[andrewstuart]

Before I say anything - I just tried it out and it's essentially a completely open spamming system - send anything to any email address. For that reason alone it won't last. But anyhow to talk to the subject matter:

I'm a recruiter.

I understand the feeling that this comes from.

Recruiters and recruiting don't have a great reputation in general.

If you're interested in WHY ghosting happens it's pretty simple:

Recruiters have a vast flow of inbound information (resumes).

Recruiters are contingency paid - they only get paid if they successfully place a person into a job - this focuses time and effort down a very specific path.

Recruiters manage many many recruiting processes simultaneously, each with varying likelihood of success.

Employers are part of the process.

The whole process is lumpy and drawn out.

Eventually the recruiter gets to hear if a candidate is successful or not.

I personally try to get back to anyone who does any sort of interview, because it's polite and I appreciate it cost that person time and effort.

Sometimes I don't - that task falls through the cracks.

That's all - that's why it happens. Perhaps some recruiters never get back to people but it's not really in their interests to behave like that.

AND FYI - recruiters get ghosted too by employers for various reasons - I just try to be patient and understand and focus on the future.

ALSO I'm a recruiter and also a programmer - I once got ghosted after doing 12 hours doing a coding test ... never heard from the company again. I know how it feels.

[dmitryminkovsky]

> AND FYI - recruiters get ghosted too by employers for various reasons.

Eveyone ghosts everyone, all the time... and that's okay? I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted.

It's like the proverb: "A wise man hears one word and understands two." I don't need a polite but almost always vacant pleasantry, which is what this site is saying is missing ("manners"). If I didn't get a reply, that's a lot of information already. That's all I need to know.

Now, many people do want to know why they didn't get a job, what they can improve upon, etc. That's a way more relatable gripe for me. Still, everything in life is a numbers game. You'll always want to know why someone broke up with you, and part of growing up for me was realizing that you'll never find out and that's okay.

EDIT: To clarify, not advocating ghosting and certainly not something I practice in my personal life. It's definitely better to be polite and direct whenever possible.

[PragmaticPulp]

> I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted.

I don't think it's appropriate for recruiters to ghost candidates.

However, I will say that I think many younger candidates really would prefer being ghosted to being explicitly rejected. The nature of interviewing means that I send a lot more rejection e-mails than offer letters. A surprising number of candidates have very negative reactions to rejection letters, from trying to argue that we've made a mistake to posting negative reviews of our company on Glassdoor or even Google Maps. People hate the feeling of rejection.

I still send polite rejection letters, but I can see how jaded interviewers would err on the side of ghosting candidates to avoid possible retribution. It only takes a few serious over-reactions to make you extra careful about dealing with candidates.

[emerged]

Ghosting is a problem in business contexts when the other side may be waiting before continuing their search elsewhere. I just ran into this with a mortgage lender. I waited for a follow up email about a loan and the entire thing ended up falling off my radar. Had they simply replied with a “sorry no” I would’ve just moved on to another lender.

It’s my own fault really, because I should’ve just contacted multiple lenders, but I had an existing relationship with this place and was giving them the courtesy of first priority.

[franga2000]

> If I didn't get a reply, that's a lot of information already. That's all I need to know.

This goes beyond manners - wanting a concrete response is a matter of practicality for me. Most of the time, interviewers don't give you a concrete time by which to expect a reply and when they do, they intentionally exaggerate it in case something stalls the process for a bit. I might be waiting for a month and a bit to hear back, even though the hiring process might've already concluded after 2 weeks. Those are 2 weeks I could've spent getting/doing more interviews.

I've never been part of the hiring process, but I can't imagine sending an automated rejection email would be too difficult. There's got to be some sort of kanban board (like Trello) with a rejection pile at the end. As soon as a card is dropped there, the email can be fired out and those people can know for sure that they should look elsewhere. It might even be good for the company - how many great engineers didn't apply for your listing because they were still waiting to hear back from the first batch? You might be missing out...

[MivLives]

I think it depends where I am in the process and what's been said. No response what so ever to the initial contact is perfectly fine and understandable. If I'm in the second round, and you mention to email you about scheduling the third, that's pretty annoying. Or when you've received a verbal offer with no follow up in writing.

[throwaway93382]

Jumping in as a CTO and hiring manager currently spending 50% time on recruiting: We're definitely to blame as well.

In the beginning, I really made an effort to be courteous and polite to every single candidate and give them their optimal chance at learning something from the interview process, but I realized that recruiting is a process that really does suck for everyone. Especially now that we're scrambling to grow, I need to constantly prioritize in order to just stay sane and get forward.

