For candidates

Advice from Dan Kiernan, career’s coach at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Why does ghosting happen?

One of the reasons ghosting happens is because people are too busy to apply the personal touch to their recruitment, even if they want to. In a big organisation, the recruitment function might be overwhelmed with applications. In a small organisation, the person running the recruitment process will probably be doing it alongside their day job.

There’s also an asymmetry of emotional investment here. While tailoring a CV, producing a cover letter, preparing for an interview and the interview itself are all significant steps in the mind of candidates, they’re often just an unwelcome distraction from more important priorities for the people involved in the hiring process. 

Nobody wants to ghost candidates. But the pace of work, demands of the day job and volume of candidates often means it happens despite peoples’ best intentions. Never take it personally!

What can you do?

• Cultivate a network of people who work for the organisations and job roles you aspire to, to learn what’s important for them, what a realistic entry point is for you, and shape yourself as a candidate accordingly

• Use your network to get referred into hiring processes, rather than just applying through high-volume channels such as LinkedIn easy apply and hoping to stand out

• Sharpen up your recruitability and make sure you are producing good quality CVs and cover letters that are tailored to the vacancy, and you are well prepared for interviews

• Stay resilient, keep friends and mentors alongside you who can give you emotional support and perspective when the going gets tough

• Keep learning! Don’t just keep sending applications off and hoping for the best. Keep talking to people and make it a positive journey of discovery where you are relentlessly closing in on the right way to position yourself for the right role

How can you minimise your chances of being ghosted?

I always advise job seekers to cultivate contacts in the organisations they are targeting. This helps them understand if it’s the right organisation for them, and to learn how to position themselves as strong candidates. 

This has a side-benefit of reducing your chances of being ghosted. If you’ve been talking to the hiring manager and recruitment partner, or if they know you’ve been referred by one of their colleagues, they’re more likely to feel obliged to respond and give you feedback than if you were just another anonymous candidate. 

And if they do ghost you, you can approach them, or get a message to them through your connections, to seek a response. This can also work if you’ve received a pro-forma, but unhelpful response such as ‘there were lots of other strong candidates…’ and you want to try and get some more actionable feedback. 

Ghosted? What now?

If you’ve been ghosted after an interview, you deserve a response and you are within your rights to follow-up with an email. There’s no guarantee of success, but there are good and bad ways to do this!

The good approach

• Keep it short, less than 100 words

• Thank the interviewer or recruitment partner for the opportunity to interview, and state one thing you specifically enjoyed about it to help them mentally reconnect with you (remember, they probably interviewed at least half a dozen candidates and have trouble remembering individuals)

• Let them know you are still interested in the position and that you’re keen to hear their thoughts on your performance and if you are progressing or not

It might look something like this:

Dear Bob

Thanks for the opportunity to interview last week. I really enjoyed discussing how my experience as an Operations Analyst at MegaBank would translate to working on similar automation projects with you in the Transactions team. 

I’m still really interested in the position, and I’d be keen to get your thoughts on how I interviewed and what the next steps are.

Many thanks,

Sam

The email above works best if you’ve taken a couple of steps before sending it. They are:

• During the interview, ask what are the next steps in the process and when you are likely to hear back. This means you don’t have to lose sleep deciding when to send a follow up, just work to their stated deadline.

• No later than one day after the interview, send a thank-you email. Again, keep it short and personal. This keeps you top of mind, establishes you as a polite and thorough person, and makes it easier to send a chaser email like the one above.

The bad approach

You can probably guess this! Sending a long, rambling email blaming the interviewer for ghosting you and taking your frustrations as a job seeker out on them won’t achieve anything productive.

Assuming they haven’t been especially egregious, your goal should be to:

• Remind them you are still a candidate

• Get them to give you actionable feedback if you haven’t been successful

• Be considered for future vacancies

No matter how frustrated you feel, stay focused on those three objectives. 

What else you can do to minimise the chance of being ghosted

If you’re being ghosted at the early stage of a selection process - CV submission or 1st telephone interview - it might be because you are applying for roles that you don’t have a realistic chance of getting. 

In this scenario, the person running the initial screen, rightly or wrongly, won’t feel much obligation to get back to you. It’s also the stage in the process where there are the most candidates, and sometimes the sheer volume makes providing individual responses to unsuccessful candidates impossible. 

So how do you know if you are applying to roles where you have a realistic chance of success?

Firstly, scrutinise the job description. Does it really sound like you? Do you fulfill 80% of the requirements? Do you tick all the ‘essentials’ they ask for? Is there anything that immediately screens you out, like a language you must be able to speak? Applying for something you don’t realistically have a chance of getting wastes everybody’s time. Don’t make these kinds of applications and kid yourself you’ve been making progress!

Second, talk to folks in the organisations and job roles you aspire to. Talk to the people who make hiring decisions! What do they want? Take some time to think through how you shape up. Ask them what they think of your background and experience. Take the time to establish meaningful relationships so that you can get honest feedback and guidance. Gather the intelligence that will help you make good decisions about which roles to target.

How to remain resilient

Job seeking is tough! Rejection is baked into the process, and it often makes us question our worth, especially if we are continually ghosted. How can you stay resilient?

One thing you can do is to accept that you are going to get rejected and ghosted, and that it’s nothing personal. It’s just a function of working life being quite indifferent to our feelings sometimes. 

Another is to develop a support network of friends, fellow job seekers, professional mentors and careers professionals (if you have access to them). They can give you emotional support, provide perspective and give you practical help too. 

Finally, and this builds on some of my other posts on this topic, you should be cultivating a network of connections who do the jobs, and work in the organisations that you are targeting. By talking to these new connections, you can be constantly learning about your strengths and weaknesses as a candidate, and this sense of progression helps keep motivation levels high.