Ryan S. Dancey
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

As a hiring manager, I have been trained for years to do nothing nor say anything that could get the company sued by a litigious rejected applicant. I usually “ghost” candidates who fail some part of the later cycle of the hiring process because there is no good way to tell them why they failed without entering into a conversation that has liability concerns.

Examples include:

We scoured your social media and found numerous red flags like negative comments about current or former employers, racist, sexist, homophobic, or extreme political viewpoints that clash with our culture, indications that you prioritize elements of your personal life above your work commitments in ways that make us uncomfortable, associations with persons or groups that we find intolerable, etc.

We got a back-channel communication from a reference or former employer that cannot be put on the record (because they’re worried about being sued too) which we found credible and which we found disqualifying.

A routine records check turned up information that you had not previously disclosed such as conviction of a crime.

Someone already on our team became aware of the potential hire and confidentially informed us that you had harassed them or engaged in other disqualifying behavior around or towards that team member and we found the report credible.

It absolutely sucks that we cannot tell a prospective hire why we are ghosting them. As someone who has been on the receiving end of the ghosting myself, I really hate it. But until and unless we get a tort reform that says you cannot sue a prospective or former employer unless there is a substantial pattern of discrimination against protected classes and that you were personally discriminated against because of your status as a member of a protected class, nobody is going to be talking to anyone.

    Ryan S. Dancey

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    I write essays