Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Have You Ever 'Ghosted' an Employer? (linkedin.com)
"Suddenly, calls and texts went unreturned," writes LinkedIn's editor at large, describing a recruiter who suddenly discovered the candidate she'd wanted to hire failed to respond to 12 messages, including emails like "Please let me know that you have not been kidnapped by aliens. I'm worried about you," and even a snail-mailed greeting card. Recruiters complain that prospective employees are now borrowing a practice from dating -- and "ghosting" recruiters and employers to let them know that they're not interested.
"Candidates agree to job interviews and fail to show up, never saying more. Some accept jobs, only to not appear for the first day of work, no reason given, of course. Instead of formally quitting, enduring a potentially awkward conversation with a manager, some employees leave and never return. Bosses realize they've quit only after a series of unsuccessful attempts to reach them.... Meredith Jones, an Indianapolis-based director of human resources for a national restaurant operator, now overbooks interviews, knowing up to 50 percent of candidates for entry-level roles likely won't show up."
Long-time Slashdot reader NormalVisual writes, "It'd be interesting to hear Slashdotters' experience with this." Have you ever ghosted a potential employer, or perhaps more relevant, have you ever been ghosted by a potential employer during the hiring process? Do you feel it's unprofessional, or simple justice for the behavior of some companies when the balance of power was more on their side?
Inc. magazine blames the low unemployment rate and "the effects technology have had on the communication style of younger generations." But leave your own thoughts in the comments.
Does ghosting show a lack of professionalism, or is it simple payback for the way corporations treated job-seekers in the past? And have you ever "ghosted" an employer?
"Candidates agree to job interviews and fail to show up, never saying more. Some accept jobs, only to not appear for the first day of work, no reason given, of course. Instead of formally quitting, enduring a potentially awkward conversation with a manager, some employees leave and never return. Bosses realize they've quit only after a series of unsuccessful attempts to reach them.... Meredith Jones, an Indianapolis-based director of human resources for a national restaurant operator, now overbooks interviews, knowing up to 50 percent of candidates for entry-level roles likely won't show up."
Long-time Slashdot reader NormalVisual writes, "It'd be interesting to hear Slashdotters' experience with this." Have you ever ghosted a potential employer, or perhaps more relevant, have you ever been ghosted by a potential employer during the hiring process? Do you feel it's unprofessional, or simple justice for the behavior of some companies when the balance of power was more on their side?
Inc. magazine blames the low unemployment rate and "the effects technology have had on the communication style of younger generations." But leave your own thoughts in the comments.
Does ghosting show a lack of professionalism, or is it simple payback for the way corporations treated job-seekers in the past? And have you ever "ghosted" an employer?
I don't expect every employer to spend hours coaching rejected applicants, but a simple statement of why would go a long way.
I've heard that a lot of lawyers advise against this, because in some jurisdictions it opens up a risk of a candidate then claiming some form of illegal discrimination has taken place if they don't like the official version. It's a bit like insurers saying you must not say "sorry" if you've been involved in a collision on the road, because it can be taken as an admission of responsibility in subsequent legal matters, even if you were just being polite/friendly and knew very well that the other person caused the crash. In some places, I think there are now laws that explicitly prevent the latter problem; maybe some sort of "protection of honest recruiting feedback" law would help with the former?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
To be honest, I never even considered that people accepting jobs and not showing up would be an issue - (while I speak mostly from the perspective of the German labour law, I believe this is also the case for most other European countries) both parties have an obligation once the employment contract is signed, with the employer being in their right to seek damages for every day that you do not show up and do your job, as agreed. The flip side of this is that it's also quite difficult for the employer to refuse leave requests by the employee, with a far wider range of allowable absences than what would be tolerated on the US side. I am certainly guilty of having interviewed at companies that were competitors at the same time and playing them against each other to up the offer, but I would never have signed something and then try to weasel out of it when something better comes along. On the other hand, I have also seen people take jobs they didn't necessarily want while continuing to look for better ones, and then simply quit their other job during their probation period (typically a 6 month period in which either side is able to terminate the relationship without cause). Once someone has to begin paying damages for every day they don't show up for work (or obtains sufficient awareness of this potentiality), I would imagine people would be a bit more careful about when and what they sign, and the problem would gradually correct itself.
Techies are hired to tech. Not to socialize. HR is hired to socialize. The lack of professionalism is from HR departments across the board, not employees.
HR departments seem to be trained to deal with poor people with no skills, and so they treat everyone like an indentured servent. When they finally have to deal with skilled workers who won't take their shit, they get all indignant.
having to eat piles of shit in the process of submitting resumes by having to deal with the subcontracted, third-party resume ingestion services that everyone uses now
Pretty much this. I understand this streamlines the process for the box-tickers at HR, but from a job-seeker's point of view it is a bloody nightmare.
