Stop ghosting your interviews!

Ghosting isn’t just something that happens in personal relationships or online. It’s also a far-too-common phenomenon in the employment and recruitment process.

What do I mean by “ghosting” in terms of recruitment? Here are a few examples:

• Failing to answer the phone for a scheduled call or not showing up to a meeting with the employer or recruiter without communicating ahead of time.
• Failing to respond to communications throughout the interview process.
• Disappearing or failing to respond after you’ve secured the job offer.
• Accepting the job offer and then not showing up.

Ghosting hurts you, the candidate, most of all.

Let’s set aside the fact that ghosting is disrespectful, demonstrates bad judgment, wastes everyone’s time, can make it more difficult to find employment, is incredibly frustrating to deal with, etc.

Instead of focusing on the impacts of ghosting on the recruiter and/or employer, let’s focus on the ways that ghosting hurts you, the candidate.

Ghosting might throw a wrench in someone’s busy day or force an employer to start its candidate search over again, which can be expensive. But, at the end of the day, the person who will bear the brunt of the damage won’t be the recruiter or the employer; it will be you.

Ghosting your interview flushes your investment down the toilet.

Whether you found the job through a recruiter or on your own, when you’ve gotten to the interview process, it means that you’ve already invested at least some of your time into it.

You’ve searched for the right recruiter to work with or you found the job posting on your own. You’ve updated and sent out your resume, and made sure it got to the right people. You’ve followed up with those people to ensure that your resume got noticed.

You may have spent hours or just a few minutes — either way, you’ve invested your time into the process. When you ghost your recruiter or a potential employer, you’re not just wasting their time. You’re wasting your own time.

Ghosting severs connections and kills opportunities.

Not only is ghosting a waste of your own time; it closes the door to other potential opportunities that may be available to you by meeting or working with the recruiter or the employer.

The truth is that a lot of success in life happens by those who were in the right place at the right time, or who knew the right people. Of course, skill and hard work are undeniably important aspects of success as well, but they matter very little without first having an opportunity.

You never know when opportunities could arise or where they might come from. And, the best thing you can do for your career is to keep the door open to as many opportunities as possible.

Maybe you got another offer that you’re more excited about, and are no longer interested in meeting with the recruiter or hiring manager. Don’t chicken out by ghosting them.

Be professional, and follow through on your commitments. Going to an interview doesn’t mean committing to the job, and you may be surprised by what you find when you follow through.

You may find that you have a connection with the hiring manager or recruiter that could open the door to other opportunities, or that there’s another position opening in the future that is exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Of course, the opposite is also true. You may go, and find that you still don’t want the job. Guess what? That’s OK, too.

You never know what will happen or where opportunities could come from. If you ghost your interview or job offer, you’ll be closing the door to those opportunities for good.

On the other hand, if you act like a professional and are open and honest about your level of interest in the position, you’ll keep that door open to expand your career.

For more tips and advice from Colorado’s go-to headhunter and recruiting firm, check out the Riderflex blog and subscribe to our podcasts.