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.
Docusign (4 YEARS); Nintendo (34 months); Google (30 months); Starbucks (22 months); Netflix (18 months); Astral (13 months); Snowflake (8 months)
But I also have a short list of shortest turn-around times. I say this because some of them are truly insane:
GitHub (3 hours); Valve (4 hours, but it was a real human with actual comments); Lockheed martin (2 hours); UserTesting (1 hour); Mozilla (30 minutes); Cloudflare (-2 minutes); Matterport (0 minutes)
The -2 minutes you see there is one of the most insane things I've ever experienced: As I'm filling in the application, I get an email simultaneously thanking me for going throug the recruitment process but saying they "reviewed my application" (that hadn't even been fully submitted yet) and that I wasn't a good fit for the role.
Matterport wins the award for "well at least they're not bullshitting" -- as soon as I had submitted the application, I didn't even get an email saying thank you, just a straight up dialog box saying "You won't be considered for this position."
My worst experience was with Microsoft. Somewhere, their system is designed such that if you ever fall out of the standard process, you're "rejected" -- I have more rejection emails for a position I ended up getting (which got canned within the year, ironically enough) than any other kind of email, including daily emails with the recruiter and hiring manager. I got an email telling me "sorry no thanks" *after* I had already signed the paperwork.
I actually had a positive, although a bit weird, experience with Microsoft. First, I got a response 3 months after I applied to schedule an interview! I figured it was due to the holidays. After the interview the recruiter called me personally and gave me the bad news that I didn’t get the job, but actually gave me specific feedback on where I did well and poorly on the interview. I was shocked! I think it’s the only time I’ve ever received non generic feedback.
I’ve heard a lot of bad experiences too, so unfortunately I think I was an exception!
Surely you meant lay-offs, or firings, not this corporate-speak.
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.
Vast majority of corporate team members or leads are not allowed to say anything bad or much other than whether that person was employed or not.
Nevertheless :
1. If a person has a comprehensive long resume but cannot provide meaningful references, that poses a significant question as to why
2. A person will not typically say anything bad about their ex colleague or team members due to legal and policy constraints. Nevertheless if they stick to the "this person was employed here" and don't give even a perfunctory "oh Bob? Yeah he was a good guy. He was employed here from 2023 to 2025" even after some soft prompting, again, a data point.
Depends what you're looking for in an employee or colleague. If "history of not completely burning bridges to the ground " is relevant to you, references are "a" data point.
While I don't love providing references, given they are such a standard part of the employment process (at least here in Australia), I can't see how a company could disallow providing character references. That would be a big red flag if I discovered that after starting to work somewhere.
It was a legal liability issue. I’m told it’s pretty much de rigueur, these days.
One of the nice things, after leaving, was finally being able to give good references for former employees, for whom I really wanted to give glowing references.
That's what you give if captured as a prisoner of war.
Sorry about that, Chief (also a figure of speech, but a bit more obscure).
Many companies don't allow details, but are allowed to confirm a person was employed in a specific role. That's in many cases a sufficient to serve as a reference.
E.g. In my company we have a very strict policy for this, but are still allowed to answer "yes, Bob was employed as problem manager team lead from 2023 to 2025". Conversely as a hiring manager, I'll take that as a minimally sufficient data point in confirming resume entry.
A reference is really intended as a statement of character IMO. "They worked here" from HR, who doesn't know you, is not that.
I've only ever once been at a place where there was a policy saying "all you are allowed to say during reference checks is "yes, they worked here as [job title], from {month/year} to {month/year}". And even with that policy/restriction I still found ways to be much much more positive about the people who were genuinely great.
One great way around that kind of policy - at least if you far enough into your career for it - is to provided references for people who are also no longer at the company they're being a referee for. There are 3 or 4 people from that job I mentioned that didn't allow me to elaborate, where I've subsequently provided reference including something like "Ratica? Yeah - she is great! She lead my QA team and worked magic! You might want to warn the company she's applying to that as soon as I get a role and budget that suits her QA skills, I'll 100% be trying to headhunt her away from them."
(We still catch up for coffee every 6 or 12 months.)
