‘Ghosting’ job candidates is bad practice. So why is it still happening?

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Question: I’m job searching and I’ve become frustrated with organizations ghosting me. On more than one occasion, I’ve done several interviews and then have heard nothing back. Isn’t this bad practice?
We asked Shena Mistry, career coach and founder of Own What’s Next, to tackle this one:
Ghosting is bad practice. It’s unprofessional. But based on my recruitment background and what my clients say, it’s not uncommon. There are reasons why it might be happening. I won’t justify it, because no matter what, there should be open communication channels between recruiters and candidates, but I can give some perspectives on how staffing agencies and recruiters might be thinking.
Firstly, there could be internal changes in the organization. That’s happening a lot in the job market right now – hiring freezes, budget cuts, mass layoffs. It could be that the company put a sudden pause on hiring when recruiters are in the middle of final interviews. It could be that there’s an uncertainty in a final decision because the hiring team is debating a couple of candidates.
A recruitment team might be overloaded by too many roles and too few people to manage them. A lot of recruiters are overworked and burnt out right now. It could be human error or miscommunication. Or it could be that the recruiter or hiring manager has a lack of training in managing rejections professionally.
If you’ve been ghosted by a potential employer, I would suggest a polite follow-up e-mail asking about the status of your application and saying that you would appreciate any updates that could be provided. I’d suggest following up two, possibly three times, in a reasonable time frame and then after that, you have to be okay with just moving on.
Legislative changes have been proposed in Ontario that would ban this sort of ghosting by employers. These changes to the Employment Standards Act (ESA) would require larger employers to respond to job applicants they’ve interviewed, which would be a first in Canada. That’s really interesting and I’m keeping an eye out to see what happens with that.
From my perspective, employers should treat their candidates the same way they treat their customers. We’re in an age of social media and the ripple effect of unprofessional behaviour is so much more than we’ve ever seen before. Trust and transparency are also important if you’ve made a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
For recruiters or hiring managers, updating anyone who’s been interviewed within a week is not only about putting it on your to-do list – it’s about upholding basic human decency. After all, you don’t know when you may want to interact with this person again.
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