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Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

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Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#51

Post by lapcat »

I once interviewed with the owner of a small tech company. I thought the interview went well, and the owner said he would get back to me the next week. But he never did. I never heard another peep from them.

Months later, I saw that the company had hired someone for the position, and the person looked to be very qualified, impressive credentials, so I had no complaints about being passed over. All they had to say was that they decided to go with another candidate, yet they didn't bother to treat me with a modicum of respect.

Fast forward to a year later, it turns out that their new employee left the company, and they had to advertise for the same position again. Guess who did NOT apply this time. Karma.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#52

Post by michaelt »

drewcoo wrote: post #44
frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

> treat candidates with respect > 95% of clowns out there you interview What's your company affiliation?

He works for Clownr, the Uber of children's party entertainment.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#53

Post by tayo42 »

So glad I wrapped up my 6mo job search lol. It was an extremely dehumanizing process. I think Ive mostly repressed my feelings since it ended, part of me wishes I wrote about it.

These companies acting like everything they do is so important and urgent that they cant be bothered to give real feedback or tell me no. I suspect part of the lack of real feedback is that most people have no clue how to interview, even these large companies.

Companies should run their own employees through the hiring process or something. This would definitely show how bad almost all tech recruiters are along with their interview process in general.

I ended my search with a couple companies I don't want to work for now. Meaningless I guess, I'm sure they still have an endless stream of candidates and these large companies past a certain point will never actually die. They make worse decisions then being rude to applicants daily and have no real repercussion.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#54

Post by skeeter2020 »

This is NOT the new normal, and we should NOT accept it. Everyone here should do their part; for example, I'm more often a hiring manager and will not tolerate ghosting anyone who gets to any interaction with engineering. IME it's lazy recruiters who are responsible for this, and they're about as big of a part of tech as an accountant, i.e. very little.

I don't understand why many people are hesitant to name and shame the individuals and companies. It doesn't matter if it was intentional or accidental the outcome is the same, and I have consistently been very vocal with my being ghosted experiences. Surprise, surprise: they're consistent on a company-basis and highly corelated to other shitty experiences, both before and during employment.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#55

Post by FredPret »

drewcoo wrote: post #44
frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

> treat candidates with respect > 95% of clowns out there you interview What's your company affiliation?

You can and should treat someone with respect, even if your expectation is that there's a 95% chance they will turn out to be a clown.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#56

Post by [deleted] »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #38
CM30 wrote: post #19

The new normal? This has been the case for years for almost all job applications. Maybe if you're lucky and the company has put you through like 4 rounds of interviews you might get feedback, but the general rule seems to be that useful feedback for an interview is the exception rather than the norm. And heck, even that isn't something you can rely on. I've had a fair few interviews get about 80% of the way through t…

When I was a pilot just starting out, in 2007 I’d see a human response maybe 1/100 applications. It’s pretty gross out there for people other than tech employees. What’s pretty funny is now that I’m changing into this field it seems to be adjusting to treat people like crap. So, I guess you’re welcome guys and gals - it’s my fault.

[deleted]

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#57

Post by philwelch »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #49
frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

You'd think if professional sports could figure out how important this is we could too, but for some reason there's a tendency to give it lip service then put absolutely no effort into doing a good job. Scouting and screenings are done by people that companies treat like dirt, we incentivize them only for body count, interviews are done by low experience employees and employees who don't even like interviewing. We do…

In professional sports you are selecting one of the few hundred or thousand best people in the world. Its not even remotely the same impact.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#58

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

frognumber wrote: post #20

One of my top lessons I've learned doing successful startups: 1. Recruiting is the #1 job of any startup CEO, and the #1 determiner of corporate success. 2. Up market, down market, side market, it doesn't matter: You will get better employees if you treat candidates with respect and you will be more competitive. 3. It's a lot of work for the 95% of clowns out there you interview, and there's a push towards automated…

This is so true it hurts. If you get burnt once with hiring, it’s something you’ll never forget but could destroy the startup/small business in the process

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#59

Post by atrettel »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #40

100% in the "nobody remembers what you did, everyone remembers how you made them feel" camp. An automated no is such a no-brainer versus the reputational risk of being seen as a bad or callous employer. And people have looooong memories / impressions created in this space. I honestly have no idea if General Electric is a good or bad employer, but the Jack Welch era still lingers in my mind.

I completely agree with this. I have only been ghosted after the interview stage twice but both times left bad feelings in my mind. I did try to contact people but did not receive a response obviously. I never applied to any jobs at those organizations again. I think many companies and other organizations need to realize that even an automated denial is much better than nothing.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#60

Post by skeeter2020 »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #38
CM30 wrote: post #19

The new normal? This has been the case for years for almost all job applications. Maybe if you're lucky and the company has put you through like 4 rounds of interviews you might get feedback, but the general rule seems to be that useful feedback for an interview is the exception rather than the norm. And heck, even that isn't something you can rely on. I've had a fair few interviews get about 80% of the way through t…

When I was a pilot just starting out, in 2007 I’d see a human response maybe 1/100 applications. It’s pretty gross out there for people other than tech employees. What’s pretty funny is now that I’m changing into this field it seems to be adjusting to treat people like crap. So, I guess you’re welcome guys and gals - it’s my fault.

This isn't really about applications though - not getting a human response at the first step has always been common, especially with electronic postings. It's as easy to apply as post, so you do get a lot of spam applicants.

If you've had human contact and then radio silenc - IMO that's inexcusable.

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