Why Candidates Feel Ghosted During Hiring

[00:00:03] This episode is powered by a specialized recruiting group in Livonia, helping businesses find top-tier talent and professionals land their next big opportunity. Welcome to Ghosted by the Machine, a podcast where job seekers break through the algorithm and finally get heard. No filters, no bots, just real conversations about what's actually happening in today's hiring system. I'm your host, Mark Lane, and today's guest is someone trying to bring more honesty, empathy, and transparency into the hiring process.

[00:00:32] Alex is the creator of Ghosted to Work. I love that name. A community-driven platform focused on the real human impact of candidate ghosting. Alex, welcome Ghosted by the Machine. Hey, thanks for having me, Mark. So, Alex, was there a personal moment or experience that inspired you to start Ghosted to Work? You know, I don't think there was any single moment. It was sort of mounting frustration about the realities of hiring right now.

[00:01:00] I think that this combination of feeling obligated to provide a tremendous amount of personal information just to not hear back from companies and not having a source to kind of a destination to kind of vent or even talk about these experiences openly is ultimately what led me to the need to have something that kind of brings some attention and accountability to the behaviors out there.

[00:01:29] But your experience, you were out of work. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm part of, I'm in the breadline with everyone else. But yeah, yeah, last June I lost my job. Being 40 plus and being in this new hiring environment, it's completely different than anything I've experienced in my career. So, that's where a lot of that mounting frustration came from is, wow, you know, a lot of folks in my network, limited jobs being offered.

[00:01:58] So, you got to open it up to more national searches. And that's where you have this volume and quality problem along with companies not treating you like a person. So, what was the moment you realized ghosting wasn't just frustrating, it's becoming a real emotional and professional issue. People needed support around this. Yeah.

[00:02:20] I think that the way, the way that I think about it is there's no ability to understand what I'm doing wrong. Right. And so, I think after a couple months, you know, you start to have mounting, if I can use that word again, mounting financial pressure. And I've got two kids, you know, I'm post-divorce, so I take care of them half-time, I've got my own place.

[00:02:47] And seeing that bank account go down, you know, I've reached an inflection point where I'm feeling like inadequate in my job as providing a household, being a sole breadwinner for my family. And, you know, I think ultimately for a lot of folks, it starts to really impact their day-to-day life, you know. For folks that treat job search like a full-time job, it feels like you're failing every day, right?

[00:03:17] You're not accomplishing what you're setting out to do. And even if they're canned rejections, you know, just the repeated rejection every day, you know, I'm not an actor auditioning for parts, yet I feel like that's what I'm doing these days, where it's just constant rejection, waiting to get cast.

[00:03:35] And then I think that finding out just how many fake jobs there are, just how many jobs either don't exist, are being filled internally, or just flat-out fraud or scams. You know, you start to find out real quickly that, you know, 20% to 40% of the jobs you're seeing, you don't even stand a chance. So it's a frustrating environment, I think, to be in.

[00:04:04] Again, I think it was that combination of things kind of coalescing into an inflection point that really hit me. And then mentally, that mental rollercoaster. Totally. You get excited, you start making life choices. Okay, you know, I can take this pay cut or only to just be ghosted, right? It's... Talked about that earlier. Absolutely, absolutely.

[00:04:30] So you built this platform, this whole program about ghosting during the hiring process. Are you getting any feedback from job seekers telling you right now that companies still aren't, you know, fully hearing it? Absolutely. Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, I mean, I'm going to be biased because of the community that chooses to participate. But I've seen, if anything, increased poor behavior from companies.

[00:04:58] I've not seen efforts made to really address this issue. I think AI has made it worse. And we can get in more, you know, to that later. But what I'm hearing is that there's just more and more failures to close the loop of hiring. There's more and more silence. I really have not seen any improvement.

[00:05:20] And just so you know, the way that we handle things for now is we encourage folks to reach out to us individually. We do ask for evidence. So we don't just post at your word. We really go the extra mile to make sure that what the information we're getting is, like, truthful. And you're representing the situation well.

[00:05:44] We delete anything personal and ask you to obfuscate anything that you don't feel comfortable sharing to us. But we delete anything you give us. And then we don't mention your name. We don't call out individuals at companies either. We focus on the company. You never know somebody's situation, you know, a recruiter's situation at a company. So, or hiring manager or anything else. So we focus on bringing attention to the company.