If I've interviewed 10 candidates in a week and there was one or two which were really interesting, that's what I'll be focusing on first. Whether I get to write 8 rejections in detail, it doesn't matter for the company. At least in the short term.

And chances are >50% that candidates don't perceive detailed and honest feedback in a good way (even with the best intentions), so I might get stuck in a discussion about details going forward when nothing changes that "no". Nothing good came from that for either me or the candidate ever. Rejections always feel like failure and honestly I hate writing them as well, as I know I'm always hurting someone.

It's not a part of my job that I'm proud about (hence the throwaway too), but this is frankly my thought process around the whole thing.

I've been on the other side of the table multiple times, so I know how much the candidate experience sucks, but that's how it goes.

If you're searching for a job, just do yourself a favor and go broad while not taking anything too personal. It's very much in your best interest to get the bidding war for your person on, so never fall in love with any single job offer.

[mlthoughts2018]

I think your perspective here is a clear example of how subverted and anti-human corporate growth mindset is intrinsically.

It sounds like you’re rationalizing how desensitized you are behaving and scapegoating it with being busy as an excuse.

Either you care and you make time to solve them problem (including by growing slower so your humanity and dignity remains intact, which sounds pretty questionable) or else admit you openly don’t care about candidates and you choose to value the marginal use of your time focused on growing the business higher than you value doing the right thing or coming up with a solution that meets some minimum level of care.

[franga2000]

> corporate growth mindset

> you choose

You're mixing two separate things here. The mindset is there because it's necessary, not because people choose to adopt it. If you don't, you won't succeed - those are the constraints of the system.

You could try and not participate in the system by not taking investor money and growing slowly, but then you're risking getting beaten by someone who did - which, depending on your situation, might be risking your and your family's livelihood.

[PragmaticPulp]

I'm not a recruiter, but I've done a lot of recruiting and hiring inside of companies. Your points about the process being lumpy and drawn out is the thing that many candidates don't quite understand.

Some large companies hire engineers non-specifically into large talent pools, then assign them to specific teams or positions later. If you're operating at this scale, there's no excuse for not moving quickly and following up with candidates.

Most companies don't operate like this, though. They're looking for one candidate to fill one specific position, and hiring the wrong person is a costly mistake. It takes time to gather candidates for a narrowly-scoped job description, coordinate interviews that work with their schedule, get approvals, and push the hire through.

Going into this, I thought communicating weekly with candidates would be a good thing, as more communication is better. To my surprise, frequent communications without progress is misinterpreted as a negative signal by a lot of candidates. I could send the most harmless e-mail explaining that we're still moving forward with the hiring process but haven't made any decisions yet, and candidates would assume this meant they were going to be rejected. Younger candidates were especially prone to over-reactions, with some of them explicitly withdrawing from the process to avoid the possibility of explicit rejection (Usually remedied with a phone call).

In an ideal world we'd move as fast as possible from interview to hire. In the real world, coordinating interviews with more than 5 candidates while everyone is also trying to do their regular job duties just takes time. Still, it should be standard practice to let candidates know when the position has been filled or they have been removed from consideration.

I've also noticed that expectations from some candidates, especially the recent college grads, are getting out of control. For example, I've had a few candidates get irate that our offer letters had expiration dates set 2 weeks in the future. There's a growing misconception that any expiration date on an offer is an "exploding offer" and therefore a predatory practice. I have to explain that we can't keep the position open for them indefinitely, and if they don't want the job then we can't keep our 2nd choice candidate on the hook forever.

[bostik]

Short expiration date on an offer, coming out of the blue, makes it an exploding one. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. There is also a very easy solution.

I've done my fair share of hiring. We have hiring windows too, and have to close a candidate in a reasonable time. But when we started down this path, I made sure that we explained the time frames and where they came from up front, and agreed with the candidate on a reasonable window. At the time of interviewing, which is the crucial part.

That way everyone knew where they stood, and more importantly, the candidates who were in the middle of a lengthier interview process with another company could arrange the time frames to suit us. Most of the time 2 weeks was perfectly fine. Some of the candidates needed 3 weeks. One ended up requiring a month.

But because the expiration windows were agreed upon together with candidates when they were still early in the process, they were not caught off guard.

[PragmaticPulp]

2 weeks is definitely not a short expiration date. Giving someone 24 or 48 hours is an exploding offer. Giving them two weeks is not.

An expired offer letter doesn't mean the candidate is rejected. It simply means that we need to move on to other candidates by that date. If someone has pressing circumstances, we'll make it work.

