Are you being ghosted?

Even if you aren’t familiar with the term ‘ghosting’, you’ll have no doubt experienced it. Ghosting originated from the world of online dating and is used to describe a situation where someone suddenly ‘vanishes’ or stops returning your calls, emails or texts. Instead of communicating that they aren’t interested they “ghost”.

Ghosting isn’t a new trend—the phenomenon was on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic and the problem has gotten worse – according to recent research, 1 in 10 UK professionals admits to having ‘ghosted’ a potential employer.

So, how can employers prevent candidate ghosting? Unfortunately, ghosting can come about for many reasons, and you can’t always control this, but you can take some steps to minimise it:

Create a positive candidate experience – if you say you are going to call/email/text on Monday then do it. You may not have any updates or new information for them, but you are holding up your end of the bargain and working on building that trust. Ultimately, it’s about putting yourself in the candidate’s shoes. What would you want from a recruiter and hiring manager right now? What would make a business stand out from the competition, and make you want to move toward an offer? Those engagement tactics are good next steps to help control ghosting.

Do you have a seamless recruitment process – Is there a certain point in the hiring process when candidates tend to ghost? This could be worth delving into because if you can identify this and potentially fine tune some of your recruitment processes, less candidates could fall through the cracks.

Encourage candidates to voice their concerns – People naturally shy away from uncomfortable conversations so we need to manage the process in a way that makes the candidate feel valued. Regularly ask them questions like ‘how are you finding the process?’ and you may even consider asking them if you have any other job offers pending. Encourage transparency and allow them to voice any concerns they might have. This way, you’ll be able to identify the problems that come up instead of wondering why your candidate disappeared.

Move quickly – We can’t stress this one enough! The majority of candidates often have multiple job offers and may jump at the first one they get. If the hiring process is more than a 2 stage interview, they might become frustrated with the process and just move on leaving you in the lurch.

Ghosting can be incredibly frustrating and is never acceptable in the workplace, just disappearing after accepting an interview invite or a job offer is highly unprofessional, but perhaps if we as employers work hard to maintain consistent and honest communication, then our candidates will follow suit!

If you would like to speak to the Gecko Travel Recruitment team about how you can prevent ghosting, please reach out to us.