Employment Ghosting

As a professional recruiter, I am in some ways a matchmaker.  So it seems somehow logical to me that the word “ghosting” from the dating world has surfaced in the recruiting world.

Ghosting Defined

The Urban Dictionary defines it as “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.”

Ghosting in the dating world has existed for a long time.  It’s the “easy” way out.  Shut off all communication and whoever you were dating will eventually go away.  Well easy for the person doing the ghosting at least.

Business Ghosting

In the business world it runs the gamut from first interviews all the way through long-term employees simply vanishing.

Ghosting can be when a candidate:

• agrees to an in-person interview and does not show up.
• stops responding to emails, phone calls, text messages at any time during the interview process.
• is extended a job offer and does not respond at all
• accepts a job offer and does not show up at work on the first day.
• Lastly, when an employee of any length of time just stops showing up at work and doesn’t respond to emails, phone calls, texts or registered letters.

Who is this behavior hurting?

While it’s easy to say:  so what, it’s just a “company” or just a “business” and no one is getting hurt, that’s not completely true. There are many people who actually genuinely care and worry about what happened to you.

Examples of Ghosting

On a personal note, I had a candidate going in for his second interview. He was almost guaranteed to get the job as he was the hiring committee’s first choice.  He called me from his car to tell me he was on his way but was stuck in some traffic.  He asked me to relay that information to the hiring manager because he was going to be a few minutes late.

As far as I know he was killed in a freak car accident or abducted by aliens and taken to another planet.  He never showed up at the interview and never responded to any forms of communication from me or the hiring manager.

In another instance, a long term employee didn’t show up for work.  No answer to phone calls, emails, text messages.  When someone from the office went to her home and knocked on the door, no answer.  The company kept trying and ultimately, the police were called in for a “wellness check.”  They found her on the kitchen floor. That one had a happy ending because she recovered.

But with ghosting becoming more common, at what point does a company just give up and move on?  If there’s no respect for the company, does the company owe the employee that level of persistence?

At any point during most of these scenarios, a simple email would have been the considerate thing to do.  Stating you are no longer interested in the job opportunity or that you’ve decided to quit is far better than just disappearing like a ghost with no official ending to the employment relationship.