However, when you have a specific position to fill it doesn't make senes to reserve a spot for a candidate who wants to spend months interviewing at many different companies. The longer you reserve the spot for someone, the more interviews they're likely to take and the naive odds that they'll join your company continue to go down.

If you aren't in a rush to fill the position and you really like the candidate, it might make sense to hold on. Otherwise, it's best to move on to other candidates. If you can't find anyone else, you can always regenerate a new offer letter for the first candidate.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

I've received exploding offers in as little as 72 hours. 2 or 3 weeks seems comparatively quite generous.

[rightbyte]

> It takes time to gather candidates for a narrowly-scoped job description, coordinate interviews that work with their schedule, get approvals, and push the hire through. ... communications without progress is misinterpreted as a negative signal by a lot of candidates

I would rather guess it is interpreted as that they are the 2nd or 3rd choice and that you are still holding the lure. Candidates are probably just going for other choices if they have any.

If the recruiting manager doesn't have mandate to close recruites there is no way to make anything smooth.

[munchbunny]

There's a growing misconception that any expiration date on an offer is an "exploding offer" and therefore a predatory practice. I have to explain that we can't keep the position open for them indefinitely, and if they don't want the job then we can't keep our 2nd choice candidate on the hook forever.

That's because many companies did start using or are using that as a pressure tactic even when there's no 2nd choice candidate.

In the last decade while demand for candidates was high and supply was low and investor money was easy to come by, you could probably safely assume that most companies were running open ended hiring pipelines for developers. That has matured somewhat, but college grad expectations might not have caught up.

Unfortunately as long as offer expiration is being used as the lever, you can't entirely separate the pressure from the need to fill the position. But working with the candidate to come up with a timeline is absolutely a more generous and fair approach.

[PragmaticPulp]

> you could probably safely assume that most companies were running open ended hiring pipelines for developers

If you're only talking about the biggest software companies, that might be true. It's definitely not true for the long tail of smaller companies.

> Unfortunately as long as offer expiration is being used as the lever, you can't entirely separate the pressure from the need to fill the position.

Two weeks is already a generous amount of time to wait for a candidate to make up their mind. If someone needs extra time, the hiring company is almost always happy to regenerate a new offer letter if they haven't already filled the position.

Companies obviously aren't going to reject otherwise qualified candidates simply because an arbitrary date has passed.

However, it's not reasonable to expect a company, or multiple companies, to reserve a spot for someone indefinitely while they decide which company to join. The show must go on.

[pnw_hazor]

Two weeks is fine. Candidates can take the first offer and continue their interview process.

Then two-months later they can give notice when the slow deciding company they really want to work at finally makes an offer.

[oAlbe]

Is that a common thing to do? sounds extremely bad mannered and unprofessional to me.

You take an offer, start working at a place, then two months later you go: "Welp, sorry guys, grass is greener on the other side, I'll be going now. It's not you, it's that you use Angular and they have React over there. Screw you and the effort you put into training and onboarding me for the past 8 weeks."

Am I out of touch or something?

[pnw_hazor]

Well, the company would cut you loose in a second if they felt like it.

A VP of Engineering at my first tech job was the first to tell me to never be loyal to a company because they will never be loyal to you.

Later the worst example of this I experienced was when I was a hotshot contractor at a medtech startup. About a week after I started, they pivoted and fired almost everyone except me and another recently hired contractor. Junior devs and most marketing/biz dev folks were offloaded. They were w-2 employees not contractors like me and my buddy.

Many of the folks there had been recently hired as the company was spinning up for a product release. They had been grinding for weeks to get ready for a trade show demo.

I found out about the pivot and layoffs when I heard some of my office neighbors crying.

I lined up another gig and left soon after.

[bernawil]

I did some contracting as tech lead for a contracting agency and was very involved in the recruiting process. I advised against some recruiters recommendations for "hiring fast" when candidates were hot in the market or they accepted some hourly rates when I knew they could get better. If you want them to stick for a while make sure you're paying as much as they can get!

[awillen]

Honestly, you're probably not what this is intended for. I don't consider it ghosting until I've sent more than one emails that have not been replied to (which thankfully has only happened to me once, after an interview with Uber). If you forget to follow up, and I send a polite reply which you respond to, that's understandable.

But I agree that this app is not a good solution.

[warent]

Out of curiosity...

Do you use LinkedIn a lot?

I've noticed this cadence of speaking.

It's like, a LinkedIn-ese.

Every sentence is punctuated by a paragraph.

Is that intentional or something subconsciously picked up?