WDYM by "allowed"? In my jurisdiction, a company is required to confirm (or deny, as the case may be) the dates and roles of employment when asked.
A reply along the lines of "we can not confirm $PERSON's employment as a $ROLE between $DATE1 and $DATE2" when $PERSON has salary slips for those dates is a slam-dunk winning lawsuit!
My company is so strict about it that it farms out reference checks to a third company so that nobody inside the company knows that references were checked. Seems a little extreme to me.
That’s actually really interesting. If you are actively looking that prevents anyone in the company from knowing you are looking, even if they did a reference check. That might be because of some previous lawsuits around terminating someone while getting a reference check before actually getting a new job/leaving.
References have many levels of usefulness, but the bar starts low - did this person actually perform the job / hold the role they claim in a resume.
Next, and the one I'll agree you don't get as much in modern environment, is how much did they burn bridges / how competent they were. The team boss might be allowed to say "Bob?!? He drove well but god dammit the guy never showed up on time for his shift!". Or they might not.
And the purpose of the reference is to understand your actual performance.
If you’re lazy or cruel to coworkers, they won’t want to hire you.
I primarily agree because some companies get way too haughty and try to ask for references in the job app. There's no way I'm giving contact info of my leadership to you to bother them (2 of which very carefully avoid posting their contact info on the internet) unless I'm dead sure I'm in consideration for a role. Certainly not before I can talk to a human.
Maybe you don’t think that way, but for every position I have ever posted you’ll get at least 100 applicants, and each of them take a massive amount of time to interview and get through the system to hire.
That reference is one more thing that helps. Better yet, it’s great when someone knows someone that you do, because then it’s easy to vouch for them.
Like when it comes to dating, are you going to date a random person that you know nothing about, or go out on a date that your best friend recommends who knows you?
That's literally modern dating in a nutshell. Anyone not dating in their 2nd/3rd degree circle is going to the apps.
More than anything, though: I don't really get modern references because they are some of the easiest things to be faked. And if for whatever reason they require your last manager... well, what can you do if you don't have contact? My last professional studio shut down, I don't know if I can get a response from my lead. I'm sure that makes for easy excuses as well.
You're right and most people are finding out they don't like it at all.
Anecdote: I have a few friends who have never and will never use dating apps, their dating comes from their social circle of various degrees (friends of friends etc..)
We have access to quicker and easier information than ever, but curiosity to escape from the friction these companies create is at an all-time low. They can't even be arsed to ask ChatGPT about ways to escape the apps (which, for now, it should give some helpful answers to). So I find it hard to sympathize with the current young generation on this issue. There's many broken systems I feel us older generations are responsible for fixing, but this feels like one of the points where this generation needs to help itself.
On my end, I'm not in a rush to date, have horrible specs for utilizing dating apps, and know how the sausage works for the apps. I've in fact spent the last few years disengaging from as much of big tech as feasible. So I don't see myself ever using such apps in the foreseeable future.
We’re inundated with fake applicants. References are more than mandatory now. But not enough, the whole system is broken.
Also you come off like a reactionary ahole.
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.
In 2021, I talked to a quantum startup and all indications were that the feedback was "overall extremely positive", and the final step would be talking to the CTO or CEO. For some reason HR could not get that meeting scheduled for two weeks, before telling me I didn't get the job. This seemed like a communication thing, but a few years later the whole company shut down, so I guess I dodged a bullet and/or they changed their mind about hiring.
A note could be a card or an email, but a thank-you note simply expresses gratitude for the interviewer’s time and attention.
And moreover, a followup will keep your name in their mind, for better or worse. Following up after the interview series may have been the trick to landing my “pandemic job” in May 2020. I phoned or emailed the recruiter, just to thank her, just to say hello, and you know what? She said “yeah actually we were gonna call you with a job offer” and the rest is history.
So, before you complain that someone ghosted you, please consider who’s ghosting whom!
Show up to the interview clothed, be pleasant and polite, show off your game, and leave it at that.