By the way, a company could do worse than just fire the lot in charge of centralized vetting of job applicants. I once advised a colleague who was recruiting people for his team, to ask HR for the resumes they rejected. I can't say the resumes passed by HR were that much better than those in the reject pile, and the latter had some good candidates in it. When I asked HR myself to post some job openings, the questions they asked me about the requirements were inane at best. I struggle to see what actual value they (or those resume ingestion services) add in this process.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Just had a potential employer do this to me. I had two on-site interviews in rapid succession, was obviously a great fit for the position, and recruiter told me I was company's first choice. It looked like an offer was imminent. Then a few weeks went by with no movement. Recruiter kept telling me this is normal and company was still interested. I called the hiring manager and HR person whom so eagerly threw their business cards to me while saying to call if there's absolutely anything they can do. Both voicemails went unreturned. Another week went by. I grilled the recruiter and he finally admitted that they gave the offer to a cheaper candidate, but told him to keep me "warm" (ie hanging) in case that candidate didn't work out. Cheap candidate didn't work out, so they sent me an offer. I soon had other competing offers. Told recruiter his offer was losing out because company had, erm, "ghosted" me. He told me that I can't take that personally, that it's perfectly normal for a company to ignore you when you're not their first choice. I told recruiter I was going to accept another offer, but told him I wasn't going to decline his offer yet in case first choice didn't work out. I asked him to keep the company "warm". He threw a tantrum that I can't do that, but he went along with it because he wanted a chance at the commission. Funny how turnabout isn't fair play. I formally declined the offer the day it was set to expire. I don't want to work with people like that.
Between 70%-85% of job openings in private sector are never listed at all. Rather, when an opening happens, someone at the company knows somebody who would be a fit, typically someone they used to work with. That's how MOST jobs are filled.
My first salaried job in a big company was like that. I had worked with a guy doing "side gigs" and he knew I was passively looking for a new job - I would be interested if the right position came along. When the right position opened up in the agency he worked for, he called me, and recommend me to the hiring manager. Policy required interviewing three people, but the job was mine because he recommended me bases on knowing I had acted professionally and done a good job before.
From that company, I have a few contacts. My old boss was good, so I've told her to let me know if she's ever in the market for a new job, and she's told me the same. Her and her boss have told me more than once they'll have a spot for me if I ever want to come back.
There are a few other people from the job who I've communicated with the same way - if either of us ever needs a job, or has the right position open, we'll contact each other. We wouldn't do that with unprofessional people who ghosted.
So it's not so much that a stranger will call around (though that happens to), but rather people WON'T call the unprofessional people, they WILL call the people they've worked with who were highly professional.
My last boss is now a high-ranking VP for a major bank. He's hired me before, and I think I did a good job for him, so whenever I need a new job I can always get a job at his bank. I expect he WILL call people he still knows at my current company, confirming that I haven't become an unprofessional asshole since he and I last worked together.
Yours is the second post mentioning advertising non existent jobs? Wtf?
Can you explain why they would do this?
There are lots of reasons:
1) The job is already filled internally but they are legally required to post it.
2) They have a new or existing employee and they are wanting to know what they employee is worth compared to other people.
3) There is a potential position and they do want to hire someone but they need to know what's out there and what it will cost
before getting approval for a salary range.
4) The job did really exist but they quickly found someone they liked but left the job "open" just in case the first person falls thru.
5) It's a position that frequently has openings and they want to be able to fill it quickly when an opening does happen.
There are likely a bunch of other similar reasons too but most probably fall into the two categories of
either "market research" and/or "job technically exists but is currently unavailable to be filled"
Thee are many reasons. The most malicious is to steal your identity: many people are less careful of their personal details with a recruiter who is "running a background check". Or they may "bait and switch", offer you a less lucrative or less skilled role when you've already invested time and effort in making a good impression with them. There is also an infamous practice of advertising roles in the market and accepting only the intended, much cheaper, H1B candidate with spurious requirements. There is also an infamous bureaucratic practice of getting approved to hire various personnel, expanding the department headcount, but never actually hiring the personnel. That last is used to justify overtime and more office space or benefits for the staff onsite "until we can fill those slots".
There are many other reasons to present an opening that does not really exist. The penalty for withdrawing an advertised role is usually quite low, and the benefits can be quite high. So I'm afraid that some fraud there is inevitable.
> By the way, a company could do worse than just fire the lot in charge of centralized vetting of job applicants. I once advised a colleague who was recruiting people for his team, to ask HR for the resumes they rejected.
This is very true for open source work. The related projects on which the best candidates worked do not match the checklist of tools familiar to many HR personnel. If it's possible, it's invaluable to work with HR and help them understand the _related software_. I once had an applicant list work related to our critical project, but rejected by HR because they did not list the software buzzword. Since they _wrote_ the buzzworded software decades ago and had moved on, they were the best possible candidate to support out out-of-date version and help us migrate to the newer tools. And that was what we wished to hire someone for.