[andrewstuart]

Nothing to do with LinkedIn. I write like that online because I feel people read like that online - they more easily consume bullet point style writing than paragraphs. Dunno if that is true or not.

[gav]

I think of it more as a BBC thing than a LinkedIn thing: https://danielmiessler.com/blog/email-like-bbc/

If you're trying to get your point across to busy people, short paragraphs help.

[MetaWhirledPeas]

I think you're right, but I also think it loses its punch if you overuse it. I'd suggest saving it for lines you really want to highlight.

[syndacks]

It's called broetry.

[eplanit]

It's become a thing over the past few months if not longer. People tell their stories in the sentence per paragraph form, thinking it adds drama, I guess. I find it a bit annoying.

[harrisonjackson]

> That's all - that's why it happens.

This is pretty insensitive to the hopes and dreams you are selling to candidates when they work with you.

It might be a numbers game for you, but to each of the people you are recruiting they have a lot on the line whether it is leaving a bad job or putting food on the table for their family or whatever else...

edit: I'm not saying you don't care - just that it seems like an organizational issue based on the amount of deals you are managing - and the job applicants don't care about any of that.

[PragmaticPulp]

When I mentor college grads, I always emphasize that they should not get too attached to any one specific job listing. Like it or not, getting a job is a lot like a sales process, and you can't close every deal. Putting all of your chips in one basket is a recipe for disappointment.

Regardless, about 1/3 of them fall in love with a specific job posting and lose a lot of time assuming their first choice will work out.

Everyone should treat the interviewing process like a numbers game. Apply to many companies. Don't get into a position where a single company decided to pass on you will destroy your finances or make it difficult to put food on the table. Don't become emotionally attached to companies before you've been hired.

[leto_ii]

> Don't become emotionally attached to companies before you've been hired.

The problem here is that as an applicant you're usually expected to show commitment, enthusiasm, passion for the work etc.

It's very hard to work yourself up about a job without actually caring about it. The underlying enormous asymetry of power between you and the employer means that what is strictly a numbers game for them will always have at least some emotional significance for you.

[PragmaticPulp]

From the hiring side of the table, I can tell you that we're not simply looking for over-eager candidates who are brimming with enthusiasm. We're looking for someone professional who can get the job done without being a pain to work with.

You don't have to show up with exaggerated, faked interested in the company or industry. In fact, it can come off as very fake if a candidate shows up and pretends they're supernaturally excited to work in our industry that they just learned about 2 days prior.

However, you can't expect to show up to a job interview and ooze disinterest and boredom and still be considered for the job.

Don't think of it as getting excited to work for a company. Think about it as getting to know your potential future coworkers. If you need to become emotionally invested in a company before applying, I'd strongly recommend that you work on breaking that habit before it makes your job search artificially difficult.

[leto_ii]

What people think they're looking for and what they're actually selecting for can be two different things.

Often the interview process is based on an expectation that, for example, you will exaggerate your previous achievements. Every past project you describe has to sound amazing, your cv has to seem like a carefully thought out career path that will culminate in the final fulfillment of some great life goal.

You can't just say that you took some job for the money or just to be in the same town as your girlfriend etc., you have to pretend it was some significant step on a path. Otherwise you sound like you're unmotivated, not serious about your career etc.

[eropple]

IME: you absolutely can say those things, and still get a job. They're often not even negatives. They just can't be all of the things you say.

My resume is, if you just look at it, not a "great" one. But it's good enough to get in the door, and then it's not really relevant anymore because we're then having a conversation about how I can bring value to the organization.

[itronitron]

The same goes for job postings. If the position description is gushing with enthusiasm over how exciting the company is to work for then that is a red flag in my book.

[PragmaticPulp]

The term "red flag" usually refers to a dealbreaker, like if the company tells you to expect working 7 days a week or that you need to answer e-mails urgently on weekends and holidays for no good reason.

I wouldn't rush to dismiss a company just because they let the HR person spruce up the job description with some boilerplate. You really need to talk to the team you'll be working with and the future manager you'll be working under.

Unfortunately, it's just not possible to tell what a job will be like by reading a job description. You have to talk to the teams.

[WalterBright]

> enormous asymetry of power between you and the employer

I've sat on both sides of the table, and know that isn't accurate. If it was accurate, everybody would be working for minimum wage.

BTW, if you're unemployed because of the pandemic, the best use of your time is to level up your skills so you'll be in a stronger position once it's over.

[leto_ii]

> If it was accurate, everybody would be working for minimum wage.

A lot of people actually are working for (close to) minimum wage.

