Talent   //   October 25, 2024

Rise in candidates getting ghosted is ‘sabotage’ for companies’ employment brands. Can AI fix it?

Ghosting — a common term in the dating scene today — is also happening in the job market. It’s when an applicant and hiring manager form an initial connection, have several rounds of solid interviews, and then the manager goes radio silent — never to make contact with the candidate again. 

Ghosting in dating is considered disrespectful, inconsiderate and downright rude — and it’s the exact same on the job hunt. In fact, disgruntled candidates are taking to anonymous platforms to warn others about their experiences. 

The share of Glassdoor interview reviews mentioning ghosting are up 11% this year, according to a report from the platform. And candidates that mention ghosting are almost five times more likely to report a negative interview experience, that report found. 

Such behaviors can harm a company’s employment brand by turning off potential candidates who’ve seen negative reviews, or those who’ve been ghosted from ever applying again. New AI tools can help automate candidate communications to improve their experience, but most hiring managers and recruiters have not been able to fully adopt them yet.

“Your employer brand is very important for recruiting, and ghosting is one of the ways that you can very quickly sabotage it."
Daniel Zhao, lead economist and senior manager of data science at Glassdoor.

“Your employer brand is very important for recruiting, and ghosting is one of the ways that you can very quickly sabotage it,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist and senior manager of data science at Glassdoor.

“Rightfully so, job seekers and candidates have an expectation that once they’ve started to talk to the employer, they’ll give them updates. And so it feels particularly bad to suddenly be cut off, even worse than having received a no answer in the first place,” Zhao said. 

New AI tools are poised to help streamline a variety of steps in the hiring process, including candidate communications, though integration is slow. And hiring managers and HR teams with a mountain of other responsibilities aren’t often encouraged to prioritize frequent candidate engagement.

“Employers are signaling that they don’t value the candidate experience and are not equipping recruiters with the right tools. It’s just a blatant disregard for both the talent that they’re trying to attract and the integrity of their own recruiting teams,” said Cliff Jurkiewicz, vp of global strategy at Phenom, an AI-powered recruiting platform. 

“Very few people are actually going to get the job. That doesn’t mean that you can’t represent your brand and your culture and your values in a way that’s respectful of that experience and keep that person engaged and nurtured for a future opportunity,” Jurkiewicz said. 

AI tools can help streamline numerous steps in the hiring process, with their use now more targeted toward early stages, like filtering applications and automatically scheduling interviews. Automated messaging with updates regarding what stage the process is in can also be leveraged “at least to nudge candidates and keep them aware of what’s going on in the process,” said Jackie Watrous, senior director analyst in Gartner’s HR technology practice.

Ultimately, the recruiter themselves should deliver the rejection, personally, to final-stage candidates, Watrous said. “Once they get into that later stage, now that they’re engaged with a recruiter, they’re starting to plan and participate in interviews, that’s where the expectation shifts to a lot more personalization, and they’re expecting more communication,” she said. 

“Very few people are actually going to get the job. That doesn't mean that you can't represent your brand and your culture and your values in a way that's respectful of that experience and keep that person engaged and nurtured for a future opportunity."
Cliff Jurkiewicz, vp of global strategy at Phenom, an AI-powered recruiting platform. 

It’s possible to leverage AI and likely in the future to automate sending more personalized rejection letters. Interview intelligence tools can summarize key topics discussed in an interview, and other AI tools can then craft a tailored rejection based on that summary, she said. 

But for now, ghosting in the hiring process is increasingly typical, and few job seekers are immune. In fact, reviews of interviews from candidates directed through referrals from someone already employed at the company rose 30% over the last year, Glassdoor’s report found. “The soft job market has reduced the attention that even high-quality employee referrals can expect,” the report said. 

The report also looked at ghosting by industry, finding it most common in media and communications. “This is not necessarily that ghosting is most common in that industry, but it’s just that candidates are most upset about being ghosted by an employer that supposedly specializes in communication,” Zhao said. 

“So I think there’s definitely an element here where it’s important for employers to meet the expectations of candidates, and the further away you are from that, the greater the harm can be to your employer brand,” he said. 

At the same time, letting someone down is never easy, and replacing ghosting with non-personalized, AI-written rejection letters may further sour someone’s experience. “A lot of it is automated, and [candidates] know that, but at least it lets them know, hey, you know we’re not ghosting you,” Jurkiewicz said.