Ask HN: Have you been ghosted during the recruiting process?

[_throwawayyyyyy]

Have you ever been ghosted by a company during the interview process?

Just had a terrible experience with 'top' startup . Over the course of about five weeks I did, in this order: three initial screens, an UNPAID three-day creative project, and then two video-interviews spaced a week apart. Everything seemed to be going well -

And then... nothing.

One week after the last interview, I sent a follow-up e-mail. No response.

Two weeks after the last interview, I sent a second follow up-email.

Later that day (today), I got a form-letter rejection with zero personalized content from a generic "talent" e-mail and not the recruiter I had been speaking with for over a month.

The second interview had moment that were pretty unprofessional... the interviewer was literally trying to draw pictures to explain the question they were asking and holding it up to the webcam. Nothing prepared to share.

Is there any benefit in a name + shame? I can post all the questions they asked and the project requirements, I never signed an NDA.

I like what I built and will probably be able to publish it myself, but this whole process is INCREDBILY frustrating.

I've had it happen with big startups, small startups, and big companies like Google.

Have you all experienced this? This kind of ghosting is so painful, and easy to avoid. Just... communicate.

Shit like this makes me want to get out of tech.

[5cott0]

Ghosted by Snap. Manager of a team reached out to me personally before putting me in touch with their internal recruiter and then nothing. Not as much of a waste of my time as OP though somewhat odd. I do still find it mildly amusing that Snapchat’s logo is a ghost.

I think a lot of times orgs/teams go through major restructuring in the middle of recruiting or otherwise rethink hiring strategy and unfortunately candidates oftentimes get left hanging. Also almost no one wants to deliver bad news, especially to a stranger.

Important thing is not to beat yourself up about it too much Always remember that interviews are 2-way streets and the signals you listed scream that it would be a complete effing nightmare to work there.

[coder4life]

Yeah, all the time, it's how it works - they don't want to give you any feedback (which IMO I should make a prerequisite for even interviewing me and wasting my time) but I barely get that. Just keep chugging along. I once worked at a company that barely hired anyone for 6 months, just kept wasting our afternoons interviewing people.

[_throwawayyyyyy]

Thanks for your response. Obviously it says more about how terrible their process is than it does about me as a candidate, but you can't help but internalize some of it. Appreciate the input - will keep chugging. Choo choo!

[downerending]

I sympathize, but it's probably useless to get angry about this. The moral of the story is to always be putting multiple irons in the fire, and assume that most will ghost.

In a way they're doing you a big favor. They're identifying themselves as a company that you don't want to work for, and that information is gold.

[_throwawayyyyyy]

Thank you, I appreciate your sentiment.

Agree that individually it doesn't make a lot of sense to get upset about it, but this has been my experience with all of tech interviewing for years now.

Their behavior is pretty standard, from what I've seen: super drawn out process, unpaid projects, ghosting.

You'd think with all that "gold" from identifying these shitty companies that I'd be rich or something ;)

I'm just not sure about tech. I've been working in tech in San Francisco for 8 years since graduate school and in addition to all the problems with hiring and interviews, I have: been fired by startups a month before the equity cliff, had patents filed on my work with me as an inventor without my signature (company sold to Facebook on strength of those false patents; FB tried to get me to assign later; I refused and they dropped the patent),had to buy and pay taxes on options that ended up completely worthless when the startup folded, worked for a full year without a 1-on-1 meeting with a 'manager', been silenced by separation packages that require 'non-disparagement' in order to get the money you need to pay rent, etc.

You'd think the big companies would be better but they're not. I once spent 6 months interviewing with Google. Then they called me the next year to apologize for how shitty their interview process was.

I graduated college during the great recession so learning to code was a skill to survive and make money, but it's been almost impossible to make a stable career out of it.

I think maybe it's time to get out of tech. I have multiple degrees from Ivy League schools in liberal arts fields but I guess I believed the Silicon Valley dream. I'm not independently wealthy or anything - I'm the first person in my family to go to college at all and have had to figure everything out through some pretty painful and expensive lessons. I've got a lot of grit but this stuff is getting out of hand.

I've generated millions and millions of dollars of "value" for my overlords and have nothing to show for it.

Anyhow... thanks again for your post. I really do appreciate it.

[downerending]

That sucks. I've not worked in the BA, but can relate to a lot of this.

With respect to the interview process specifically, I've had an offer rate of maybe 30% over the course of my career (I'm in my 50s), and the process has been pretty easy. Sometimes a few whiteboard questions, but no take-home bullshit, etc. So, not too hard to find a job.

But on my last search, a few years ago, I experienced a lot of what you're seeing. Lengthy, unprofessional processes with maybe 15 companies. I finally ended up elsewhere, in an academic position. Pay is painfully low, but in pretty much every other respect one of the best jobs I ever had. And that's partly because the pay is low--my manager knows full well that I'm virtually irreplaceable, so I have a lot of power in the employment relationship.

Anyway, the thought there is that perhaps before leaving the technology field altogether, it might be enough to leave "Tech(TM)" (the part of tech that's huge in the BA and here on HN). There can be interesting things to do at rather boring sounding places.

Good luck!

[drenginian]

Name the company in a separate headline HN post.

Normally ghosting is expected, but since you put in so much effort it’s really disgraceful to not give you a phone call and at least some sort of vague phony explanation.

What is it that would lead to a rejection at step 7, that they could not have discovered at step 1 or 2? Answer is “nothing”, it’s just really bad hiring practice.

[_throwawayyyyyy]

thanks for your response, it really made me feel a lot better. it was TikTok, btw.