[awillen]

Ghosting people is bad form, too.

"all it does is make people walk on egg shells in the future" - well that depends a lot on how it's done. Here, we're presented with a behavior by recruiters that is very rude, and on top of that, incredibly easy to solve. You can literally have an email template ready to go to reject people, so we're talking under 30 seconds per person to avoid ghosting. If you shame them about ghosting, given the presence of such an easy solution, they just won't do it. This isn't shaming someone for some vague belief they have about something, it's a very specific behavior.

Blameless post-mortems are a poor comparison. You're talking about the failure of a system that is contributed to and designed by a group of people who are continuously working together. Ghosting a candidate is one person doing something rude. Apples and oranges.

Your solution is not useful at all for internal recruiters - you just don't develop relationships with them, because the nature of their job is a one shot thing with each candidate. As for agencies and external recruiters, I should not have to develop a collegial relationship with them to get them to act with basic politeness. That's ridiculous. If they reach out to me to try to make money by placing me into a position, they should behave politely. If they don't, there's no reason they shouldn't be shamed, so that people can work with other recruiters who do behave properly.

[kodah]

> Here, we're presented with a behavior by recruiters that is very rude, and on top of that, incredibly easy to solve

I was responding to someone suggesting naming and shaming individuals.

> Blameless post-mortems are a poor comparison. You're talking about the failure of a system that is contributed to and designed by a group of people who are continuously working together

Get to know some recruiters. There's one that replied on here. They too work within a system designed by someone external to them that has constraints, quotas, and asymmetrical input/output.

> Your solution is not useful at all for internal recruiters - you just don't develop relationships with them, because the nature of their job is a one shot thing with each candidate

I have relationships with both. All it means is I stay top of mind and when they hit me up it's for relevant jobs.

[awillen]

My comments were about naming and shaming individuals. Ghosting is a behavior of individuals that is very rude of those individuals and very easy to solve by those individuals (all it takes is <30 seconds to send an email).

I know plenty of recruiters. The fact that they work within a system isn't relevant. Ghosting is not a complex issue that requires a post-mortem. It's not sending a single, short email. Quotas, constraints, and everything else that you've mentioned are totally irrelevant.

[kodah]

That's crazy. This behavior will ultimately end up propagating harassment and abuse. It seems like as long as people feel righteous they think that's okay. To me, it's answering a problem with an obvious problem.

[awillen]

No, it's crazy to say that a very specific behavior in response to a very particular situation will just end up harassment and abuse. If that logic were true, then the fact that sites like Yelp exist would've led to us burning the world down.

Creating public, negative consequences for people isn't inherently bad. Some kinds of it are, but it's not reasonable to say that in any form it will lead to abuse.

[kodah]

This concept you've described is literally a Black Mirror episode. Those are not intended to be encouraging.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Ghosting people is bad form, too.

So why is it wrong for recruiters to do something that's bad form, but not for someone else to do something that's bad form?

[colejohnson66]

Id say because the recruiter is in a higher position of power. The have full veto power over hundreds of people while you don’t.

[kodah]

Given the number of recruiters I have met that have to deal with candidates that are fielding multiple offers, pinning offers against each other, or doing ghosting of their own I doubt this is true.