[00:06:14] And if we've at least started some conversations internally at that company, that's the best, you know, we can hope for it. So go through the process. Yeah. Let me know exactly how the process works. Yeah. So there's really two ways to reach out to us. Right now, we're active on LinkedIn from a social media standpoint. So on LinkedIn, just reach out to the alias and we'll have a brief, you know, if it's just in chat, that's fine. If you want to, you know, talk on video, that's fine, too.

[00:06:44] We just want to know your experience that, you know, you have an issue with. And so we provide then a draft of our post to you. And we don't post anything without your approval. So that's one channel. The other channel is to reach out to us on our website, ghosted.work. And there's a contact us form that we'll receive and we can have the conversation in that way. So it's pretty lo-fi at the moment, but it's also where people are at right now.

[00:07:11] So easiest to just make things simple and we don't need you to sign up for something. You know, you're just free to reach out. How long have you been doing this for? And are you busy with this? I mean, it's got to be. It's yeah, I mean, so I've been doing it for about nine months or so. I don't think we started the LinkedIn account until January.

[00:07:33] Last year, we kind of me and a couple partners worked on a on the platform itself, like an actual product that is not public facing at the moment. We took that as far as I think is reasonable and then decided, you know, anything like this is kind of nothing if nobody uses it.

[00:07:51] So our focus has been more on building an online presence and providing that core mechanism for people to reach out to us and for us to be able to call out bad hiring practices on existing platforms. And so for now, that's our focus. We've seen some pretty good traction since January. I like to think like a like on LinkedIn, especially with our content is worth about 100 likes on Instagram.

[00:08:16] The fact that people even want to associate themselves with us or support us. The fact that people just aren't as social on a platform like LinkedIn. I like to think that, you know, each of those likes or followers is worth, you know, more than its weight compared to other platforms. So so, yeah, it's it's a part time thing. You know, I don't collect money from it. I myself am looking for work.

[00:08:42] So between me and a couple other folks, you know, we might be a whole person always working on it. But most of our time is just spent filtering and looking at the content that we're provided and just paying attention to trends and whatnot out there on existing platforms. It definitely gives you insight on the company if you're looking at. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is, too, is I feel like there is this, you know, a lot of companies talk about customer experience.

[00:09:09] I think there is a pretty good case to be made that candidate experience is now customer experience because I know that I am far less likely in for B2B businesses.

[00:09:24] If I have the option to use a different product than somebody who has ghosted me in the past, it's a pretty you're creating barriers that I don't think, you know, you realize you're creating when you treat people poorly about wanting to work somewhere. And ultimately, these people are going to be decision makers about your product, you know, in some way, shape or form down the road.

[00:09:49] So I would make a case that, you know, there's just as much of a financial motive as there is a societal, you know, human aspect to this. So how much of today's ghosting probably do you think is driven by AI and our mission? I think to be clear, AI didn't create the problem.

[00:10:11] You know, I think what AI has done is accentuate, amplify existing cracks in the system, right? So that's sort of my vantage point is I don't think AI is creating new problems. I think it's making existing problems worse, primarily around volume. And that's volume on both sides.

[00:10:32] The amount of jobs and job descriptions and how easy it is for companies to reach out now nationally, especially with remote work is a different ballgame than when everything was more regional. So I think that's, you know, that's on that side. And then, of course, on the other side is you've got even bots or fake resumes. You've got folks, you know, spinning up, applying to a thousand jobs a day, you know, kind of thing with all these tools.

[00:11:00] And that's only going to get you so far, too. And it creates, you know, a volume problem on the on the recruiting side of things as well. So there's there's pain on both sides. But to be clear, candidates didn't create this system. Companies did. And all that's happening right now is AI amplifying a system that was already broken.

[00:11:21] So what do you think the the human cost of silence is in the hiring process, especially for people who have been searching for months like yourself and myself at one time and starting to question their value? Am I good enough? Absolutely. I mean, what do I think? I mean, it's a big human cost. I think we all. I try my best not to get my hopes up during an interview process. And it seems these days we're doing four or five, six rounds.

[00:11:50] We're providing all kinds of case studies or, you know, these mock presentations. And there's so many more hoops these days. And especially when in a tough market, you might be making financial sacrifices. I'm willing to accept this job, even though it was, you know, less than what I was making. You start making these decisions.

