Why Do So Many Applications Ghost Me

Job Search

Dec 11

Job searching is hard work. Putting in the work to write a resume, assemble a cover letter, answer questions, find the right jobs, and then apply for them only to hear nothing in response is frustrating. I get it.

Over the past few years, the term “ghosting” has really taken off, even in hiring conversations. But I think there are a lot of misconceptions around the term and whether it is happening or not. Plus, I think we make it harder on ourselves when we think that we’ve been ghosted for reasons that probably aren’t based in reality.

Today, I want to cover this topic as it relates to submitting applications and not hearing anything back from an employer. Hopefully by the end, you’ll have a better understanding of what is happening and what you can control and can’t.

What is Ghosting

Ghosting is a neat term that started picking up speed in the early 2000s. It happens in dating, in friendships, and in hiring. In fact, more people are ghosted by potential employers than they are by online daters these days - wild huh?

For our purposes, let’s define ghosting as the act of suddenly cutting off all communication with a job candidate for no apparent reason. In other words, someone stops responding to your attempts to communicate for a reason that you are not aware of.

Can You Be Ghosted After Submitting an Application

With that definition, let’s think about if it’s really possible to be ghosted after submitting an application. Again, I’m not talking about after you’ve had an interview or anything like that. All you’ve done at this point is apply for a job.

At this point, I don’t know if there was any communication to cut off. No one has contacted you and you’ve never spoken to anyone. If all you’ve done is submit an application, I don’t know if not messaging you rises to the practice of ghosting. Let me explain with a story.

A few months ago, my wife and I had a roof tile fall off our house. She used an app to find a roofer who could fix it. The app then shot out our information to several roofers in the area with our information and we started getting text messages.

You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you we didn’t respond to every message we received. Some companies were very thoughtful in their approach which encouraged us to engage with them. But some were slow, taking several days to send us a message, and at that point, we had already found someone. We did some research on some of the companies who messaged us and chose not to respond based on what we found.

At no point did I feel it was my solemn duty to respond to every company that messaged me to let them know I did not choose them. In fact, had I done so, some of them would have gotten pushy about it (I know from experience).

Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m not. Maybe I did have a moral obligation to respond to every business that was trying to get my business, but I didn’t and I imagine many of you wouldn’t either.

And this is the exact same thing that happens when we apply for jobs. Hiring is a buying transaction with a buying process. You are selling yourself. The company is buying.

Now, had I engaged with a company and then not selected them and they inquired with me again, I would have written them back and explained that I went with someone else. But that’s different. At that point, there is a relationship. Someone took the time to talk to me and get to know me and I think after that they deserve a response if they message me. But an inquiry, I’m not sold that merits a response to everyone.

In other words, I don’t know if it’s fair of us to say we were ghosted by a company we’ve never spoken to when all we’ve done is send an application or resume.

Why Recruiters May Not Respond to All Applications

In the distant past, companies I knew would send rejection letters by snail mail to applicants. Back then, there were much fewer applicants as well. With the rise of technology, this practice has stopped almost entirely. While some companies do still aim to send email rejections, the practice doesn’t seem as normal as it once was.

I’ve worked with dozens of recruiting teams as a consultant and as a recruiting manager before that. Here are the most common reasons recruiters (or hiring managers in smaller organizations) don’t respond to every applicant. I’m not saying they are right, but here are the reasons.

Time

Many recruiters will tell you they simply don’t have the time to respond to every applicant. Today, most recruiters have some form of ATS (applicant tracking system) that has the ability for automation. They can drag and drop applicants into a status or folder and the system will send out an automatic rejection letter.

There are some complications to this, however. Most companies advertise jobs on third-party sites and not everyone’s ATS connects to all of those sites. I remember working with some companies who had to log in to multiple sites separately (LinkedIn being notorious for this) to review applicants for their jobs. This complicates things and does make sending out auto-rejection emails a bit more challenging.

