a cult you should avoid.

warent 6y ago

Out of curiosity... Do you use LinkedIn a lot? I've noticed this cadence of speaking. It's like, a LinkedIn-ese. Every sentence is punctuated by a paragraph. Is that intentional or something subconsciously picked up?

andrewstuart 6y ago
Nothing to do with LinkedIn. I write like that online because I feel people read like that online - they more easily consume bullet point style writing than paragraphs. Dunno if that is true or not.
- gav 6y ago
  I think of it more as a BBC thing than a LinkedIn thing: https://danielmiessler.com/blog/email-like-bbc/ https://danielmiessler.com/blog/email-like-bbc/ If you're trying to get your point across to busy people, short paragraphs help.
- MetaWhirledPeas 6y ago
  I think you're right, but I also think it loses its punch if you overuse it. I'd suggest saving it for lines you really want to highlight.
eplanit 6y ago
It's become a thing over the past few months if not longer. People tell their stories in the sentence per paragraph form, thinking it adds drama, I guess. I find it a bit annoying.
syndacks 6y ago
It's called broetry.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

I'm not a recruiter, but I've done a lot of recruiting and hiring inside of companies. Your points about the process being lumpy and drawn out is the thing that many candidates don't quite understand. Some large companies hire engineers non-specifically into large talent pools, then assign them to specific teams or positions later. If you're operating at this scale, there's no excuse for not moving quickly and following up with candidates. Most companies don't operate like this, though. They're looking for one candidate to fill one specific position, and hiring the wrong person is a costly mistake. It takes time to gather candidates for a narrowly-scoped job description, coordinate interviews that work with their schedule, get approvals, and push the hire through. Going into this, I thought communicating weekly with candidates would be a good thing, as more communication is better. To my surprise, frequent communications without progress is misinterpreted as a negative signal by a lot of candidates. I could send the most harmless e-mail explaining that we're still moving forward with the hiring process but haven't made any decisions yet, and candidates would assume this meant they were going to be rejected. Younger candidates were especially prone to over-reactions, with some of them explicitly withdrawing from the process to avoid the possibility of explicit rejection (Usually remedied with a phone call). In an ideal world we'd move as fast as possible from interview to hire. In the real world, coordinating interviews with more than 5 candidates while everyone is also trying to do their regular job duties just takes time. Still, it should be standard practice to let candidates know when the position has been filled or they have been removed from consideration. I've also noticed that expectations from some candidates, especially the recent college grads, are getting out of control. For example, I've had a few candidates get irate that our offer letters had expiration dates set 2 weeks in the future. There's a growing misconception that any expiration date on an offer is an "exploding offer" and therefore a predatory practice. I have to explain that we can't keep the position open for them indefinitely, and if they don't want the job then we can't keep our 2nd choice candidate on the hook forever.

bostik 6y ago
Short expiration date on an offer, coming out of the blue, makes it an exploding one. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. There is also a very easy solution. I've done my fair share of hiring. We have hiring windows too, and have to close a candidate in a reasonable time. But when we started down this path, I made sure that we explained the time frames and where they came from up front, and agreed with the candidate on a reasonable window. At the time of interviewing, which is the crucial part. That way everyone knew where they stood, and more importantly, the candidates who were in the middle of a lengthier interview process with another company could arrange the time frames to suit us. Most of the time 2 weeks was perfectly fine. Some of the candidates needed 3 weeks. One ended up requiring a month. But because the expiration windows were agreed upon together with candidates when they were still early in the process, they were not caught off guard.

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago

> AND FYI - recruiters get ghosted too by employers for various reasons. Eveyone ghosts everyone, all the time... and that's okay? I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted. It's like the proverb: "A wise man hears one word and understands two." I don't need a polite but almost always vacant pleasantry, which is what this site is saying is missing ("manners"). If I didn't get a reply, that's a lot of information already. That's all I need to know. Now, many people do want to know why they didn't get a job, what they can improve upon, etc. That's a way more relatable gripe for me. Still, everything in life is a numbers game. You'll always want to know why someone broke up with you, and part of growing up for me was realizing that you'll never find out and that's okay. EDIT: To clarify, not advocating ghosting and certainly not something I practice in my personal life. It's definitely better to be polite and direct whenever possible.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted. I don't think it's appropriate for recruiters to ghost candidates. However, I will say that I think many younger candidates really would prefer being ghosted to being explicitly rejected. The nature of interviewing means that I send a lot more rejection e-mails than offer letters. A surprising number of candidates have very negative reactions to rejection letters, from trying to argue that we've made a mistake to posting negative reviews of our company on Glassdoor or even Google Maps. People hate the feeling of rejection. I still send polite rejection letters, but I can see how jaded interviewers would err on the side of ghosting candidates to avoid possible retribution. It only takes a few serious over-reactions to make you extra careful about dealing with candidates.
- deleted 6y ago
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MivLives 6y ago
I think it depends where I am in the process and what's been said. No response what so ever to the initial contact is perfectly fine and understandable. If I'm in the second round, and you mention to email you about scheduling the third, that's pretty annoying. Or when you've received a verbal offer with no follow up in writing.