As an interviewer myself, I get where they're coming from. My email is not shared with applicants, so finding it requires some stalking or at least digging me up on LinkedIn. By the time they reach out, I've already put in my notes, and any final decision is out of my hands. So while I'm not going to hold it against them, it's not a particularly useful move on the candidate's part either.
Should work in a job interview setting as well.
It also has the benefit of giving me a signal. Usually if the interview went well, the interviewer will happily agree to be connected. If not, you'll see either a refusal or subtle body language indicating discomfort with the connection. And you can then form your own conclusions about the probability of getting an offer before the firm gets back to you (or often ghosts you.)
Use every signal your prospect gives you.
How can you determine if a thank you note is genuine or not if you don't read it in good faith?
One person might send a generic thank you that tells you nothing, and another might send a thoughtful message that in some specific way reiterates their interest and excitement in the job.
> ...and has no impact on anything...
Sure it does. I hired lots of people in my career and things like this helped me determine if the candidate was thoughtful, professional and interested. On multiple occasions, I hired people who didn't technically meet my ideal requirements but explained why they were interested in the role and gave me greater confidence that they were up for the challenge and worth taking a chance on.
Cynicism by default does not serve you well in any aspect of life.
You sound like someone who most would absolutely dread to work with.
And if they inform me about the rejection in person, that's great. It's not getting any feedback at all that's impolite and frustrating, because it leaves you in the dark about what the status is. Is this something you need to wait for or care about? It teaches applicants not to care.
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.
Oh, I'd love to know why this is a thing.
I did work for a mutual fund company for 18 months, one of those companies where the title Vice President simply meant nothing more than "employee" (although it was fun showing my business card to my friends and family, who were impressed by the title even though it had no meaning), but I didn't notice anything special about employee retention, probably because I was in a tech team.
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.
And the emails you sent didn't bounce after that?
This has happened to be more than once. At various points in time Microsoft has used external vendors for its recruiting/hiring pipeline (which, IMHO, is a bad idea, you want people with a vested interest in the company doing all of the recruiting and hiring...).
So yeah, working with a recruiter, wait awhile, nothing, message "oh sorry she left, but the company wants to go forward."
Ugh.
It wasn't any better when I was a hiring manager at Microsoft trying to hire people. :(
Flip side of this is I stopped giving honest feedback after I interviewed a candidate who, on paper, was a stretch for the role. They generally interviewed well but had obvious gaps in their knowledge from being self taught. At the end of the interview they asked me if I had any recommendations for what they could study up on, I emailed some suggested reading (popular tech blogs, probably something by Petzold as well) and got an angry letter back accusing me of being sexist and some other stuff.
For engineers at a large software company perhaps. But if you were a distribution company that hires one developer per year, then it is hard to maintain the network required to get good candidates
I'm pretty good at what I do and I'm not weird. All the conversations seemed to go well so I have no idea what happened.
Sure but it sucks more for some than others
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
The ones you may not have heard is the odd post on LinkedIn from a recruiter which suggests that the role is so cutthroat that you have to ghost most candidates.
The one person I know from college who became a tech recruiter was someone who was not technical (English/philosophy double major) who loved telling people how stupid and wrong they were about things. He bemoaned once to me candidates that applied for job x which required experience x and not y which the candidate had, and how dumb they were for thinking it was equivalent. (They were mostly equivalent, which I knew having had a year of both under my belt; he never asked what I was doing at work in that conversation)
You can draw your own conclusions. I have met recruiters I felt were under enormous pressure to find the best candidates. I have met some who were the scum of the earth. Mostly, unless they were on the payroll of the company they were hiring for, I have just felt they were lazy.
There's no "have". We have automated systems and they have a list of contact info. Make a whitelist then blast out a generic message if you have to. But you never "have" to ghost.
>Mostly, unless they were on the payroll of the company they were hiring for, I have just felt they were lazy.
I think that's the biggest thing AI revealed in all of this; most people simply do not care, and now they have a solution to care even less. It's just preying off most people's genuine desire to do the bare minimum, to the detriment of the people around them. It's a vicious cycle.
... that turned out to be that I'd been the runner up candidate.
Wow, thanks.
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.
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.
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.