> BTW, if you're unemployed because of the pandemic, the best use of your time is to level up your skills

I am not, but your recommendation only highlights the inequality I was referring to. In your conception the entire burden is placed on individuals. Companies seem to have no responsibility to train people at all, that's smth you have to do on your own time for free.

[WalterBright]

> A lot of people actually are working for (close to) minimum wage.

2.1% of workers work for minimum wage.

> Companies seem to have no responsibility to train people at all,

They don't. Neither do people owe them fealty.

> that's smth you have to do on your own time for free.

Consider a company that decides to train you for 4 years while paying you. Then, you decide to leave and take a better offer elsewhere. A company cannot make you stay. Taking that on would be very risky and very expensive for any company.

"Companies" that do this tend to force you to work for them so many years afterwards, like the military.

[eropple]

> It's very hard to work yourself up about a job without actually caring about it.

I'm very lucky in that my current job hits on most of my skills as well as many of my non-work interests, and that's not a job I'd have to fake anything for, but it's not as if every startup coming down the pike is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is a skill, and it is one that you can learn to be good at.

That enthusiasm is just the polite enthusiasm of a sales call. It may require a few minutes of reading and thinking (because tbh I also see a lot of folks who have no idea what a company does when they go in to interview), but it is almost always either a baseline "do they get what we do here?" check (which is what you can learn and practice for) or it is a cult you should avoid.

[MrPatan]

It's not "a lot like a sales process". It is a sales process.

[WalterBright]

So true. Everyone should read books on how to sell. It can make your life much better.

[kelnos]

I think your comment is missing the overall point.

If you have a communication line open with someone for some sort of transactional activity, you do not just drop off into oblivion. Ever. It's rude and disrespectful, full stop.

Yes, I agree that the interview process can be a numbers game: candidates should apply to many opportunities that fit their skills, and expect no interest from nearly all of them.

But if a candidate has received a response, and there's any kind of open dialog, no matter how minimal, then out of a sense of basic civility and respect, they deserve a reply, even if it's just a canned one-liner rejection.

That's the only decent thing to do. Anything else is disrespectful.

[PragmaticPulp]

I never said otherwise? I was responding to the specific of the parent comment.

Regardless of how the communication is flowing (or not), candidates shouldn't perform their job search as a serial process. Parallelize as much as possible and don't stop searching until you've been given a start date somewhere.

[HenryBemis]

> Everyone should treat the interviewing process like a numbers game

THAT!! Everyone should try and get as many interviews as possible. And a friendly and weird suggestion is this.. record your call (YOUR voice) and replay the mp3 later. And listen to what you said. 99% of the people never wonder what they said, never have mock interviews with a friend/colleague. You hear them on a call with a recruiter, it is a trainwreck, and you ask them and they think it was brilliant.

Feedback, feedback, feedback!

[kashura]

You picked out that phrase out of everything the person wrote, including "I personally try to get back to anyone who does any sort of interview, because it's polite and I appreciate it cost that person time and effort."

Maybe you're the one that is being pretty insensitive.

[WalterBright]

> It might be a numbers game for you, but to each of the people you are recruiting they have a lot on the line whether it is leaving a bad job or putting food on the table for their family or whatever else...

It's a numbers game for the candidate, too, as they often apply for dozens of jobs simultaneously. Recruiters also aren't doing it for fun, they're on commission. If they don't make a placement, they don't put food on the table for their families.

Ghosting is impolite, but people do it all the time, including to their dates, friends, etc. The best thing to do is don't take it personally and move on.

[maria_weber]

> and the job applicants don't care about any of that.

Well, they should. If you don't understand this reply, I guess you are applying for a junior role? Looking at jobs as if the hot girl you met at a bar doesn't call you back, isn't exactly a great strategy. And as with girls, being obsessive about employers pretty much has similar consequences. You lower your value, the chances of getting in and your relationship with them will become one-sided, fester and die, unless you change.

Employers are there to pay you, because you need money. They need you, because you are doing a great a job and if they don't call you back, who gives a f*? You've got other options. Actually the more I think about it, the more I like the relationship analogy, even though incentives and goals usually are different, unless you've come to employ a gold digger.

And guess what, hot girls have to sift through so many applicants, you really can't fault them for not notifying every poor soul who tried, that they are not interested.

[GekkePrutser]

I'm glad I don't work for an employer with that mindset. If a job is good for you it's good to be excited about it. It's good for employers too - to have someone that really wants a job instead of someone who's just chancing for it and happy to move on somewhere else for a few bucks more just after you finished training them.

