Stop ghosting! It’s Damaging Your Professional Reputation.

Save your ghosting for your personal life

I’m not talking about the pain of ghosting that apparently happens now in the world of dating. I’ve been out of that game for several decades, so I have nothing much to say on that issue. It does leave people hanging with a million questions, but sometimes it is better and safer to just disappear. I get that.

I’m talking about the ghosting in the professional world that is damaging your reputation and limiting your career. A mature professional responds, follows up, and cleanly closes things out.

Inexplicably disappearing and refusing to respond to repeated communication attempts is the sign of someone who avoids conflict, can’t communicate honestly, and perhaps doesn’t understand how disrespectful it is.

Ghosting during the interview process

This isn’t about ghosting when you receive unwanted initial contact from recruiters. We all get bombarded with irrelevant jobs from people we don’t even know. I think it’s still a good practice to tell that recruiter why you aren’t interested, so that they don’t keep sending jobs like that to you. But, I understand that some of you receive dozens of unwanted solicitations every day and you just get tired of dealing with it. I’m not surprised when you block these people.

I’m talking about the process after you’ve initiated the conversation. If you accept a request, take a meeting, and especially if you really get into the interview process, see it through. That doesn’t mean that you have to continue all the way until the end. “Seeing it through” means that you honestly tell the recruiter or hiring manager if you want to stop because you are no longer interested, instead of ghosting.

Kristi Muller wrote an excellent article on the issue of professional ghosting from the perspective of a recruiter. These were some of the comments made by her clients about ghosters (i.e., candidates…