The one used in "A public record of professional silence." specifically
I think Wellfound (f/k/a AngelList) is doing something similar.
The jobs advertised on there are real...
I'd been on the job market four months. Every day I did the rounds: Levels, Wellfound, YC/jobs, Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn.
It is what it is, as a crappy jobs market.
Wellfound? I didn't ever hear from anything from their job ads.I'm pretty certain that whatever Wellfound/AngelList was, it has become a company that just markets their resume writing services, resume review services, all sorts of other services that draw in your money somehow.
Why do I say that?
120+ applications on Wellfound since then. Crickets. Absolutely nothing.
One day I got an email, "Your profile has been viewed!". Weird, never seen an email like that from Wellfound. Indeed, "You have 1 profile view in the last 90 days".
Huh. 120+ applications, 120+ times me answering filling out Wellfound's content questions on "why you would be a good fit for this role", "tell us about x and y and z", no interviews, no contact, only ONE company has ever even viewed my profile (and for what it's worth, it's not a company that has any positions open).
Well, maybe my answers suck, you say. Maybe my resume isn't as impressive as I think it is.
But similar answers and the same resume get me fairly steady hits on every other site I mentioned, I've got to multiple final rounds, I've been explicitly told I was hirable, I was just the number two, I was "in the top three".
And to be clear, many of the companies I see on WF are advertising on other sites too.
My suspicion? WF DOES take job listings, but they also harvest them from other sites - the job is real, but there's no-one from the employer reviewing the applications to their "phantom" job at Wellfound... and meanwhile all people like me are doing is providing content for WF to harvest and train models for their real business model: AI-driven resume writing and review service and other products.
My AI video interview? Viewed... zero times.
Huh.
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.
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.
But treating people with respect and dignity -that’s something that helps the company (not necessarily the applicant).
On the other hand, it's hard to forget when I went 5 stages into an interview, then did 3 follow ups: 3 days later, a week after that, then 2 weeks after that. I got a response each time pretty quickly saying "yeah, your're still in consideration", and then nothing. Not even a generic rejection. I just cut my losses because if they can give weekly interviews for a month but need more than a month to consider me, it's not happening.
working as a Redteamer/Purpleteamer, I read this as you physically planting a (listening) bug in the HR office to get that info :D
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.
And it would prevent companies from ghosting people.
Sure it does. You send an email politely reminding them they need to write out a basic reason, and then you get the reason. If they're crazy stubborn and absolutely refuse, small claims court is probably next.
I'm pretty skeptical about the idea of making this a law, but a law could solve the problem.
> I assume you'd also make it illegal for a person to turn down a company without a reason, right?
There's a huge power imbalance here, but okay sure why not? Not many people are turning down job offers after interviewing, but if they do they can spend two minutes writing why.
> How about we make that 6 months in prison.
This strawman is a good way to indicate you didn't spend a single second thinking through the actual implications.
We need more labor laws in general, but this one should be more of a good ol' fashioned social shaming situation. make it painful to try and outright ignore people you started talking to.
It's not a strawman. It's either jail time or a fine, right? Have you thought about the implications?
Fines are all we need. But even if we ignored fines entirely, one day of jail would be plenty.
Your original comment makes it sound like there's no reasonable way to enforce the law. There is. You send reminders and warnings and escalate to a fine after a certain point.
Also I think you could figure out a big list of boilerplate answers and make everyone roughly satisfied.
But come on, surely there exist laws where reasons have to be given and they're not corrupted into doing nothing.
No, we need way more regulation on jobs in the US. This country is sacking millions in real time but reporting record profits. That isn't right nor healthy.
>I assume you'd also make it illegal for a person to turn down a company without a reason, right?
Who holds the cards in the relationship, again? It's illegal to distriminate against hirees, but a person can choose any reason to take an offer over another.
Relationship? There is no relationship. It is a business transaction. Both parties are free to leave at any point.
Yes, a much more stable job market, the ability for its leaders to pass bills, and actual resistance against the so called immigration people are all up in arms about.Turns out you can manage that without creates a domestic scare campaign.
