back
221 comments
Anecdotal, I know, but I was ghosted by Google back in 2004-2005 or thereabouts. Back and forth with a recruiter, who promised me that she would book phone screens. Then heard nothing. Pinged her repeatedly. Nothing.

A few years later got another Google recruiter after me. Ended up getting hired in 2008.

Looked up the previous recruiter. Her last day at the company was the day she promised she would book phone screens, or the day after (can't remember exactly, this is quite a few years ago). I can only assume she was suddenly let go.

Ever since, I keep wondering how many ghostings happen because the person holding the strings disappears for some reason, and there's a lack of system to follow up on that.

A few years ago I was "between roles" and applied for a developer position at Roku. For a short time they seemed moderately interested, and I exchanged a few emails with a senior in-house recruiter. And then they went completely quiet - no response to my follow-up emails. So I just put it behine me and got on with looking for a job.

Just over a year later I received an email from another in-house recruiter at Roku, thanking me for my application but regretting that they wouldn't be going forward with it (or some such corporate-speak). Which was kind of surprising.

I did a few searches and discovered that the date they went quiet roughly coincided with a sizeable round of redundancies. I also looked up the new recruiter and found that they were new to the company and quite junior. So, presumably, their first task had been to clear-up the backlog. That year was by far the longest I've ever waited for a response to a job application.

Had this happen at the beginning of the pandemic. Did well on the full loop. The Friday of that week the recruiter reaches out to get references. A week goes by, I hear nothing. I contact one of my references, they heard nothing.

A month later another recruiter from the company reaches out and explains the recruiter I was talking to was let go that day. Told me in the system that I was approved to hire, but unfortunately along with the layoff came a 6 month hiring freeze for engineering.

I interviewed at Linkedin in 2020 or so - interview went great, team fit was great, all the interviews were great, the recruiter told me he was going to prepare an offer... then I never heard from them again.

4 years later, a recruiter messaged me saying that they found my name as a potential candidate and knew that I declined the offer, back in 2020, so they wanted to know if I wanted to re-interview. I told the recruiter I never rejected anything. She looked into it and apparently it was your exact same situation: recruiter left that day, a bunch of candidates got marked as "declined" shortly after.

To be fair if employees are being fired that abruptly with so little consideration to operational continuity it might be a worse red flag than a recruiter ghosting you.
This happened at my old company. My manager went away for a holiday and never came back. We never found out why, but it was a Finance company so people suddenly not coming in the next day was a thing.

This completely broke the interview pipeline, and in the disorder no one realised. The company got some bad reviews in that period for just stopping a bunch of processes mid-way.

I once had an interview loop where after the final round I didn't hear back from the recruiter point-of-contact for awhile. After 1.5 weeks, I sent an email following up: the recruiter replied "I was on vacation dammit, btw you didn't get the job."
I am building an interviewing and hiring platform (https://coderba.se/) but I've also hired/interviewed and shaped hiring processes at several companies before. It's ridiculous how easy it is to account for such trivial edge cases, yet most people just... dont. A big part of it is that, in spite of frequent chest beating about how "hiring is [one of] the most important thing[s] we do", the actual process is half-assed at best in most places, an effect particularly amplified by the current massive oversupply of talent.
I had a similar experience. In my case, they gave me a few dates to fly out and do some sort of final boss talent show interview. Then… nothing.

I got the sense it was some internal political drama but maybe the recruiter disappeared… that honestly didn’t occur to me, and up until that point it was a pretty awesome and interesting process.

I’m on google’s list of special people who qualify for an interview whenever I’m ready, no screen required. I think most “big tech” employees are. I get an email every 6 months or so from a new recruiter letting me know they took over from the previous one, who’s no longer with the company.
I had a Meta recruiter talking to me a while back (maybe 5 years) and she ghosted me. Found her obituary online a couple weeks later. Recently, had another Meta recruiter ghost me but that’s because of the Meta layoff round robin. Probably for the better since FRL has more or less been gutted due to AI focus.
Ghosted by Apple here. Devops or SRE job for services teams if I'm remembering right. Did a months worth of rounds. Was told the offer letter would be coming within the next week. Turned down other companies on the gamble that it was actually coming. Never came. Pinged recruiter and finally after a month was told they stopped hiring and would reach back out in a few months when it started back. Never happened. That was 3 years ago. It was character building to say the least.
During the pandemic, my Amazon recruiter became sort of a friend. We communicated maybe over a period of a month, I joined multiple Amazon online panels and got to meet some employees. Everything was going well until it stopped abruptly.

Covid was going full force, so I assumed something happened to her, especially since she was older. Emails and text went unanswered. I was worried... Until I checked LinkedIn and saw that she was posting daily.