dbish 6y ago

I've worked with many recruiting teams as a hiring manager and many of my friends are hiring managers at other tech companies. We talk about how bad the current situation is across the board. The processes are all pretty similar and generally bad at treating the people being vetted well, and tracking them throughout the process to close the loop. I attribute this to a top down problem across the industry where these teams are led by the same recruiting leads who jump around companies so processes are standardized and they've convinced everyone that the current process works well. I've tried to have conversations diving into the details and looking at ways to improve this experience and recruiters are not interested, as they think the only think that matters are some specific metrics that they are measured on. I can't blame individual recruiters for this, since it's how they are measured, I can blame recruiting senior leadership who has allowed this to happen and continues to be ok with it.

joe_the_user 6y ago

I've had a zillion bad experiences in the job search world. But I just want to echo that recruiters as such aren't the problem. I'd divide the job search into two parts. 1) Send out "pings" of different sorts, get back expressions of interest of 2) Each side expresses interest, each side invests a little more in learning about the other, until things work-out or they don't. An explicit or implied "no" can happen at any point here and whether that happens by ghosting or by form-letter-level no really shouldn't matter to you. That's part you should legitimately just toughen up to even though it's challenging. A formulaic "sorry but it was great to meet and you have great skills but they aren't the skills we want" can be just as infuriating as ghosting imo. Get used to the "frenemy" relationship with your employer. Professionalism is only gloss on that, though it's a useful gloss. Lack of professionalism isn't good sign but it's just a sign. The one thing that I think people often are angry about and should be angry about, is situations where an employer sets up a situation that requires the job seeker to invest far more energy in the job-search than the employer. For example, suppose an employer sends each of a thousand applicants a quiz that takes a day to complete and then filters the best 10 results by whether some underling likes them, maybe hires someone, maybe not. That employer has wasted a lot of time of a lot of people. And that's different from a detailed onsite quiz from the people you might work with in a situation where they might indeed hire you. The company still might not hire you based on purely subjective criteria but then you've invested your time knowing there's a legitimate possibility of being hired, since they're investing their time and money so demonstrating sincerity.

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vmception 6y ago

For you and other recruiters and anyone interested in this topic, it is important to differentiate between third party recruiters and inhouse recruiters. We are pissed at all recruiters, but when you say "I get ghosted by employers too!" its like oooh okay you are a third party recruiter..... so even less likely to know what our skillset is! Pitch forks now lit on fire.

bigmattystyles 6y ago

Is there any truth that ghosting is a strategy to avoid saying 'no' on the record. The argument is that ghosting essentially avoids any potential litigation from potential candidates saying they were discriminated against? I've always heard that, but I am not sure it is true.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

When it became evident to a recruiter I didn't like the initial compensation package offered, they immediately de-prioritized me. They somewhat at first said they'd help negotiate, but then had to tend to other things. We were so close to a deal, but my recruiter didn't want to go that extra mile. So, they made $0 since no conversion. (And I was only looking for 15% additional compensation -- I wasn't asking for the moon here). They went so far, to only drop the ball at the very end. I understand third-party (kind I was working with) and in-house recruiters operate a little differently, but I still found this surprising.

