Stop Ghosting your Candidates and Give Me My ‘NO’!

Finding a new job is hard.. You spend hours looking for open positions, checking the descriptions, adjusting your CV, and drafting cover letters. So far, so expected, but many modern day companies ask more of you before even offering you an interview: Please provide a work sample (and no, it doesn’t matter if your previous work was confidential). Would you do this assessment or fill out these forms? Can you also complete a written assignment? Oh, don’t forget to answer all these questions about your life and character. We also need you to do all of this exactly how we want and at our own convenience. It really doesn’t matter if you have work or other obligations, we need to fill this spot ASAP. Oh, you don’t have 3+ hours available to do this written assignment (yes, really) or you can’t work around us with 1-2 days’ notice? Too bad, you snooze, you lose, not our problem.

So what do you do? What can you do? You jump through the hoops of course, because you want the job. At this point, you need that job. Maybe, just maybe, you get invited to an interview. If you get the interview you will do the preparatory work: read up on the company, research the relevant topics, make yourself up to be a likable, malleable little worker bug. If the interview is in person, you take time off to go to their office. You are nice and polite to everyone as you explain your person, justify some life choices, prove that everything you wrote in the application was your original experiences, and give as many details as possible to back it all up. All while being perfectly professional and charismatic in front of a committee of strangers.

Then- what? Some companies will have you do 2, 3, 4, even 5 more rounds of interviews. And then? Maybe you get a rejection, which is okay, it is a part of life. You expect to be rejected, you know that it is an inescapable part of the job search. But perhaps, and more often than not, you are ghosted. No feedback, no calls, nothing. Your emails go unanswered and any responses you do get are clearly giving you the runaround. Maybe you assume the assignments they required you to complete are now being used by their paid employees, and you sigh as you put yet another ‘Ghosted’ in the response section of your application tracker. Having dedicated hours of your life to tailoring your application materials, completing unpaid assignments, and rearranging your schedule to accommodate them, you push your frustration aside to try and focus on the next application, hoping this one will go differently.

Now, we can all agree that just applying and completing assignments does not entitle one to a job - although the problem of unpaid assignments is a whole other can of worms we won’t get into here. However, we are owed our rejections at the very least. Give me my ‘no’, give me closure so I can move on with my life! Especially because being ghosted for three months doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t get the job. Our friends have received interview requests 6+ months after submitting an application (the record being a stunning 15 months)! So if you find your dream job that you are more than qualified for, you might end up emotionally hanging on to that application long after the company has moved on, because it’s not unheard of to get a response months and months after, and you were never actually told you didn’t make it to the next stage. If you’re going to ask me to dedicate a non insignificant amount of time and effort to your company when I’m not even on the payroll, at the very least I’m owed that ‘No’.

The power imbalance between companies and job seekers is ridiculously high. Recruiters and HR, or whoever is really in charge of those final decisions, can simply throw all the basic rules and conventions of social interactions and politeness out the window and do one of the most unprofessional things one can do:: ghost us. Meanwhile, we have to double check every email we write and maintain pristine composure - never showing impatience or frustration with their ‘process’ even when it means being led on for months and months just to have the offer pulled at the last minute. Or even to be told: ‘actually we don’t have the budget for this position so we are canceling it entirely, oops, sorry’. All the while, we are being treated in the most unprofessional manner by people who clearly do not care about the humans behind the applications. Why is our character so important if companies can treat us like crap and get away with it? Why must we justify our life choices while not receiving even an iota of feedback on our application, interviews, or assignments, or any reasoning that another candidate was selected, beyond ‘we went with a more qualified candidate’? Or ‘we wanted to go in a different direction with this position.’ What does that even mean, especially when many of us are applying to positions we are sufficiently, if not overqualified for?

This treatment is beyond unfair and reflects the capitalist society we live in that sees humans as expendable capital in the pursuit of profit. It reflects the growing cultural norm that expects candidates to meet unattainable standards while companies can slack, resting easy in the knowledge that there is always enough desperation out there to find someone else.