Full story: https://idiallo.com/blog/dont-ghost-me

I've never actually been ghosted but in my early 20s, I had applied to a company doing something to do with processing geographic data from for NASA as a contractor. It sounded really cool and I heard about it from a guy who worked there who was the brother of an acquaintance and reached out to me to ask if I was interested. We went out to lunch, talked it over, and then followed up by email, and he put me in touch with their HR department. They asked my availability over the next couple weeks for an interview and I gave it to them, and they never responded. I followed up and got nothing. Then about a month later, they emailed me apologizing and explaining that they had just been so busy. I wrote back and again got nothing in return. This happened over and over for about 6 months. They'd email apologizing, I'd respond, and they'd ignore me. Then there was another six month pause before I got one last big apology and request for availability which I never responded to. In hindsight, I probably should have politely told them I was no longer interested after the first gap but I was young and really wanted to say I did work for NASA.

Anyway, I never attributed any kind of malice to it, just poor management and poor candidate handling. I suspect that's often the case, especially with smaller start ups with likely overwhelmed employees wearing many hats. If anything, it's good signal that it's maybe not a great place to work. Imagine how they treat the people who work there if that's how they treat candidates.

Earlier this year I was interviewing at Figma. My interview was at 3:00.

I signed the required NDA.

At 3:00:55 I received an email saying thanks for your time but you're not being considered anymore.

I emailed the recruiter and heard nothing back.

---

Jerred,

Thank you for your interest in Figma! We know that applying for jobs takes time, and we appreciate your interest in joining our team. After reviewing your application for Software Engineer, Full Stack, we've decided not to move forward with your candidacy at this time.

Your resume is in our system for future opportunities, and we hope you'll keep an eye on our careers page. Best of luck with your job search!

Best, Figma Recruiting

---

Jerred Shepherd's interview with Figma!

M_____ F_____ canceled this event.

Based on the strange emoji use in place of some buttons, I'm guessing this is vibe coded- and a lot of this is really nice looking front end - great color, topography, border styles... Would be interested to know how much intervention there was or if this is where we are
There were two companies posting on hn some time ago that I suspect was just gathering training data (asking for a code challenge or to answer 2 questions about 60 seconds long answering some bs). I feel like we should denounce those as well. Posting jobs that don't actually exists. Specially those that post month after month.
I was once ghosted mid interview day. They left me in conference room and completely forgot. I was going to walk out after 30 minutes but I just wanted to see how long I could stay there. It took them five hours. And this was in a “highly secure” building so not sure how they invite someone to interview and let them just hangout inside the building for five hours.
Last year I interviewed with Epic Games and I didn't get the job but they arranged a meeting to let me down easily, encourage me to apply for other positions. I really appreciated that!
Sadly, not a new phenomenon. It does seem to have gotten a lot worse.

One time, way back in ~2012, I did an all-day onsite interview with several people, lunch with the team, and everything. A full 8-hour gauntlet, and they ghosted me after it.

Ghosting is rude. Companies should at least politely reject you.

Chances are if they ghosted you, you didn't do as well as you think. You nailed a tech interview, but you only nailed part 1 of 3 and the interviewer didn't have the heart to tell you there was 2 other questions.

It happens to everyone. We've all done these interviews with nice candidates that just aren't right for that job. Don't worry! You'll find the job that works for you.

Those are quite small sample sizes. I assume that this is supposed to grow?

In my experience, I was usually ghosted (sometimes, rather brutally). In a couple of instances, I was able to get the companies to confirm that I was toast, but only after I bugged them.

This should include the hiring manager, recruiter or other point of contact. Particularly at large companies. That aligns individual incentives with the goal of reducing this behavior.
My anegdotal experience in EU is that ghosting AFTER the company responds to your application is very, very rare.

I would always get the usual "Unfortunately, we have decided..." charades. At least no ghosting.

I can think of only one situation, and it was kinda peculiar in its own right (they called me 8 months after my application because they were in a jam and I said I won't be able to start in such a short notice they wanted, and they warned me in advance they would ghost me because the HR was I presume in a crunch).

As for the ghostings BEFORE they even respond to the job application, I'd say that it is around 40% of job applications that I never get a response after "We have received your job application yada yada yada".

Again, this is just my anegdotal experience. Maybe my experience in EU job market is a rarity.

