Discouraging Job Candidates Ghosting in Your Workplace

In the job market, the term ghosting may refer to when the candidate or even new hire abruptly ceases all communication with a recruiter or employer.

Job candidate ghosting is a discouraging waste of the time and effort spent recruiting, scheduling, onboarding, and training. Unfortunately, many hiring management professionals have experienced it. Here’s why ghosting occurs and some tips to prevent it.

Why Job Candidate Ghosting Happens

Job candidates ghosting has been on the rise across the U.S. workforce recently, but why? One major cause is the country’s rapidly fluctuating, mostly low, unemployment rate.

Limited labor supply has shifted the employer/employee power dynamic, emboldening job candidates and employees to go AWOL if they encounter more lucrative job offers. It is most likely to occur with younger candidates with limited work experience and little exposure to the reputational consequences of improperly handling employment issues.

Addressing the Real Cause

For businesses to discourage this trend, they must first and foremost admit their allowance of this dynamic. Unfortunately, many major companies have been guilty of ghosting their candidates since the Great Recession of 2008/2009, when the employment market chose to favor employers.

By failing to maintain honorable standards and practices when labor was suffering, many employers forfeited workers’ loyalty with widespread layoffs during the recession and, in turn, damaged their credibility. Now, many companies with poor employee/candidate engagement practices are enduring the consequences.

How to Prevent Job Candidates Ghosting

There are some steps a hiring organization can take to improve and encourage goodwill among workers and candidates. For example, you can engage in rigorous employment branding to maintain high standards for candidate experience: This is a strategy we’ve been recommending for years—since before ghosting became the problem it is today.

Next, you can focus on transparency in the process, from sourcing through onboarding and training. Since so many employment opportunities are available, candidates exhibit a very low tolerance for opaque processes or roles different from the job description.

You can also emphasize process efficiency in all of your interactions with candidates and workers. Find ways to streamline the onboarding process, identify communication gaps, and make the entire process painless and effective for the worker; this will engender a greater sense of loyalty to your brand among workers, and that reputation can be a powerful tool for attracting talent.

Ghosting is rude and unprofessional. Prepare your operations to minimize this activity, and you’ll be more effective overall in your workforce pursuits.

For All Staffing Concerns, Turn to nextSource 

That’s about all of our advice on job candidates ghosting for today’s reading. If you’re interested in learning more, we have plenty of other free, informative resources like this for employers and employees in our insights section.

If your business needs professional, customized staff management solutions or upgraded practices in contracting, hiring, interviewing, payroll, and scheduling—you can connect with our experts at nextSource today! We’ll help you reach these goals and keep your employee management practices up to date with the fast-paced, ever-changing workforce and business world.