It’s not always as easy as moving a status and having a system send out an auto-reject. In some cases, recruiters have to manually import applicants from sites like LinkedIn to get them into the ATS in the first place and this doesn’t always happen.

You Were Too Late to the Party

Not every resume gets reviewed. I wish I could say that every recruiter or manager reviews every resume that is submitted for a job, but that’s not true. I can remember some companies that had large queues of resumes that were never reviewed.

This often happened when other candidates were already scheduled for interviews. At this point, the recruiter (who is usually stretched on resources, time, and budgets) had already moved on to review resumes for another job opening they were working on.

Because the job wasn’t closed yet, none of those applicants received any kind of notice that they weren’t moving forward. The truth was, they were in a limbo phase. If the current candidates don’t work out, their resumes may be reviewed later. This is also why sometimes you get a call back after a month or two. It’s because the first round didn’t work out and they’re starting over.

Systems Not Updated

Back to the ATS and auto-rejection capabilities. This only works when someone is managing the administrative function of each job. I know many recruiters who are cruising a million miles per minute trying to do their job and won’t take the time to keep the ATS neat and pretty.

If you’ve ever worked in sales management, sometimes getting recruiters to update an ATS is just as hard as it is to get salespeople to update their CRMs. It’s viewed as an administrative function and is sometimes done at the bare minimum required to do the job.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but it happens.

Your Resume

There are two types of people that get interviews or rejection letters quickly. Those with great resumes that clearly highlight qualifications in an obvious and relevant way. Those people usually get interviews quickly. The second is people with poorly written resumes that don’t show qualifications clearly. Those are often rejected immediately.

Now this isn’t always the rule, but in general, this is the case. It’s the resumes in the middle that tend to not hear anything back. Those people aren’t clearly unqualified that they should be rejected yet, but they’re not as qualified as others who will progress through the process first. In other words, you’re on a waiting list. And this usually causes no response.

No one is going to tell you, “Hey, we think you’re mediocre, so let’s just wait and see if our favorites pan out first.”

Policy

Even if you reach out directly to a hiring manager, you still may not hear anything. This could be because the company has a policy that prevents managers from engaging with candidates. All communication is typically sent through HR or Recruiting and that’s done for a good reason. Because those are the people trained on what they can say and can’t say.

AI

Years ago the rise of one-click easy apply led to a surge in applicants for many jobs. Today it’s even worse with artificial intelligence.

Never before has it been so easy to blast a resume out to hundreds of jobs. Many of those jobs that AI is blasting your resume out to, you’re not qualified for. If you talk to recruiters, the number of qualified applicants for most jobs is relatively low. Most will tell you somewhere between 10% and 20% on a good day.

I know some recruiters who refer to these as spam applicants because the people behind the resumes are not qualified for the jobs and they have no skin in the game. They are just shooting out resumes to everyone, everywhere.

This bogs down the system, causes delays, and yes, causes people not to respond to you one way or another after you apply.

Stalled Process

One truth you can always count on when recruiting is that things always change. Hiring often involves several individuals at a company. One of them is out of the office on vacation or becomes ill and the process stalls. A manager may change their mind about the skills they need after reviewing the first round of candidates. All kinds of things happen.

And this all leads to silence. It’s not that you’re rejected. It’s just that things are moving along and the business has not reached the point where they can make a decision about whether you should be a candidate or not.

Frustration

There are some career coaches out there who tell people they should follow up like crazy. Usually, those coaches were in sales before and not recruiting. Unfortunately, the two (sales and recruiting) aren’t always transferable in the way they work - similar but not the same.

I want to tell you another story. Last year we bought a new car. When we started to look we naturally made some inquiries about vehicles we found online at different dealerships. We were early in the process, not quite ready to buy, but figuring out our options.

One dealer called me every other day to “follow up” and see if I was ready to buy. You can probably imagine the frustration I had with that. It was pushy and all about them. Needless to say, I didn’t buy a car from them.

