Candidate Ghosting

Candidate Ghosti ng: A Disturbing Trend in the Labor Market By: Candice Shintani

What is Candidate Ghosting?

When a job candidate suddenly ends all Start date arrives and you as the employer have made all the arrangements for orientation and training – and the candidate does a no-show.

You try to contact him or her, you e-mail, do phone calls, and no response.

You have just been ghosted.

communication without an explanation. You can either sit there and get upset or move on and hire smarter.

According to Roy Maurer in an article on the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) website, the shift in the labor market to where there are more job openings available than unemployed workers to fi ll them, it has become an increasingly tight labor market.

What has typically only aff ected lower-wage, highvolume types of jobs, has increasingly become a widespread problem in numerous classes of work.

Candidates are being provided so many job opportunities at once that when they are no longer interested in a job, they will simply cut off all communication or merely not show up for the interview. Keep the communication going with the selected candidate, provide clear expectations, be honest, open and upfront about the compensation package, benefi ts and workplace culture.

According to Samantha McLaren, LinkedIn Talent Blog and Dr. John Sullivan, ERE Recruiting Intelligence, they advise that you talk about the candidate’s goals, encourage questions, off er a tour of the offi ce, keep the candidate well informed about changes, and set clear timelines of when he or she will hear back from you. A M a R a c q o in

Remember the saying, “Work smarter, not harder.”

According to Maurer, although many new employers are experiencing it in the recruitment phase, “ghosting” seems to be more prevalent in the hiring stage.

In a typical scenario a candidate applies, interviews, a job off er made and accepted, background check completed, start date confi rmed. If you keep the candidate engaged and the communication going, ghosting will be a thing of the past.