Everyone’s Getting Ghosted
The company I interviewed for was up and coming, YC funded, now profitable, a well-known player in the generative AI space. I was excited for the opportunity. They have many in-house recruiting resources and a policy to not ghost candidates. Yet, I got ghosted. I’m not alone in this, and we’re going to investigate why this happens.
Ghosting is a term that refers to asynchronous communication that is abruptly cut off by one party. The term is typically used in dating, but works well for tech recruiting too. In order for it to be ghosting, the ghosted party has to expect the conversation will continue. This means that if you apply and never hear back from a job, that’s not ghosting, a conversation never started. It only becomes ghosting when there is an expected next step that never happens.
The effect of getting ghosted for me, and likely others, is impactful. The narrative in my head played out like this: “was I really so bad that they wouldn’t even tell me no?” It was also a chilling effect for my projects that involved generative AI. I didn’t want to work on them. Every time I logged into my Github, I was reminded of the company because I still had a fork of the take home assignment. It took about a month for my project work to feel normal again, but I shelved some of my LLM projects and moved on. The fire of disappointment had smoldered into an ember of resentment.
The resentment that, months later, inspired me to write a message to the team’s Product Manager (PM). I didn’t reach out on Linkedin. It was much more intimate, using my gamer tag. Discord is a social media platform where you can join communities that have chat rooms, forums, video and voice chat. I am a member of 50+ Discord communities, and many of them are dedicated to open source projects or technologies. The PM was in a Discord I was active in for an open source LLM toolset. Seeing that they were still in the server, and not wanting them to entice others to get ghosted. I private messaged them with the story of my experience. Thankfully, he was receptive.
I had finished a 3-hour take home test and went through hours of Zoom interviews. My loop was done. I didn’t feel great about my performance, but didn’t feel bad. I had done well, but not perfect. My experience was not well aligned with the role. They were looking for a senior level engineer they deemed an “AI hacker.” I had spent the previous decade in technical lead roles, spending as much time on technical direction as I have with coding. I was expecting a message in the next two weeks saying “no,” but would be pleasantly surprised if they said “yes.”
Two weeks after my final interview, I hear nothing. I am tired of waiting for the no, so I send an email to the recruiter asking for more details. I thought that something probably happened in the process and I slipped through the cracks, and I want to give them the opportunity to do the right thing. The right thing being not ghosting me. The recruiter never responded.
Ugh. That’s tough to hear.
The PM says after I tell them about this part in the story.
Let me go talk to our talent team and see what went on here. Really appreciate you sharing this with me.
There is this sort of liminal space between interpreting behavior as a mistake or malicious, at least for the story I tell in my head. I remind myself of Hanlon’s razor, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by [misunderstanding].” When the weeks passed by with no response from the recruiter, the story in my head solidified — it’s malice. However, after the PM’s attempted reconciliation and more context, it seems like it was probably misunderstanding, or in the actual quote from Wikipedia: “stupidity.” A week after the PM got back to me, I get this email:
I didn’t bomb the interview and feedback was generally positive, though vague. Their policy is to not ghost candidates, and it seems I slipped through the cracks. This works for me as closure. I will not be responding to the recruiting manager. I thanked the PM for helping me out, solid person, really appreciate them.
Ghost World
I had not been ghosted by an interviewer before. I typically apply to positions where I know people, so that may be why. I reached out to some coding communities I am in to ask for their experiences. Here are the parts of the discussion that stuck out:
Almost all of the people i know have been ghosted multiple times by potential employers
I had an HR lady tell me ‘we’ll definitely reach out one way or another we’re not one of those places that will leave you hanging’ and then proceed to leave me hanging
recruiters have really been shit the past couple years with actually responding
in the tech world…. Literally every single company i interviewed at (including some really big well known ones) recently have ghosted me
This is a small sample, and does not include all the people who weren’t ghosted. These people are smart and talented with varying levels of experience.
Knowing the skillsets of others who got ghosted and my personal experience, here are some of my assumptions about the recruitment ghosting trend:
- It has nothing to do with how well you interviewed (you could be 2nd pick and still get ghosted).
- The majority of people who participated in the interview are not aware of the ghosting. The people who performed the interview probably assume they have humane recruiting practices.
- There is no perceived incentive from recruiters to not ghost
- Verifying or measuring contact with rejected candidates is not a priority and not done. Even if there is a policy, there is nobody checking to see if it is followed.
Nonperformative policy
the message that they intended to send to you never made it to your inbox. You were meant to receive our decision with a link to book time for feedback.
In Sarah Ahmed’s Complaint! she talks about institutions and their policies, describing many as “nonperformative,” a term which “seemed to capture how saying something was not doing something.” Some policies exist simply to bolster the institutions image, like an anti-bullying policy or inclusion policy.
Nonperformative policies are not necessarily malicious, they come about when there is no investment or measurement into the success of the policy. In my case, the policy to follow up with every candidate was not appropriately measured, therefore allowing me to “slip through the cracks.”
I wonder how many other candidates have slipped through the cracks as well. From the recruiter’s perspective, there is very little incentive to do a final follow up with a rejected candidate. That person is no longer part of the pool of potential candidates, which is the group of people who will make them money. They will definitely prioritize profitable communications over closing the loop with a rejected candidate.
Final Thoughts
From a game theory perspective if “winning” is having a job that fits all your wants and needs. Then the best way to win is to look and apply for jobs constantly, not just when you are discontent with your current job. That means a lot of opportunities for learning and improving interviewing skills. When recruiters ghost us, it becomes incredibly difficult to gauge our performance in those interviews and continue to improve.
The truth is that getting ghosted by recruiters (or anyone) feels bad. Spending 10 hours on an interview process to not even get the time of day for a “no” is an inhumane practice and should be stopped. It cannot just be stopped with a policy, there needs to be measurement of compliance to the policy. The whole thing could be automated rather simply.
We all know that working with recruiters can be frustrating from both a candidate and interviewer perspective. Those of us who perform interviews regularly in our professional lives should be more aware and verify that loops are closed for candidates. I have so many great conversations with potential coworkers, but a lot of times it doesn’t work out. I want those people to be treated with dignity and respect, and the easiest way I can do that is to ping the recruiter I work with on Slack and verify. So, that’s what I’ll do. Thanks for reading.
