How to Act When You Are Ghosted by a Recruiter

Being ghosted by a recruiter hurts. When you feel that you should be important to someone, it is hard when they ignore you. Especially if they are a recruiter offering the hope of a new job.

You expect them to get in touch within a certain time frame, but the deadline passes. Your email inbox is empty. Countless reasons cycle around your mind as to why they are not getting back to you. Most of these reasons end up with everything somehow working out.

You don’t want to admit that you weren’t good enough.

That thought even starts to affect your confidence as you apply to other roles.

What if everyone ignores me like this?

In fact, being ghosted by a recruiter is a sad reality of the hiring process. It happens for multiple reasons and may mean that the opportunity either remains open or has closed down. 

…. Commonly, busy recruiters do not always share the nuances:

…. Something changed in the job specification (open)

…. The employers are taking their time deciding (open)

…. The role has been frozen temporarily (open)

…. They are still interviewing other candidates (open)

…. Thousands of candidates applied – no chance (closed)

…. The recruiters don’t have time for feedback (closed)

…. You have been forgotten due to an admin error (closed)

It is unprofessional for a recruiter or employer to ghost a candidate for any length of time. Whatever the reason, candidates should try to find out what has gone on if an excessive amount of time has passed. A decent recruiter will get back to them.

Ghosted by a recruiter? Do this…

Follow up (when/if appropriate)

You will naturally be impatient to find out the status of your application but give the recruiter the benefit of the doubt for a while before chasing. This might be a week or two, depending on the seniority of the role (senior hiring processes can take months).

Send a brief email referring to the timescales. Be polite when you enquire. Remember that other candidates will likely be chasing the recruiters, so only follow up if you genuinely need to hurry things along (i.e. you have another role concluding).

End with a brief sentence to ask for reasons in the case of a rejection. Feedback is essential for you to learn for your next application. You likely won’t get it if you don’t ask.

Learn the lessons

If the eventual response is negative, do your best to analyse what you could have done better. Our instinct is to run away from negative thoughts in a stressful situation, but that is the worst thing you could do. 

Finding one or two things to improve after a rejection is the best gift for your job search. Otherwise, you have wasted your time. Talk about the rejection with a friend or previous colleague. Sometimes another perspective can help you to move past a disappointment.

Obviously, take the feedback from the recruiter seriously. Thank them for it.

The last thing to suggest is that you don’t take ghosting to heart.

Recruiters are incredibly busy people, and much as they would love to get in touch with every candidate and give them detailed feedback, the commercial reality of it is that this activity does not move them any closer to their next commission. 

Great recruiters realise the value of maintaining great candidate relationships and will never ghost anyone, but the sad reality of a high-pressure industry means that it is common.

In some ways, you should expect to be ghosted by a recruiter.

What to do about it (and when) is up to you. Be patient where possible.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).