Hiring works similar to this. I’m not saying to never follow up with someone. In fact, one of my favorite success stories involves a guy who called the company HR, and that led him to an interview and ultimately a job offer.

But if you follow up every week or more, you may just frustrate the other person, and that often causes them to not respond or engage with you.

Legal

I’ve heard a lot from different managers and recruiters over the years, some of it borderline illegal. It could be the case that someone passed on your resume for something that’s not entirely legal, or borderline unethical.

Even if it is legal, it may be for reasons that just wouldn’t look good if others knew about it. So rather than open up a can of worms they don’t want to deal with, they may simply ignore you. I would be lying to you if I said there were not a lot of biases in hiring.

Sometimes, this is why no one will respond to your application or messages about your application.

Training

Other times it’s more of a matter of training. We live in a litigious society and that causes real fear in some employers. Some people don’t have the training or know how to reject candidates appropriately.

No one wants to get canceled either so instead of telling you that you’re not under consideration, they may just ignore you out of fear that something they say could be misconstrued and used against them.

What to Do If Your Application is Ghosted

Don’t Assume the Worst

There are so many things that could be happening behind the scenes. Don’t assume that you’re not qualified or have been rejected. Someone could be out on leave, a change could have happened in the hiring process, or someone may simply be waiting for feedback from a busy manager.

Don’t Take It Personally

It’s hard not to take things personally, especially when all you want for Christmas is a new job and you’re doing everything you can think of to make that happen. I find that if you keep moving forward it sometimes helps with this. Don’t dwell on any one job.

Realize That It May Have Nothing To Do With You

As I said before, the silence may not have anything to do with you. It could simply be that you were late submitting an application and they’ve already moved forward with a group of candidates. Until they know the outcome, they may not revisit the pool of applicants which includes you.

Reach Out Politely and Professionally

Don’t be afraid to reach out. There is nothing wrong with sending an email or making a phone call as long as you are polite and professional. One of our members was asking me about this and I advised him to call the company main line and ask for HR. It was a mid-size organization so the chances were high that he could get through to someone.

He did. He simply asked the HR person if she could take a moment to review his resume. Turns out that she hadn’t seen the resume. Someone the ATS stuffed it in a folder that she hadn’t checked. She reviewed it, interviewed him, and a few weeks later he had the job.

That never would have happened if he hadn’t called and asked.

Get Feedback on Your Resume

While it may not be your resume that is an issue, it could be. Based on my experience you’ve got a 50/50 shot that your resume is an issue. The other 50% are things out of your control.

Find a resume coach or join a membership site where you can have an expert look at your resume and give you candid feedback. You could ask family or friends to review your resume, but unless they’ve been hired in your industry, you may not get great feedback.

Just Keep Swimming

Sometimes the best thing you can do is apply for a job and forget about it. Just keep moving on. Why let it bother you anyhow? I like to think of jobs like buses. If you miss your first bus, there’s another one coming 15 minutes later and they all end up in the same place eventually.

Is Ghosting Indicative of Toxic Culture

It’s all the rage for social media influencers to scream red flags when companies don’t respond to an application. But let’s step back for a minute and think about it.

I don’t think ghosting is necessarily an indication of a toxic culture.

There are few companies I’ve worked with where the entire company has a homogenous culture and every person has the same level of work ethic.

It’s possible that ghosting may be indicative of one person being toxic or even an HR department being toxic. Sure, it’s possible.

But even if a recruiter ghosted you, that doesn’t mean the department you would work in is toxic. Many companies prohibit managers from reaching out to candidates directly. I mentioned that earlier. So I wouldn’t hold one recruiter’s actions (as frustrating as it may be) against a department manager who could have a really great team.

I also don’t think not responding to an application rises to the qualification of ghosting either so I just don’t see this as a sign of a toxic culture or even unethical hiring practices. Could it be, yes. But by itself, I don’t think it always means this.