Insights - May 4th, 2023
Ghosting in Recruitment - Why It Happens and How to Handle It
A few weeks ago I posted a poll Linkedin asking my HR community to vote on the biggest challenges they encountered when it came to job searching. The options provided were: too time consuming, building a network and ghosting after interviews.
75% of votes went towards ghosting after interviews, so I’d like to talk about ghosting.
A common definition of ghosting is the practice of cutting off all communication without an explanation. In a recruiting context, ghosting occurs when a recruiter, a hiring manager, or a candidate stops responding to email messages, fails to appear for an interview, or disappears during any stage of the hiring process. There is also a growing trend of new hires who simply don't show up on the first day of work, but let’s stick with recruiting for now.
Ghosting has become a widespread common practice these days that nobody likes it when it’s done to them, but a lot of people still do it for various reasons. Also, there seems to be another issue: when you’re the ghostee, you’re apt to ghost someone else. Sadly, it's become almost socially acceptable to cut ties without letting the other party know why.
Why People Resort to Ghosting
There could be many reasons why both employers and candidates alike resort to ghosting as a form of communication.
One way to explain this common practice is that we don’t like to give people bad news or simply we don’t like to talk about issues. For example, HR people are afraid to speak with job seekers or offer bad news, such as they won’t be advanced in the interview process. It's easier for them to just keep quiet and hope the person goes away. It’s just easier to “disappear”. Same goes for candidates, it’s easier to avoid embarrassment by disappearing from the hiring process than to take accountability if, for some reason, you missed your first interview or you are not interested in the job anymore.
Just to be clear, we are not talking about accidental ghosting here, we are talking about chronic ghosting as an acceptable form of communication that an individual or a company regularly engage in. As an HR leader, if your company has a robust recruiting process and candidate experience KPIs in place and you just happened to miss one step in the process, that’s not ghosting, that’s being human, making mistakes, and learning from them. Similarly on the candidate side, if you had an urgent personal issue come up and just couldn’t cancel the interview on time, that’s not ghosting; again, that’s being human. However, when ghosting becomes a socially acceptable form of communication between two people, I think it requires some introspection.
Ghosting as a Coping Mechanism
So, let’s dig a bit deeper here. Let’s take the first explanation, that people ghost because they don’t like to give bad news. A first inquiry here would be: why don’t you like to give bad news, what are you afraid of? Let’s say your answer is that you are afraid that you may do something that can be construed as offensive or discriminatory, even when it's not your intention and then the candidate can sue the company and you lose your job. Our next inquiry would be: OK, so if you lose your job, what happens? You may say, well, I’ll be losing the comfortable life I have now and I’m not prepared for that. Or you may say, well, people will judge me. Then we ask you: So if people judge you, what do you make it mean about you? You may say: That I’m a bad person or that I’m not good enough.
There you have it. The limiting beliefs we were looking for.
I see ghosting as a coping mechanism that people learnt at some point in life to keep themselves safe. We all acquire various beliefs as we go through life and some of these beliefs may become limiting later on if they don’t serve us well anymore. If my belief is that I’m a bad person or that I’m not good enough, I may use ghosting as a coping mechanism to keep myself safe from experiencing the uncomfortable feeling of not being good enough or to avoid conflict. It could also be a coping mechanism because I don’t know how to express my needs. So let’s say as a candidate, instead of being open with a recruiter that something has come up and I’ll be missing the interview, I just default to ghosting because that makes me feel safer than facing the fear of expressing my needs to reschedule the interview.
Keep in mind that most of the time we don’t even realize that we employ this coping mechanism. Our subconscious mind just does it for us. And this is because our subconscious mind drives about 95% of our lives.
Handling Ghosting Through Inquiry
If you find yourself resorting to ghosting as a form of communication, I invite you do go through an inquiry process and find out how you picked up this coping mechanism along the way. It was definitely for a good reason back then, most likely to keep yourself safe, but as with many other copying mechanisms, it may not be serving you well anymore.
Let me know in the comments what are your thoughts on ghosting as a socially acceptable form of communication these days.
If you would like to discuss effective strategies for learning how to handle ghosting while looking for a new job, don't hesitate to book a conversation with us here at Aly Talent.
Our coaching programs provide support with the inquiry process and the reprogramming of limiting beliefs, so if you’d like to take your career to the next level, please book a call with us at https://calendly.com/alytalent/30min to learn more about how to transform your life and your career from the inside-out by reprogramming your limiting beliefs and learning how to express your needs.