Anecdotal, I know, but I was ghosted by Google back in 2004-2005 or thereabouts. Back and forth with a recruiter, who promised me that she would book phone screens. Then heard nothing. Pinged her repeatedly. Nothing.

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.

I had a Meta recruiter talking to me a while back (maybe 5 years) and she ghosted me. Found her obituary online a couple weeks later. Recently, had another Meta recruiter ghost me but that’s because of the Meta layoff round robin. Probably for the better since FRL has more or less been gutted due to AI focus.

Ghosted by Apple here. Devops or SRE job for services teams if I'm remembering right. Did a months worth of rounds. Was told the offer letter would be coming within the next week. Turned down other companies on the gamble that it was actually coming. Never came. Pinged recruiter and finally after a month was told they stopped hiring and would reach back out in a few months when it started back. Never happened. That was 3 years ago. It was character building to say the least.

Earlier this year I was interviewing at Figma. My interview was at 3:00.

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.

I've never actually been ghosted but in my early 20s, I had applied to a company doing something to do with processing geographic data from for NASA as a contractor. It sounded really cool and I heard about it from a guy who worked there who was the brother of an acquaintance and reached out to me to ask if I was interested. We went out to lunch, talked it over, and then followed up by email, and he put me in touch with their HR department. They asked my availability over the next couple weeks for an interview and I gave it to them, and they never responded. I followed up and got nothing. Then about a month later, they emailed me apologizing and explaining that they had just been so busy. I wrote back and again got nothing in return. This happened over and over for about 6 months. They'd email apologizing, I'd respond, and they'd ignore me. Then there was another six month pause before I got one last big apology and request for availability which I never responded to. In hindsight, I probably should have politely told them I was no longer interested after the first gap but I was young and really wanted to say I did work for NASA.

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.

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 that she was posting daily.

Full story: https://idiallo.com/blog/dont-ghost-me

There were two companies posting on hn some time ago that I suspect was just gathering training data (asking for a code challenge or to answer 2 questions about 60 seconds long answering some bs). I feel like we should denounce those as well. Posting jobs that don't actually exists. Specially those that post month after month.

Based on the strange emoji use in place of some buttons, I'm guessing this is vibe coded- and a lot of this is really nice looking front end - great color, topography, border styles... Would be interested to know how much intervention there was or if this is where we are

Last year I interviewed with Epic Games and I didn't get the job but they arranged a meeting to let me down easily, encourage me to apply for other positions. I really appreciated that!

Sadly, not a new phenomenon. It does seem to have gotten a lot worse.

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.

Those are quite small sample sizes. I assume that this is supposed to grow?

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.

This should include the hiring manager, recruiter or other point of contact. Particularly at large companies. That aligns individual incentives with the goal of reducing this behavior.

https://ghostjobs.net/

https://ghostjobs.io/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43853401)

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 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.

I very much advocate for this, but only if you're past the HR/recruiter screen. Onsites, coding screen, second round, etc.

After several interviews with a big telecommunications company, I got a verbal job offer from the recruiter over the phone. I accepted. They said the formal job offer would be coming in the next week or so.

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.

"1 of 1 would interview with them again" is too small a sample. This site needs more data before they post recommendations.

As long as there has been recruiters… there has been ghosting.

A few years ago I was considering setting up something like this for B2B startups that get stuffed around / dragged along / ghosted by corporates to try and change behaviour. Including positive reviews…

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_...

An API for reporting would be nice. Besides that: hope this page came to stay. It's nicely done. Couple of years ago there was a very similar project here on hn, which came to a halt after only a couple of days it got posted

Call the recruiters out by name.

I think that there should be a feature of "they turned me down/declined" and have an option for whether or not they gave you useful feedback.

We should also reward and encourage positive behavior by companies.

I've been meaning to write something up about this myself but, suffice it to say, I've been asking myself this question a lot lately.

lol "robert half: google"

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.

I was once ghosted mid interview day. They left me in conference room and completely forgot. I was going to walk out after 30 minutes but I just wanted to see how long I could stay there. It took them five hours. And this was in a “highly secure” building so not sure how they invite someone to interview and let them just hangout inside the building for five hours.

This would probably be more effective (and controversial) if the reports included the linkedin profiles of the recruiters/employees involved in the ghosting.

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.

I think companies that don’t even acknowledge your application also need to be in this list. Most companies ghost at the application level.

the 4-year Docusign one raises the question of whether they were ghosting or just running the world's slowest background check

I know more than a few people looking for a job right now and this is their number 1 complaint.

this is cool but the leaderboard is just going to converge on large companies unless it's normalized somehow

In my personal experience, order of dodginess :)

1. Recruiter 2. Second-hand car salesman 3. Realtor 4. Mechanics 5. Lawyers

As a hiring manager I take candidate experience seriously because I know it’s easy to get wrong and leave people with a really bad taste in their mouth at a sensitive time.

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.

Do they distinguish ghosting after an interview vs before?

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.

wonder if this would count as sousveillance [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance]

for a moment i thought this was a commentary about my relationships

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 :)

Cease and desist letters from lawyers piling in 3 .. 2 ... 1 ... They should've done it in a form of .onion service.

The real answer is that many jobbads are fraudulent.

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.

Is ghosting really such a big deal?

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

Of course BJAK would be on there. Any company that quotes prices in anything other than USD isn't a company I would trust

this is awesome and a scoreboard you might not want to win for your company xD

> Provide a factual account without names,

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.

Nice name and shame

“Yes”

this is pointless because different teams/different recruiters within the same company operate differently (surprise surprise humans are different).

We need this for employees too. There are many who don’t act ethically when interviewing for a job.

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.