Why Are Recruiters Still Ghosting Candidates?

As a recruitment leader, one of your top priorities is to ensure that candidates have a positive experience with your company, even if they are not ultimately offered a job. With the number of unsuccessful candidates many orders of magnitude higher than any successful candidates, it's important that we create a recruitment process that has the secondary benefit of turning candidates into brand advocates.?

Unfortunately, one all-too-common occurrence that can derail this goal is "ghosting" – Recruiters simply cutting off communication with candidates without any explanation or follow-up. According to a survey of 1,500 candidates by makers of the application tracking system Greenhouse, a whopping 75% of job applicants say they’ve been ghosted by a prospective employer after an interview.

The issue of ghosting just scrapes the surface of applicants' misgivings about the interview process. This can lead to frustration, negative word-of-mouth for your company, and even a loss of potential future candidates. It literally reduces the dollar value of your candidate database.

Why do they Do it?

Before we look at ways to combat this behaviour, lets first explore WHY recruiters continue to act in this manner. Based on my own experience managing teams of recruiters, here are some common causes:

1. They are junior recruiters with little guidance or defined processes.?

Basically, they don't know any better. Recruiters who, though no fault of their own, are highly reactive and lack the support needed to build good communication and time management habits.

2. Recruiters who need help with time management.

Recruitment is an on-going job. It never stops. One of the most common issues I see when coaching recruiters is poor time management and prioritisation skills. It has a knock on effect to many aspects of the role, including candidate communication as they make candidate rejections last on their to do list, then don’t get everything done that week.

3. Cognitive dissonance.

I’ve learned from experience that a clear, honest, well structured rejection, with useful feedback is an incredibly important way to build trust and demonstrate your value as a recruiter. But it also sucks. A lot. Everyone hates rejecting candidates. So there's often a reluctance to do the rejection calls, which pushes it to the back of the list of things to do.

4. Recruiters are overworked.

Recruiters who simply have too much on and start cutting corners to move as many roles forward as they can. In this case, the corner being cut is respectful candidate communication

5. Recruiters who don’t fully understand the value of candidate experience.

Recruiters can get tunnel vision and focus only on the value of the role they are currently working on, getting stuck in a very tactical mode. They have never seen what happens when they have a network of happy candidates, nurtured over a period of years. It makes re-engagement or recruitment for hard to fill roles a million times easier. It increases response rate as you are reaching out to people who have had a positive experience, even if the outcome was not to their liking.

How do we Fix it?

So that's what I see, but I’m sure there are myriad other reasons. Now, what can a recruitment leader do to eradicate this practice from their teams? Here are some ways you can help your recruiters stop to ghosting candidates and improve the overall candidate experience.

1.Write a full? workflow for the recruitment process. Not just the stages for a candidate to pass, but a proper flow chart that details the steps all stakeholders take at each stage. Once you have done this, it's easier to then attach SLAs to certain steps and outline specific formats of communication that would be best for candidate experience. It can be used as a tool to keep all stakeholders, including your recruiters, informed of best practices and fully accountable. Here is an example of a flowchart that can help you visualise the process in much more granular detail.

2. Set clear expectations with the candidate. From the very beginning of the recruitment process, make sure that your recruiters are communicating clear expectations to candidates about the process and timeline. Let them know when they can expect to hear back from you. It keeps recruiters accountable when they have already set out when and how they will get back to the candidate.

3. Regular coaching on time management, including :

• Calendar blocking
• Deep vs shallow work
• Prioritisation

4. Better capacity planning. Have you figured out how much sourcing, screening, interview prep and admin a recruiter can do in a week when assigning roles? Or is the number of roles they are currently working dictated more by what's been put in the hiring plan? If you haven't figured this out, then your recruiters may well be overworked, cutting corners which is affecting your company’s reputation as well as the efficiency of the recruitment process. If you haven't done this, you can still set up some simple rule of thumb capacities (eg) :??

“Each individual role needs 4 hours per recruiter per week to ensure hiring success”

If you are measuring roles based on the number of hours required to make it a success, it's easier to capacity plan and ensure recruiters aren't taking on too much.

Ghosting can have negative consequences for both candidates and your company, but with the right processes and tools in place, it can be prevented. As a recruitment leader, you have the power to set the tone for your team and create a positive candidate experience that can set your company apart from the competition. By setting clear expectations, providing regular updates, training recruiters on communication skills, and using technology to streamline communication, you can ensure that candidates feel valued and respected throughout the recruitment process.