There’s a term called ‘ghosting’ in the modern dating world. As Urban Dictionary puts it, it is “quietly disappearing from someone you’ve met on an online dating site.” It is also known as “fadeaway,” an act of vanishing from contact with another person without any explanation at all.
This does not only apply to dates, but also to jobs.
For sure when you were looking for a job, at least one company has reached to you and never communicated with you again. That company has conducted a job interview, responded to your e-mails, made phone calls, but eventually did not hire you.
That’s ghosting in the employment world, and it sucks.
No engineer deserves to be ghosted. Regardless if the communication between the potential employee and the company has already reached many levels, as long as they have already acknowledged that they are interested in you, you are supposed to know the status of your application process. Approved or denied.
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Jane Ashen Turkewitz, owner of recruiting firm .comRecruiting.com with experience in the advertising and tech industry for more than 15 years, cannot believe how hiring companies can be so rude to prospective employees after interviewing them.
“I was sick of it all. I thought that we needed to do it all in a more empathetic way,” Turkewitz told Business Insider.
She recently had a viral post on LinkedIn about being ghosted by a company.
“For those of you who have been ghosted by a company after interviewing, and feel demoralized and dejected, you can say something,” she wrote. “It won’t get you the job but it could make you feel better and that’s a valid reason right there.”
Indeed. When you are an engineer who has been ghosted by a company you are applying for, communicate. You should be able to know formally if you’re not going to get the job.
Turkewitz suggests that you write a firm e-mail, which is something like this:
“I would like to thank you for the opportunity to interview for the role of X. I was surprised, after my 7 rounds of interviews, to not hear anything regardless of my attempts to stay engaged. Due to the lack of response, it’s a fair assumption that you have decided to move in another direction. While I am disappointed, I certainly respect if someone more qualified entered the picture.”
She went on to say in her post that while rejection is disappointing, ghosting shows a lack of leadership and empathy.
Arguments were welcome in Turkewitz’ post. One fellow commented, “I definitely think ghosting is poor etiquette, but I would be cautious about sending a passive aggressive response. I think it’s best to chalk it up to a loss (or possibly a gain) and move on.”
This is a fair point, but your reaction – how you will write your e-mail – to the ghosting actually depends on how far you’ve gotten in the application process and how much you want the job.
Source: World Economic Forum
