from Hacker News

Ask HN: What’s with all the job applicants who ghost the company

by taklimakan on 4/24/21, 4:39 PM with 10 comments

• by totalZero on 4/24/21, 4:52 PM

  I am not a hiring manager but I have some thoughts that may or may not be useful.

  After a few rounds of applying to jobs, people start to simply shotgun out resumes and filter the job opportunity later. I doubt there's any conscious malice involved. This is a tough time for some people and those applicants probably stopped being selective after early failures. Others who are looking for lateral moves may just be testing the waters. What's the delay between collection of applications and first contact?

  > Not a single applicant has ever replied thereafter. Some have replied to schedule a first meeting and simply didn’t show up.

  Not sure how to parse this. It sounds like some of them are replying.

  > is this the new normal in recruitment? Is it a collective revenge against companies that ghost candidates?

  I think what you are describing is the old normal. The shoe is simply on the other foot. "It's just business" has become almost a mantra for technocrats.

• by iwangulenko on 4/24/21, 6:21 PM

  Technical recruiter here.

  Did you check DMRAC and all the other email settings?

  Maybe your emails land in spam.

  Or even quicker and better: If you have their resume, just call the (best) candidates.

  If they were unsure whether to work for you, you might turn them around even. On the phone you can give them reasons why they should work for you and dissolve misunderstandings that they might have gotten via your website.

  If you are hiring, the biggest ROI skill you need to acquire is LEARN TO LOVE THE PHONE.

• by effingwewt on 4/24/21, 8:45 PM

  From a perspective from the other side- job seekers are more and more finding that with WFH becoming more popular, their choices are increasing as well. However, that means more applications put in, more tweaks to resume/CV. Employers on the other hand seem to be asking more and more of the job seekers.

  What I'm seeing is people dropping the companies with big asks in order to out out more applications. They can spend hours/days on back and forth with one company or spend that time applying to 20 other places.

  Shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.

• by imagineerschool on 4/24/21, 4:55 PM

  What are the stats about the whole funnel? Where are applicants coming from? How long does it take for a company to respond to applicants?

  And, this isn't really a stats question: Are these meaningful skilled jobs, or are they jobs that could be done by anyone with a pulse?

  To try to understand, I suggest you try putting yourself in an applicant's shoes. Try applying to these companies yourself and keep a journal of how the interactions unfold. You'll learn something!

• by ksaj on 4/24/21, 7:07 PM

  To be fair, if that is their ethic, you probably don't want to hire them anyway. It seems reasonable to expect that if you ghost a company or recruiter, they are not likely to welcome you with open arms when you find yourself on the job hunt again.

• by ThrowawayR2 on 4/24/21, 6:41 PM

  Perhaps they're collecting unemployment insurance? My understanding is that submitting a number of job applications per week is required to collect but no follow-up with the potential employer beyond submitting the application is required.

• by imagineerschool on 4/26/21, 12:16 PM

  You created an ask HN and only responded to 2 of 5 answers.

  It's you.