[00:12:13] You're like, OK, I'm feeling good about this role only for, you know, not to hear back. All of a sudden, after all this effort, four or five rounds, you know, that's a unique kind of pain, especially, you know, especially when you've already kind of. You've questioned your financial value, like, OK, I'd be OK settling for this. And then you still don't get it. It's a unique kind of letdown.

[00:12:41] I also just think societally, you know, like, can you imagine just if we're talking about productivity in the workforce and you have a section of the population that's unemployed? The amount of time wasted, you know, the collective time spent applying for jobs that you don't have any shot of getting. Is is got to be vast. Yeah.

[00:13:09] You know, and so there's just like a huge toll and drag that I think this creates. Also, I think you see longer and longer hiring process, you know, out there. Right. So now, you know, companies want to find a deal. You have a lot of people unemployed. You know, maybe we can get somebody for this price. They kind of drag things out for nine months. Right. Unless you're hiring a CEO, you know, these should be much shorter cycles.

[00:13:37] And so I think in a time of of tough employment, there's plenty of jobs, but it's almost like a game of musical chairs. Only the music has slowed. And so that just drags down, you know, the whole market because I still see a lot of jobs. And to be clear, this isn't COVID. You know, this isn't 2001. This isn't 2008. Those were worse job markets objectively.

[00:14:06] But I think it's this time is unique in the industry that it's affecting, particularly technology. And then you just have these longer cycles. And I think it's just it's a real drag to our economy and to society and to the emotions that we're all. And we all remember when you first got into the job market, you know, pick up all these skills, learn this, learn that, put that into your toolbox.

[00:14:33] And as things gone on now, it doesn't matter. It didn't matter that I have all these tools now. And then you look at these job descriptions and you apply for a job. I'm listening to you speak. And I'm like, God, I was there. I was there. I remember this. I remember putting a list together, an Excel file of all the jobs that I applied to. But you have all these skills now that you've accumulated over the years and you apply for a job and you're hoping you won the lottery, that your keywords all matched up. Yet you have more than what they asked for.

[00:15:03] But that's we don't want that. We don't. It's just. Yeah. It's like winning the lottery. You know, it is like it feels like that. And if you go through that process, you're talking earlier about, you know, getting a you might have a job or you're applying for a job. And you're hoping and then you don't get called and then you get dosed. It's almost like a grieving process. It's almost like you're going through a death. Oh, yeah.

[00:15:28] It's just the emotional stress that you're going through and putting your family through it. So there you go. I'm sorry. I'm being off my soapbox. No. Hey, I mean, we could also have a therapy session. I mean, yeah, I can invite you to my next one with my therapist. It's, you know, it's just as much as I try to remove emotion from it, the longer you're unemployed, the more difficult that becomes, you know. And I've found myself getting far more nervous.

[00:15:58] You know, because of how much each of these interactions matter, the longer I'm unemployed. Right. And I feel like that can be tough to tamp down during an interview process when so much is riding on each interaction. And, you know, sometimes when I have trouble tamping that down, I don't feel like I'm representing myself as well as I could. And it becomes a very negative feedback loop.

[00:16:22] So where do you think conversations like this go next if we actually want the hiring process to improve? You know, how do we get that human element back into hiring? And we can only knock on the door so many times, kick it in, throw grenades, whatever we got to do to make them listen. Yeah, I think it's more of that. I think that we have to drive accountability.

[00:16:48] You know, there's not really sufficient ways to do that in a way that's going to change a system from at least the candidate side. And in my opinion, the only way to really change things is to create a challenge or problems for companies to solve. So what that means to me is, again, you know, not about calling out individuals, but calling out companies.

[00:17:18] And I think, you know, in a world where we are expected to share and be willing to provide all kinds of personal details just to buy that lottery ticket, if you will. You know, we're providing all kind of demographic information, our phone number, our address, you know, everything unimaginable if you were signing up for anything else. You know, much more than anything else. Think about what they do with that human capital or what they've done with it.

[00:17:47] Yeah, well, and the thing is, is we don't even know. I think that's part of the problem, right, is there's this, you know, opaque layer that we can't see what they're doing, right? We don't get feedback. We don't understand how they're using this information. All we know is we're not really treated like people in the process.

[00:18:09] And part of the problem is that the platforms that collect this data or provide access to jobs, they're not interested in sharing that information either. And so the idea of Ghosted is to really try to tap into that negative emotion, but to be able to be in a position where we have trends and data to be able to drive accountability in the behaviors and bad hiring practices of companies out there.

