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Did they ghost you?

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Re: Did they ghost you?

#171

Post by RajT88 »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #108
firefoxd wrote: post #56

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…

Recruiters are never your friend. Ever.

I have had many poor experiences with recruiters. You have heard all the same stories I have to tell.

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.

Re: Did they ghost you?

#172

Post by gabeio »

reaperducer wrote: post #157
NikolaNovak wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? 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 da…

In my company we have a very strict policy for this 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.

> a third company so that nobody inside the company knows that references were checked

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.

Re: Did they ghost you?

#173

Post by sumanthvepa »

decimalenough wrote: post #50
kulahan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being a recruiter, seeing someone genuinely interested in the position (or at least willing to put in the effort to make it seem that way), and getting annoyed rather than hyped. You in the wrong line of work, brother.

I presume the previous poster is one of many interviewers, not the recruiter. 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 particu…

Not quite in job interviews, but when I'm selling to a client, I just ask in the interview if it is okay, if I connect with them on LinkedIn. Some say yes. Others say no.

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.

Re: Did they ghost you?

#174

Post by SilentM68 »

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 :)

Re: Did they ghost you?

#175

Post by unsnap_biceps »

indrora wrote: post #143
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

I have a leaderboard of some of the longest turn-around times from initial contact to rejection. Thus far the winners (if you can call them that) have been: 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…

I had the same experience with Cloudflare, It's been awhile, but I recall I uploaded my resume as one of the first steps and while I was filling out the later steps (copying the resume contents into fields) I got the same rejection error on trying to move to the next step. I presumed it was looking for specific resume keywords.

Re: Did they ghost you?

#176

Post by neya »

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_...

Re: Did they ghost you?

#177

Post by laughing_man »

Companies at which I worked sometimes went silent because there was no decision. It's hard to send an email that says something like "Hey, I know it's been three months, but I can't get my boss off the stick to make a decision here."

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.

Re: Did they ghost you?

#178

Post by orphereus »

prodmod wrote: post #53
orphereus wrote: post #5

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…

Really no offense, but in all truth, I would probably skip an application with simple misspellings. Anecdotal is what you're looking for.

This comment really has no purpose other than being petulent.

Re: Did they ghost you?

#180

Post by skypivot »

bigiain wrote: post #160
NikolaNovak wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? 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 da…

It's always worth considering whether you have people who will give you genuine glowing references. 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…

Congratulations, you cost her the job because the company didn't want to deal with an increased risk of her being poached. She's suing, by the way.
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