And what have they done with it practically? Breakthroughs in sustainability and environmental technology, materials engineering, neuroscienc, and yes: even semiconductors. You can do great things for the world without sucking up to shareholders and abusing your labor.
>Both parties are free to leave at any point.
Spoken like someone who's never had to live paycheck to paycheck.
There are employed people who still need to rely on food stamps to live. No, it is not a balanced relationship, and one party keeps lobbying to make it worse.
- Instances they ghosted
- Interviewer behavior
- Scope of work and funding red flags
- Generic red flags found on Glassdoor, Team Blind etc.
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.
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.
We should also reward and encourage positive behavior by companies.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theprimeagen/comments/1tkgml2/bolt_...
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.
Presumably the Yucca plant in the corner put on a spurt of growth after your visit?
what am i supposed to gather from this?
Robert Half ghosted someone they were actively trying to find a job for? Why would they even do that? They have more clients, the recruiter loses if they don't get you somewhere.
If you got "ghosted" from a recruiting company, there was probably a good reason for it.
1. Recruiter 2. Second-hand car salesman 3. Realtor 4. Mechanics 5. Lawyers
Nvidia ghosted me some years ago after a full interview. They said they'd get back to me in two weeks. After three weeks I pinged the recruiter and she said "definitely by the end of the week".
Never heard from them. Two months later the site showed it was still pending. Some time later it finally changed to "rejected". Not even an automated email.
I stopped applying and responding to their recruiters. Some years later a manager reached out to me saying I'd be a good candidate but I need to formally apply to schedule. I applied. Crickets.
Amazon routinely ghosted me prior to scheduling the full interview. They'd do a screening round that I'd pass. Then they'd say they want to go ahead with a full interview and that I'll be called for scheduling. They never called and the recruiter never responded. Probably happened five times.
I ignore Amazon recruiters.
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.
Say for example, a company posts 10 job openings, fills 9 of them, but for the tenth, they don’t receive good candidates initially, the hiring manager has to go back to their leadership and negotiate a higher salary for the position, it goes through HR, they update the PD, they do a round of interviews with two good candidates, but then the hiring manager has a death in the family and takes leave, one candidate accepts a different position in that time, and then when presented with the offer, the second candidate backs out because they were expecting a salary at the higher end of the range in the PD despite having limited experience, then after 6 months and the team prepping for another interview round, the financial situation has changed and executive leadership freezes all hiring indefinitely and the job gets taken down.
Has the company made good in this case? If not, and this was an example of fraud, what is the mechanism for detecting it as such? Are there law enforcement officers actively scrubbing for possible violations? How much does that cost? Is it worth pulling a prosecuting attorney from a civil rights lawsuit over?
Or, if the company has made good, what compliance could a company do to prove that they haven’t committed fraud? How many man hours do we expect the company to spend on that compliance?
I don’t ask these questions just to poke holes, I think there would be a lot of benefits to the job market for both employers and employees if everyone applying to a job could be confident that the position was open. But I am skeptical that anyone has done a serious cost benefit analysis to determine if the juice is worth the squeeze.
I feel that as part of unemployment insurance all job postings should tie back to a canonical job position registered with the state with mandatory reporting of applications received,number of interviews conducted,date hired or date position withdrawn, and final dispensation: external hire, internal hire, contract hire, or position withdrawn.
If HR isn’t bullshitting everyone, they should have that data. State agencies and nonprofits already tract the information.
A way to keep recruiters honest? Is this for job xyz that has been reported filled as of Friday?
I’d certainly use it in interviews. Job x appears to posted every 10 weeks and reported a filled by internal hires. What is the problem with this job?
We aren't worried about your case. We are worried about ID theft rings who harvest information from CVs sent to fake job ads. If you hire for even a fraction of your ads and you are engaged in any sort of legitimate business (where the revenue doesn't come from the CVs or information harvested from them), we aren't worried about that.
Was a position (and tax revenue) hired for this position?
Were there no candidates qualified for this position?
Ohhhh, there were? Why didn't you hire them?
Many job ads are simply scams. And companies faking job ads can rie in a fire, or fined out of extinction.
