Ghosting Candidates, Marathon Interviews and Zero Feedback: The Modern Recruitment Experience

There was a time, not so long ago, when you could expect a polite acknowledgement of a job application, an explanation of the process and steps involved, and feedback if you weren’t successful. These days, ghosting candidates seems to be the norm. Hiring managers will claim that they are inundated with responses, so it’s just not possible to acknowledge every application, or inform people when they have been unsuccessful. They’ll also claim that overly aggressive legal requirements and an increasingly litigious environment means it’s no longer possible to provide candidates with feedback. Personally I don’t buy either of these arguments.

The volume of job applications has always been high, and if talking to hiring managers is anything to go by, the challenge they face is having too few qualified candidates rater than too many. While it used to be the case that applicants would apply for jobs via email, a large part of the process has now been automated. So the use of hiring tools with their set processes and templated responses, makes it harder to hide behind the excuse of volume.

I can sort of understand why, if you’ve received over a hundred applications for a specific role, it may not be practical to respond to everyone individually. However if somebody has…