| I was ghosted for many months this summer by a company for a Head of Software Engineering role. I had been referred in by friends/ex-colleagues who worked here "Paul would do great things here" type of thing. One has left. I'm checking on the other before I name names. I completed an entire day of back to back Zoom interviews in March, thanked all the interviewers by email, saying "I'm looking forward to the next steps". There was a bunch of people on their side scheduling everything for me including dropping for flights and hotel (which the canceled and swapped for zoom a day or two before). Those were not recruiters as such, but admin assistants, directors and a CIO. I sent another "catching up" email with the director who was charged with handling my candidacy. I got a reply in June just under three months from the interview day. > Apologies for the slow response. Things have certainly gotten crazy since
> we last spoke! I managed to get out of <interview-city> and have been
> on lockdown at my home in <home-town> with my family. Hope things are well
> for you.
>
> As for the head of software engineering position, we have moved forward
> with a different candidate. I hope we can stay in touch and work together
> on something in the future. In the meantime I'd gently nudged the two that referred me in as to what expectations I could have as a candidate and they were embarrassed. There's only so much you can do in this situation. You know, to a great degree those that refer people in have to recuse themselves. I've been ghosted a few times since too. The above story is the max effort on my part to get to the ghost outcome. I'd be keen on a site that was an agreed policy on candidate handling. Each time there's a candidate that gets put forward something that private key encrypted gets written to a public ledger ($1 charge to recruiter). Each time there's progress another record is written. Ghosting means no updates. The Ledger service will notify all parties of updates. Any of the parties could disclose the key to make all the records public. There's be terms and conditions for that. The candidate can pay a second fee - say $10 - for a review of the record and a change in the status of the recruiter. The recruiter can protect themselves from shitty clients with "sorry paul, I've heard nothing new from <client> re your candidacy. Each candidate/candidacy has a state "explicit rejection" or "effectively ghosted". That bit not encrypted. The recruiters get a badge they can use that makes it clear what their stats are. There's some privacy concerns too for that service - how can the legal entity not monetize & not leak the bits that should remain private. In summary I'm thinking about something that's different to ghostreply.com which is like the "Just a Tip" site & email service from the 90's. |