[00:18:38] And so once you have that kind of information, then you can start driving some ultimate, you know, accountability in the marketplace. Because I really don't think folks intend on being bad actors. But if you think about a recruiter being stuck between, you know, their 10 hires they need to make, you know, in the next six weeks and 10 different hiring managers that are keep going back and forth on what they want or being way too picky.

[00:19:07] Or, you know, you can imagine the situation where to us as candidates, you know, it feels like we're getting burned. But in reality, we're just dealing with somebody in the middle with having to deal with hiring managers that don't know what they want or don't feel the need to kind of drive a more succinct or effective hiring process.

[00:19:28] So I think the way that you address that is you start to drive accountability, which starts to drive conversations internally, which starts to open the door for different behaviors, which I think then opens the door for different kind of technology to help drive a better system. I always go back to attitude reflects leadership. Yeah. And you wonder if these leaders will pick up on this.

[00:19:56] Oh, hey, really think about the cost. Think about the cost of the company. Like when I drag a high like a hiring process out for nine months, I've wasted how much of my time, how much of my team's time to interview candidates, how much of the recruiter's time. It's a drag on the company. Right. But they kind of get a pass. Maybe they have some power or authority there. They kind of get a pass. Hey, wait for somebody that fits the bill, you know, or with the excuse of like a bad hire.

[00:20:26] There are costs, you know, if somebody quits or a bad hire costs X amount. Right. We're so focused on that metric. Well, what's the cost to drag out a process for nine months? You could have the worst person ever, which would have at least been a contributor for nine months. Right. Rather than drag, drag down everybody's time when you have a need. Right. And in this world where we're all trying to hustle, you know, there's all this money being thrown at AI. We're all trying to move so quickly.

[00:20:56] Isn't it weird that we, that companies sit there with open roles? You know, I think the more, the quicker your cycles, even if you make a bad hire here and there, the quicker your cycles, the more competitive and, you know, the more you're going to beat out the competition. So I have a story of, of a process that I went through. And then I want to ask you one of yours before we, we end this conversation. I applied for a job. It was for a manufacturing firm here in Metro Detroit.

[00:21:25] I got the interview, went through the interview process, interviewed with the, um, the manager or the, the VP for this position that were in it. They were in a different state, but the job is here in Metro Detroit. I did the interview, gave them some ideas and how I would handle the, um, position. I had, I could back it up with information or, or, uh, skills that I had done in the past. Uh, the interview was, I thought it was very, very good.

[00:21:55] Reached out back to them. Hey, thank you very much for the interview. This was, uh, late October. And I asked when you think you'd get back. They said sometime before Thanksgiving. So it was like a four week window there. Didn't hear anything back to Thanksgiving. Uh, reached back to them, um, early December. They said they had hired someone. So any communication, no communication.

[00:22:21] Um, early in January, I happened to see that same job being reposted. Right. Reach back to them, reach back to the HR department. Hey, I see the job is now open again. You know, what happened? Well, that person didn't work out. Are you going back to the, uh, the process again? You know, I, I felt pretty good about this. What's going on? If, if we're, if we're going to move forward, we'll get back with you. Absolutely nothing.

[00:22:51] Now I had also had someone working there that I had known and made friends with on LinkedIn. And she was checking it out from the, Hey, we'll, we'll do back, you know, backstory. We'll find out what's going on. We'll get back. She came back and said, they, they hired someone. It looks like they hired someone internally after the person didn't work out. Okay. Thank you very much. So that was a four week process. I'm sitting, God, I really liked this job. It would have been a drive, but I can care less. I really wanted this job.

[00:23:20] I was really in tune with it. I had the backstory. I could, I could handle this job. I was crushed. It was, didn't, didn't, you know, didn't go on a drinking binge or anything like that. But I was, I, I better than me. Few hours of sleep. It's a family show. We'll talk about that later. So yeah, that's, that's one of my stories. I've got 20 others, but that, that one really got in my, in that space where I'm really frustrated.

[00:23:49] What do I have to do? What more do I have to do? Gave them ideas. Talked about, we should be, you should be doing this to communicate. I have contacts that would help you blah, blah, blah. I had everything together. Blew me off. Blew me off the wall of the charts, man. And it is difficult for me to choose one. Yeah. There's been a variety of different behaviors.