I agree employment is like a relationship. And good communication is essential in a good relationship. I'm not interested in a girl that browses for relationships as if she was on a meat market, same with employers. It has to 'click'. And if it does it's very unfair not to get feedback either way.

Having said that I've rarely been ghosted. I've always got decent feedback when I didn't get a job, including on what went 'wrong' and how to improve my chances. That information is very valuable. In most cases it just didn't 'click' and I didn't want the job anyway.

I also rejected a job offer once because I didn't like the work atmosphere there (I asked to see the workplace after the interview). The HR guy was absolutely livid :D I don't get that, why would he want me in a job where I'm unhappy? I always ask to see the place so I can get an idea of where I'll be spending a large part of my life. Money isn't the only thing I care about.

The one interview that really stood out, where I was amazed at the lively atmosphere, it was with the company I still work for 17 years on. It was a crappy callcenter job I started at but when I walked in there I could see the people were happy and had time to have fun as well as work.

[mgkimsal]

> ... they have a lot on the line whether it is leaving a bad job or putting food on the table for their family...

That seems like a life organizational issue based on the amount of job hunt stress you're managing. Recruiters don't care about any of that.

For "jobs" in general, the situation might be slightly different. If we're confining ourselves to the tech world... talk to multiple recruiters. They owe you nothing, and you owe them nothing (until/unless a contract is signed).

They're not selling "hopes and dreams". They're selling the potential to go work for someone where they take a cut of your earnings. That's it.

Don't put your 'hopes and dreams' in the hands of anyone but yourself.

[pc86]

They don't take a cut of your earnings, they get a commission from the employer - it's a subtle but very important distinction. If there's a $150k job out there and a recruiter gets $30k for a placement, guess how much that job would pay without the recruiter? $150k. It's an expense to the business and one that doesn't impact how much you're going to get paid at the end of the day.

Pretending the recruiter takes "a cut" of your salary creates an unnecessarily adversarial tone.

[WalterBright]

> It's an expense to the business and one that doesn't impact how much you're going to get paid at the end of the day.

That's how it looks from an accounting point of view but it is not how it works in reality. Employers have no interest in what your take-home pay is, they only are interested in what it costs to hire you.

Those costs are compared with what value you provide to the company. The (value - cost)/cost is the "opportunity cost", and market forces tend to push this to be around 1.15, or 15%.

The cut paid to the recruiter, as well as benefits, so-called "employer contributions" to social security, etc., all come out of your take-home pay one way or another.

[mgkimsal]

That's not always the case, where they would only pay the $150k. It's situational, but if the company has some process in place where they basically only work through one recruiting agency, the scenario you spelled out is the practical implication. But if the company is also open to other avenues (referrals, etc) they may pay more than they would via a different channel.

[eropple]

FWIW, this doesn't always have to be the case if you're a good negotiator and you came in through a non-recruiter contact. (I have successfully negotiated this, using this argument, to go above their normal salary band. Maybe I would've gotten it anyway. But it didn't hurt.)

[andrewstuart]

Exactly correct, except in contracting in which often the recruiter is trying to sell high (to the employer) and buy low (from the contractor) and the recruiter pockets the difference, and often tries to hide the true numbers to each side of the deal.

[pc86]

Yes absolutely, I've been on both sides of this (the contractor being "sold" as well as employing short-term contract developers through an agency like this). I will say though that a couple of times where I was able to find out how much the client was paying for me, there wasn't as big of a gap as I had expected - I think the largest was about 6%, and when I was a lead my employer was losing about $15/hr on me. I have to assume the team as a whole was profitable enough that they weren't that concerned with it.

[mgkimsal]

That seems awfully low. The times when I've found out that info, it's tended to be ~15-20-25%.

[l0b0]

A blanket statement like

> each of the people you are recruiting they have a lot on the line whether it is leaving a bad job or putting food on the table for their family or whatever else...

isn't helpful, because there are a lot of reasons to change jobs which don't involve having a lot on the line. Having a vague interest in changing fields, wanting to move from a stagnating career, stability, salary, moving to a nicer place, what have you.

It would be interesting to see some numbers on this. Unfortunately I don't expect it's the sort of information anyone is collecting, mostly because I wouldn't expect job seekers to volunteer it.

[subsubzero]

> Sometimes I don't - that task falls through the cracks.

That line to me is unacceptable. Your(recruiters) job is entirely dealing with people, no coding, no architecture, no design mockups, no capacity analysis or quality testing.

The fact that you cannot even get the people portion right means there is alot of recruiters that should not be in that position. I get that the company itself may be somewhat to blame but not getting back to a candidate should be an offense similar to an engineer pushing untested changes to a production application blindly(meaning it should never happen).