I very much advocate for this, but only if you're past the HR/recruiter screen. Onsites, coding screen, second round, etc.
> Provide a factual account without names,

What that even means? What’s a “factual account”?! The story/events? The account you used to apply? Or what

That being said, ghosting and generic rejections are alike, usually when you don’t hear from a company within a week (or within the time you ask them when you would hear back), you know they went with someone else, going back at you after that time is a major redflag, either they are chaotic, or the other candidate ditched them in the negotiations because they don’t know how to negotiate and are looking for bargain not a skillsets.

Also, I think instead of the company only, the recruiter/HR name should be there plus the company, public shaming is needed for those individuals, maybe other recruiters are good on following up, which is not fair for the good ones while the bad ones are hidden.

After several interviews with a big telecommunications company, I got a verbal job offer from the recruiter over the phone. I accepted. They said the formal job offer would be coming in the next week or so.

I never received the formal job offer. I called after a month and was told not to worry, it was still happening. I think I called again after 3 months, but stopped thinking about it after that.

Eventually I went to work for an internet company (which also delayed the formal job offer for several months. Deja Vu! But only because the background checking firm was having trouble completing the background check).

This was in the mid-aughts.

The real answer is that many jobbads are fraudulent.

And fraudulent job ads should be handled the same way a fraudulent advertisement for a good is handled: you either make good and prove hiring, or you're tried for felony fraud.

For Companies Looking to Scale Ghostying Pipelines (Satire) https://staticfile-25978.wasmer.app/
I got email offer from Snowflake with numbers after a full round of office interviews. They first matched me with a team and then themselves decided to pivot me to another team. I wasn't feeling fully interested in second team's work; the manager told me it's completely OK to explore with 1-2 hiring managers before accepting. I asked the recruiter to help connect. The next email was "Thank you for your time!" and ghosting on all follow ups.
"1 of 1 would interview with them again" is too small a sample. This site needs more data before they post recommendations.
Of course BJAK would be on there. Any company that quotes prices in anything other than USD isn't a company I would trust
Cease and desist letters from lawyers piling in 3 .. 2 ... 1 ... They should've done it in a form of .onion service.
I used to have an active avoid list of companies based on:

  - Instances they ghosted
  - Interviewer behavior
  - Scope of work and funding red flags
  - Generic red flags found on Glassdoor, Team Blind etc.
Now I just remember it without needing that list
In my personal experience, order of dodginess :)

1. Recruiter 2. Second-hand car salesman 3. Realtor 4. Mechanics 5. Lawyers

Most company managers don't care about letting the rejected candidates know what their fate is. They just want to find the right candidate and make their daily hiring quota.

Thank you for the site. I shall make good use of it as I am constantly getting ghosted :)

An API for reporting would be nice. Besides that: hope this page came to stay. It's nicely done. Couple of years ago there was a very similar project here on hn, which came to a halt after only a couple of days it got posted
As a hiring manager I take candidate experience seriously because I know it’s easy to get wrong and leave people with a really bad taste in their mouth at a sensitive time.

As a candidate, though, I have learned not to take offense to being ghosted or the million other indignities that one is subjected to in a modern interview pipeline. It’s just a part of the modern economy, and far from the worst one. As terrible as it is, it’s not a hill worth dying on, suck it up and just move on with your search.

A few years ago I was considering setting up something like this for B2B startups that get stuffed around / dragged along / ghosted by corporates to try and change behaviour. Including positive reviews…
I think that there should be a feature of "they turned me down/declined" and have an option for whether or not they gave you useful feedback.

We should also reward and encourage positive behavior by companies.

As long as there has been recruiters… there has been ghosting.
This would probably be more effective (and controversial) if the reports included the linkedin profiles of the recruiters/employees involved in the ghosting.

I can imagine a lot of situations where it'd be unfair, so maybe giving them an opportunity to explain their side before it goes up might be important... but also fuck you if you ghost someone trying to find a job.

I've been meaning to write something up about this myself but, suffice it to say, I've been asking myself this question a lot lately.
my friend had been waiting for offer after passing final interview, but recruiter suddenly went silent. she responded nearly 2 years after saying that she had been on parental leave (yeah it's this long in our country), and he would have to start whole process again. of course he moved on and never applied to this company again
I think companies that don’t even acknowledge your application also need to be in this list. Most companies ghost at the application level.
Likely, every company ghosts, either occasionally or often. So really this is kind of a 100% hit rate problem.
The real person that should be held responsible for ghosting is the HR. They represent the company. It takes very little effort to even send an automated email intimating the rejection and better yet if possible, a one liner reason - even from a drop down so as to help the candidate improve themselves. Instead, all the fucking HR does all day long is make cringe videos on TikTok these days and create imaginary problems that don't exist to justify their existence to management.

https://www.reddit.com/r/theprimeagen/comments/1tkgml2/bolt_...