[00:24:11] You know, when I think through these past nine months or so, and sometimes also it's, it's a bit of like, I don't know why, but that's it. Right. Sometimes it's not even that bad of a thing, but you just sort of exhausted yourself. I think one thing that I like because I got a rare glimpse into the sausage making machine because I had an inside track and that's always fascinating.

[00:24:37] But I'll, I'll sort of give them the respect of anonymity. But it was an interview at one of the FAANG companies. And very excited about this job. It would have been really great job. I felt like I was reaching a little bit. I'm not going to lie, but it was within my reach. After all, they wouldn't be talking to me if that weren't the case. So I didn't get very far in the process. I got to two rounds and the second one was with the hiring manager.

[00:25:07] Kind of like a story you were sharing earlier, the hiring manager showed up five, 10 minutes late. It was about a 45 minute call that we had booked. Right. And so, you know, she also had a hard stop. So we're trying to kind of compress everything. Well, lo and behold, like we still got through her questions. I felt like, you know, I did fine.

[00:25:30] Maybe I'm my own worst critic, but I felt decent about it and felt like I covered what I needed to. Could have been smoother, et cetera. But, you know, you're trying to look at your performance and be objective. Well, so I didn't move forward. That was disappointing, but I'm really curious why. Right. And of course, you're not going to get the why. But I had a buddy. I have a buddy who works at this company and is pretty high up in the, like,

[00:26:00] talent acquisition department. So he can kind of peek under the covers and see all the notes. Well, this person that the hiring manager had said that I took too long to answer questions. That was the core part of the feedback. Huh. And, you know, that was, again, sometimes I feel like this is why they don't say anything.

[00:26:26] But very odd to show up 10 minutes late, get through all of your questions. So you had the opportunity. We had time and you had the opportunity to clarify or to have a conversation. I'm more conversational rather than like, you know, that's have everything answered in a star format kind of thing. Right, right. It's just how my brain works for better or for worse. Well, and it's your obedience. It's how you speak.

[00:26:54] And you're trying to, you know, you're trying to answer the questions properly. That's right. It's a part of the interview process. Right. And again, you know, I kind of kept tabs and their hire was a great hire, you know, but that one really hit me because it started to feel like I had no shot at that anyway. This person had made the decision before I even showed up.

[00:27:18] And I think that starts to really paint a bleak picture of you want to get you want to build yourself up and show up. And it's hard to do that when you sort of get experiences like that, where it's like it wouldn't have mattered. You know, it literally there's nothing I could have done because this person came in predetermined of my destiny, you know, and that was it. Right. So there's something about that one.

[00:27:45] Again, sometimes there's far worse behaviors I've seen, but that was one that really got under me because you start to feel like it doesn't even matter. Like, right. It's like if you're going into something predetermined, it's hard to keep that motivation. Well, Alex, I appreciate you being on the show today. And the fact that you guys are building something to give job seekers a voice as far as I'm concerned, it's amazing. Like what I do, we want to hear their stories.

[00:28:13] We want to hear how the journey is going for them. And if we have to expose what these companies are doing, we need to get them out there. Got to make some change. There's a big community out there. It's nice to feel like you aren't alone also, you know, and to talk to just amazing professionals like yourself going through the same thing. You start to realize, man, there's so many. I don't have to feel bad about myself because look at all these people that I know are so great out there going through the same thing. And that's why we do the show.

[00:28:44] We want to shine light on what people are really experiencing today in this hiring process and this horrible system that we're all part of. So if you're watching and listening and thinking, yeah, I felt that too. You're not alone. And if you'd like to share your story, feel free to email me or send me a DM. And if you want to stay plugged into the real stories, real insights and the real humans like Alex behind today's hiring system, make sure to follow and subscribe. We've got new episodes, new shorts and conversations every week.

[00:29:13] Also, now we're really excited. We're part of the HR channel. You can stream this live on Roku and on Fire TV. And if your organization believes in making hiring human again and wants to support conversations like this, we're opening a few sponsorship spots. So feel free to reach out. I'm Mark Wayne. And this is Ghosted by a Machine because behind every application, there's a human. Let's make hiring human again. Alex, thanks again. We appreciate it. And we're going to come back to you down the road. I want to hear more about your stories. Okay.

[00:29:43] Absolutely.