[keyle]

Yes I meant to secure our api but you know how things go, I got so busy and that task fell through the cracks /s

[dbish]

I've worked with many recruiting teams as a hiring manager and many of my friends are hiring managers at other tech companies. We talk about how bad the current situation is across the board. The processes are all pretty similar and generally bad at treating the people being vetted well, and tracking them throughout the process to close the loop. I attribute this to a top down problem across the industry where these teams are led by the same recruiting leads who jump around companies so processes are standardized and they've convinced everyone that the current process works well. I've tried to have conversations diving into the details and looking at ways to improve this experience and recruiters are not interested, as they think the only think that matters are some specific metrics that they are measured on. I can't blame individual recruiters for this, since it's how they are measured, I can blame recruiting senior leadership who has allowed this to happen and continues to be ok with it.

[joe_the_user]

I've had a zillion bad experiences in the job search world. But I just want to echo that recruiters as such aren't the problem.

I'd divide the job search into two parts. 1) Send out "pings" of different sorts, get back expressions of interest of 2) Each side expresses interest, each side invests a little more in learning about the other, until things work-out or they don't.

An explicit or implied "no" can happen at any point here and whether that happens by ghosting or by form-letter-level no really shouldn't matter to you. That's part you should legitimately just toughen up to even though it's challenging. A formulaic "sorry but it was great to meet and you have great skills but they aren't the skills we want" can be just as infuriating as ghosting imo. Get used to the "frenemy" relationship with your employer. Professionalism is only gloss on that, though it's a useful gloss. Lack of professionalism isn't good sign but it's just a sign.

The one thing that I think people often are angry about and should be angry about, is situations where an employer sets up a situation that requires the job seeker to invest far more energy in the job-search than the employer. For example, suppose an employer sends each of a thousand applicants a quiz that takes a day to complete and then filters the best 10 results by whether some underling likes them, maybe hires someone, maybe not. That employer has wasted a lot of time of a lot of people. And that's different from a detailed onsite quiz from the people you might work with in a situation where they might indeed hire you. The company still might not hire you based on purely subjective criteria but then you've invested your time knowing there's a legitimate possibility of being hired, since they're investing their time and money so demonstrating sincerity.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

When it became evident to a recruiter I didn't like the initial compensation package offered, they immediately de-prioritized me. They somewhat at first said they'd help negotiate, but then had to tend to other things. We were so close to a deal, but my recruiter didn't want to go that extra mile. So, they made $0 since no conversion. (And I was only looking for 15% additional compensation -- I wasn't asking for the moon here).

They went so far, to only drop the ball at the very end. I understand third-party (kind I was working with) and in-house recruiters operate a little differently, but I still found this surprising.

[x0x0]

I'm an employer, and we're open with recruiters about our limits. I bet you passed the limit the employer was willing to pay.

[jdhn]

It would’ve behooved the recruiter to at least mention that the pay he was asking for was above the limit.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

As a candidate, I don't want to prematurely limit myself on comp at the intake portion of the conversion funnel. So, the recruiter might mention a number, and I'll think to myself "that plus Y%" would do it for me. But I have no reason to say that. Who knows, maybe "that plus Y+Z%" is the firm's real upper limit. So it can't be the fault of recruiter, but also, it would be unwise for me too early on.

I could give an absolute minimum, but that would be an anchor I don't want to be tied to.

[PragmaticPulp]

> When it became evident to a recruiter I didn't like the initial compensation package offered, they immediately de-prioritized me.

Sounds like the process was working as intended?

> We were so close to a deal, but my recruiter didn't want to go that extra mile. So, they made $0 since no conversion.

I think you're assuming malice or laziness where the simpler explanation is that the company simply had a firm salary range for the position.

It's more likely that the recruiter simply kept searching to find the client what they ordered: Someone who fit within their explicit compensation budget.

There is a lot of good online job seeking and negotiating advice available these days, but I'm afraid that some of it has become a little too optimistic about how easy it is to squeeze more money out of every employer under the sun. There are many times where the budget is the budget, and the upper limit really is the upper limit.

[RichardCA]

There's no way to know what really happened. It's entirely possible the client wanted the agent to accept a thinner margin in order to meet your target number. And the recruiter is forbidden from telling you this because client hiring budgets are confidential.

This is common, the recruiter wants to be transparent, but they can't. You wish the negotiation was characterized by symmetry of information flow, but it isn't.

