Ok, I don't care if I'm not going to sound woke or hip or whatever, but, I'm going to say it...manners, when it comes to recruiting, are lacking.
Let me explain.
I hear this from all sides...from my clients, from my candidates, from my peers...it's just too easy to ghost people. I'm still surprised when it happens. And I have found that it can happen regardless of the level of candidate (I've had SVP candidates do it), regardless of the role, and regardless of the age of the candidate. I'm not talking about initial outreach that's never returned by a candidate because that I can understand. I'm talking about when you have engagement and then you get ghosted. I'll define engagement here as any email/text/vm/social media conversation that has at least one back and forth and then suddenly stops.
Just last week, I had email engagement, in fact more than one exchange, with a candidate who just happened to be a recruiter. She started to be slow to answer me (which is often but not always a sign of a dwindling lack of interest) but we did set up an initial call. She didn't show up. I called her and left a voicemail. I emailed her. Nothing. I will admit that I expect far more from a recruiter given they know how ghosting feels.
I try to make sure I always close the loop with candidates (I feel guilty if I let it slide!). But one thing I do is put the ownice on them to follow up with me if they haven't heard from me and want a status update. I always tell them that I don't perceive it as them 'bugging' me, in fact, I love it. I love when candidates are eager and press me for updates.
I think it boils down to manners: manners are not a thing of the past. They aren't antiquated, quaint meaningless expressions. They should be part of the recruiting process from all parties involved.
Ok, that's it. The rant is over. Back to work.
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