How to avoid “Candidate Ghosting”

What is “candidate ghosting”?

• The term “ghosting” has its origin in the dating world, where it describes a person who suddenly breaks off contact without an explanation.
• Today, we observe that ghosting has also become more popular in the labor market. According to a survey of Robert Half, 39% of hiring managers in the US confirmed that “candidate ghosting” strongly increased over the last two years.

The consequences of “candidate ghosting” can be very frustrating. The position is still open, and you have to start over without knowing why the former candidate dropped out from the process. Nevertheless, understanding why a candidate left the hiring process is a chance to  uncover potential weaknesses in your recruitment process.

What can you do to avoid “candidate ghosting”?

Today, candidates often have various choices and are less afraid to leave bad impressions. This situation also contributes to more cases of “candidate ghosting”. Nevertheless, there are ways to reduce “candidate ghosting” as much as possible:

1. Communicate regularly with applicants

At times, there may be little or no personal communication during the hiring process. Employers should ask themselves: Have we responded and provided an update to candidates frequently? So for candidates, it might be frustrating to wait a long time without being informed when the process is extended.

2. Provide enough information

It is also possible that the information revealed by the employer has not been enough to attract the applicant. For companies, it is beneficial to provide applicants with enough relevant information to convince them that your company is their employer of choice. Hand in hand with providing enough information, effective employer branding measures should be used. For example, stories can be told about the development of team colleagues working for the company. 

3. Ask for feedback during the hiring process

It can be beneficial to ask candidates for feedback after they completed a certain level of the hiring process. Thereby, companies can track successfully why candidates withdrew from the process and improve their hiring experience iteratively.

Our recommendations

• Set up realistic expectations when and where you will communicate every update and next steps of the hiring process. For example, you can prepare email templates that will be sent regularly to show the applicant that s/he is still present to you.
• The messages you send to your candidates should encourage a response. Therefore, make sure your messages are friendly, persuasive, specific and provide details about the next steps.