Bull-fucking-shit
Companies claim all the time that "if you give us a 10 year abatement we will bring X jobs to the area"
Well, time to quantify that, asshole.
We pay for it. And if you can't, I want C level blood. Id be OK with 100% of all taxes, with a 30% yearly interest, payable, to prevent jailing of the whole C level board.
Wait until you get an overly smug rejection letter that the author seemed too eager to write, and took too much joy in writing.
Some people love to reject, and would never miss an opportunity.
Another angle is -
If you've been ghosted, you still have not been told no. That means there's no record of you ever getting denied for the position.
(and maybe you really haven't been)
It's kinda better IMO
I got one of those a few years ago, from a prominent tech startup CEO (non-YC).
The funniest thing is that I'm pretty sure it's a person who has some kind of recurring episodes of anonymously attacking HN infrastructure and dang.
Who then also attacked me on HN (and elsewhere, it looks like), while seeming to reference that earlier rejection, and emphasizing how much they thought I was unworthy.
> That means there's no record of you ever getting denied for the position.
Or record held in the mind, even years later, of someone who sometimes acts out maliciously.
Apparently, it's a real thing.
Whether you made it up or are confusing multiple people idk
Dang isn’t a great person, no mod is. Censorship is evil and we’re still in the dark ages.
In the future they will say in 2026 people were something like illiterate - nobody cared about solving death or aging (nobody is even working on it) and the authority of our day was way more into censoring ideas and collecting rent.
You’re basically a Savonarola fanboy
Hahah.
I forgot you existed, Neil. And don't be too hard on yourself - job market is cooked. The time to build your legacy is now.
But this is about them ghosting you. So presumably even if you ask them this they don't get back to you, otherwise they're not ghosting you.
If you get a shitty rejection letter, you should see it as a lucky escape. A rejection burns both your bridge and theirs.
If it’s especially shitty, there is nothing stopping you publishing it as a signal to others that a recruiter or employer is wasting people's time.
Especially if you just did a coding exercise that looks suspiciously like code they might put a value on.
Well, online moderation can stop you.
Glassdoor seems more about keeping things "squeaky clean" rather than "transparency" ;)
I don't think candidates (or customers for that matter) have much of a voice anymore online.
Everyone who's popular on social media who could reach huge audiences is already working for the brands.
We've entered into an era when self-defense is more important than outdated notions of politesse. In dating, for instance, it's usually advantageous for a woman to ignore (ghost) a man she wants nothing to do with rather than reject him, to avoid the argument or retaliation that may come with explicit rejection. Too many bad actors have changed the strategy. If you can't handle ghosting, maybe you don't belong in the job or dating markets.
1a) Who the other girl is looking at
1b) Wallet Size
2) Face And Body Appearance & Social Positioning
3) Dick Size
That's it playboy
Professionals act professionally. Ghosting is profoundly unprofessional. It is their job to manage the process with full information. End of story.
> If you can't handle ghosting, maybe you don't belong in the job or dating markets.
Ehhh? This is a very weird, I think silly, perhaps even insulting thing to say. I can handle it. I just think it's rude and unprofessional from a potential employer — someone that I have wasted my time and perhaps might have actually risked my job security to interview with.
Not every employer reacts well when they find out you're out there going to interviews, and they do find out.
As a freelancer, if I go to an interview it is my time they are wasting if they aren't going to handle the process professionally.
One of your last questions in any interview should be "when should I expect to hear your decision" and if you've heard nothing by then, take it as a "no."
And I actually prefer nothing to unsolicited feedback. I don't give a shit about what someone who can't even spell principal thinks about me.
Thank you for the site. I shall make good use of it as I am constantly getting ghosted :)
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.
I don't know how many times I had this conversation:
Me: Hey boss, you know how Matt quit last week and we're down a guy? We really need someone in that role. The project is going to slip if we don't replace him.
Boss: The project can't slip. My bonu... I mean, it will make the whole team look bad if it slips.
Me: Great. When are you scheduling technical interviews?
Boss: There's a company wide hiring freeze. We can't replace anyone.
Me: So... the project is going to slip then.
Boss: No, the project can't slip.
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.