x0x0 6y ago
I'm an employer, and we're open with recruiters about our limits. I bet you passed the limit the employer was willing to pay.
- jdhn 6y ago
  It would’ve behooved the recruiter to at least mention that the pay he was asking for was above the limit.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    As a candidate, I don't want to prematurely limit myself on comp at the intake portion of the conversion funnel. So, the recruiter might mention a number, and I'll think to myself "that plus Y%" would do it for me. But I have no reason to say that. Who knows, maybe "that plus Y+Z%" is the firm's real upper limit. So it can't be the fault of recruiter, but also, it would be unwise for me too early on. I could give an absolute minimum, but that would be an anchor I don't want to be tied to.
WalterBright 6y ago
Yeah, well, any recruiter can spend hours regaling you with tales of inept candidates, too :-) A recruiter is a lot like a real estate agent. Understanding how their business works and how they operate, leads to a good professional relationship with them that works for both of you.

k9000 6y ago

Thank you.

subsubzero 6y ago

> Sometimes I don't - that task falls through the cracks. That line to me is unacceptable. Your(recruiters) job is entirely dealing with people, no coding, no architecture, no design mockups, no capacity analysis or quality testing. The fact that you cannot even get the people portion right means there is alot of recruiters that should not be in that position. I get that the company itself may be somewhat to blame but not getting back to a candidate should be an offense similar to an engineer pushing untested changes to a production application blindly(meaning it should never happen).

keyle 6y ago
Yes I meant to secure our api but you know how things go, I got so busy and that task fell through the cracks /s

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throwaway93382 6y ago

Jumping in as a CTO and hiring manager currently spending 50% time on recruiting: We're definitely to blame as well. In the beginning, I really made an effort to be courteous and polite to every single candidate and give them their optimal chance at learning something from the interview process, but I realized that recruiting is a process that really does suck for everyone. Especially now that we're scrambling to grow, I need to constantly prioritize in order to just stay sane and get forward. If I've interviewed 10 candidates in a week and there was one or two which were really interesting, that's what I'll be focusing on first. Whether I get to write 8 rejections in detail, it doesn't matter for the company. At least in the short term. And chances are >50% that candidates don't perceive detailed and honest feedback in a good way (even with the best intentions), so I might get stuck in a discussion about details going forward when nothing changes that "no". Nothing good came from that for either me or the candidate ever. Rejections always feel like failure and honestly I hate writing them as well, as I know I'm always hurting someone. It's not a part of my job that I'm proud about (hence the throwaway too), but this is frankly my thought process around the whole thing. I've been on the other side of the table multiple times, so I know how much the candidate experience sucks, but that's how it goes. If you're searching for a job, just do yourself a favor and go broad while not taking anything too personal. It's very much in your best interest to get the bidding war for your person on, so never fall in love with any single job offer.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I think your perspective here is a clear example of how subverted and anti-human corporate growth mindset is intrinsically. It sounds like you’re rationalizing how desensitized you are behaving and scapegoating it with being busy as an excuse. Either you care and you make time to solve them problem (including by growing slower so your humanity and dignity remains intact, which sounds pretty questionable) or else admit you openly don’t care about candidates and you choose to value the marginal use of your time focused on growing the business higher than you value doing the right thing or coming up with a solution that meets some minimum level of care.
- franga2000 6y ago

csa 6y ago

For reference, how many irons do you have in the fire at any one point in time? Both sides -- companies and applicants. I imagine this number will surprise people.

TurkishPoptart 6y ago

Can I ask you a question? Why do you write like that? Why not use sentences and paragraphs? This kind of writing reminds me of Linkedin hell.

jiveturkey 6y ago

meh to you: this is a solved problem. ticket systems that send reminders have been around for 30 years, at least. saas recruiter dashboards with candidate status for 10 years, at least. there's zero excuse for ghosting a candidate in 2020. You are just making excuses, as if the problem is intrinsic and it just comes with the territory. All of your points are true, but none of them matter! meh to the site: anonymity is pointless and makes this a spam tool, at best. i could see this working after a few iterations on it, but as it stands it's quite poor.

seem_2211 6y ago

Also speaking as a recruiter. We often get ghosted by candidates. As an industry, recruiters (myself included), need to do a better job managing rejection. But it is not as simple as name and shame.

CodeWriter23 6y ago

Maybe OP should pivot this product and make an auto-"sorry you didn't get the job" so a recruiter can click one button on a job lead and spam condolences to everyone but the new hire.

dyeje 6y ago

It's obvious you're a recruiter. When you speak in LinkedIn. One to two sentences per line.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Haha hey Andrew, long time! Speaking of good recruiters, you’re in the good books. Keep it up :)

andrewstuart 6y ago
Hey Alfie how goes man!
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  Crazy year :) I hope you’re doing well, and the team is going great!