[WalterBright]

Yeah, well, any recruiter can spend hours regaling you with tales of inept candidates, too :-)

A recruiter is a lot like a real estate agent. Understanding how their business works and how they operate, leads to a good professional relationship with them that works for both of you.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

I'm not blaming the recruiter. They could say 'the limit is $X' on an intro call. But I tend to take that as an early negotiation tactic. Because if I say X+Y% during the offer-letter phase of the pipeline, and they say yes, the first limit mentioned was a fabrication.

In other words, there is no way to truly know the limit until you've reached the end of the funnel. Maybe the company's struggled with finding a candidate, and now has decided to shell out a premium upon request. You'll never have that context. But true cards will only played at the end, not the beginning, of the conversation.

[WalterBright]

> the first limit mentioned was a fabrication

As the process goes on, the company may decide you offer more value than they originally anticipated, hence are worth a higher limit.

[dnautics]

would a tool that helps you automatically send a "sorry you have not been considered for the job" email after X (~2-3) weeks, or even settable by client be helpful for you?

[chaps]

Imagine how quickly that sort of tool will be turned off when it makes its first mistake.

[dnautics]

good point!

[dyeje]

It's obvious you're a recruiter.

When you speak in LinkedIn.

One to two sentences per line.

[bigmattystyles]

Is there any truth that ghosting is a strategy to avoid saying 'no' on the record. The argument is that ghosting essentially avoids any potential litigation from potential candidates saying they were discriminated against? I've always heard that, but I am not sure it is true.

[alfiedotwtf]

Haha hey Andrew, long time!

Speaking of good recruiters, you’re in the good books. Keep it up :)

[andrewstuart]

Hey Alfie how goes man!

[alfiedotwtf]

Crazy year :)

I hope you’re doing well, and the team is going great!

[jiveturkey]

meh to you: this is a solved problem. ticket systems that send reminders have been around for 30 years, at least. saas recruiter dashboards with candidate status for 10 years, at least. there's zero excuse for ghosting a candidate in 2020. You are just making excuses, as if the problem is intrinsic and it just comes with the territory. All of your points are true, but none of them matter!

meh to the site: anonymity is pointless and makes this a spam tool, at best. i could see this working after a few iterations on it, but as it stands it's quite poor.

[timvisee]

I'm afraid you're right.

I had a spam problem once with an app of mine.

Spammers registered accounts, put an URL in the name field, essentially allowing them to send an email to anybody starting with:

Hello SKETCHY_URL, please activate your account...

[massaman_yams]

This happens at stunning scale; there are probably several billion messages a month sent via malicious form submissions globally, by my rough semi-informed estimate. (That includes other types of abuse than the one you mentioned.)

Perhaps this is bias from dealing with that kind of spam on a regular basis, but my current position is that a captcha needs to be present any web form which can even indirectly or occasionally result in an email being sent.

[timvisee]

I always find Captcha's a really tricky topic. Especially these days where robots have become super sophisticated on solving them.

At the same time it can be super irritating, and might even block legit users. Along with that you invade user privacy with solutions provided by Google, tracking every move on all pages.

But yeah, it may be nice to have the option, even if temporary, if you're experiencing an ongoing attack.

[CodeWriter23]

Maybe OP should pivot this product and make an auto-"sorry you didn't get the job" so a recruiter can click one button on a job lead and spam condolences to everyone but the new hire.

[seem_2211]

Also speaking as a recruiter. We often get ghosted by candidates.

As an industry, recruiters (myself included), need to do a better job managing rejection. But it is not as simple as name and shame.

[csa]

For reference, how many irons do you have in the fire at any one point in time? Both sides -- companies and applicants.

I imagine this number will surprise people.

[TurkishPoptart]

Can I ask you a question? Why do you write like that? Why not use sentences and paragraphs? This kind of writing reminds me of Linkedin hell.

[k9000]

Thank you.

[vmception]

For you and other recruiters and anyone interested in this topic, it is important to differentiate between third party recruiters and inhouse recruiters.

We are pissed at all recruiters, but when you say "I get ghosted by employers too!" its like oooh okay you are a third party recruiter..... so even less likely to know what our skillset is! Pitch forks now lit on fire.

[na85]

I mean that's great and all, and I'm sure you're a nice person, but irrespective of how you justify it, it's still unacceptable for a recruiter to ghost candidates.

Having been ghosted a few times I now refuse to deal with recruiters whatsoever.

The negative reputation that recruiters have is both entirely of their own making and entirely within their means to remedy. The fact that recruiters as an industry aren't trying to address this just drives home the perception that you see job candidates as a fungible commodity.