Josh Bersin tweeted an article on LinkedIn about Candidate Ghosting and it caught my eye. You might associate the term ‘ghost’ to a ghost writer when someone writes under a different name. But this is different – it’s when someone you’ve been in touch with through a medium of communication completely disappears unexpectedly. This isn’t unique to recruiting, it happens in the internet dating world too. In fact, most people have probably experienced it to some degree or another in a social context when someone says they’ll attend something and doesn’t show without explanation. Somehow our accountability to people has lessened as communication methods move away from a phone call to a written message. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have to deal with the consequences in that moment.

Back to candidate ghosting. I wondered how many of us recruiters have experienced this?

And if so, why, and how can we can ensure it doesn’t happen? It’s different to candidates accepting a job and then turning it down - but I think how we avoid it is similar. Maybe we engaged with a great candidate that was super keen then all of a sudden disappeared and didn’t accept our calls? Or they attended a first interview and then dropped off the radar. Of course, we can’t always predict candidate actions but there are things we can do to successfully engage a candidate.

Influencing successfully and caring about our candidates and knowing them leads to success. If we know our candidates personally, tap into them and understand what makes them tick - and get the oxytocin working and use empathy, we’re more likely to hire the ones we want, and retain them.

If we don’t do this- we run the risk of losing them - why should they be more interested in us over one of our competitors? It’s a Candidate’s market these days and we don’t know which other companies candidates are dancing with whilst we engage with them- so the impact we make from that initial engagement is key to Sage being their top choice.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/people-ghosting-work-its-driving-companies-crazy-chip-cutter