Hey folks,
I need some advice. Ghosting has been driving me a bit crazy lately. Last week I had a candidate who absolutely nailed the interview, seemed genuinely excited about the role, and we even set a start date. I prepped onboarding paperwork, scheduled training, everything was ready to go… and then radio silence. No emails, no calls, no nothing.
It really threw a wrench into the process because we had to scramble to find someone else, and now the role is still open. I’ve had a few candidates do this lately, and I feel like it’s happening more often.
I’m curious how you all deal with this. Do you try to prevent it with check-ins, reminders, or pre-commits? Do you have any ways to gauge candidate reliability before it gets to this stage? Or do you just accept ghosting as part of recruiting and move on?
Honestly, it’s frustrating because it stalls hiring, impacts the team, and can make you second-guess the whole screening process. Any tips, tricks, or strategies that have actually worked for you would be amazing to hear! I’d love to learn how others are handling ghosting so it doesn’t keep derailing the process.
That's incredibly frustrating - I've found that more frequent touchpoints between offer acceptance and start date help, but honestly, some candidates will still ghost regardless of how well you think you've vetted their commitment level. The screening tools I use now help me get a better read on communication patterns early on, but there's no foolproof way to predict this behavior.
The manufacturing timeline pressures make this even more painful - when you're trying to fill a production role or compliance position, every day of delay impacts operations. I've started building in buffer time and keeping a stronger secondary candidate pipeline, though it's frustrating to have to plan around unprofessional behavior. The communication pattern tracking has helped me spot some red flags earlier, but you're absolutely right that some people will ghost no matter how engaged they seemed initially.
The systemic nature of this issue really requires us to think beyond individual candidate behavior and look at our entire talent acquisition strategy. I've found that implementing multiple touchpoint protocols and maintaining what we call "warm backup" candidate pools helps mitigate the operational impact, but honestly, the bigger challenge is the cultural shift we're seeing in professional communication standards. We've had to evolve our forecasting models to account for higher dropout rates and build more resilience into our hiring timelines. The key insight for me has been treating this as a supply chain risk management problem rather than just a recruiting frustration - it changes how you architect the entire process.
That supply chain perspective is really smart! I've been dealing with this same issue and honestly, it's been a steep learning curve figuring out how to build in those buffers. What's been eye-opening for me is realizing how much my screening process was focused on skills and culture fit, but not really gauging follow-through or communication style. I've started paying more attention to how candidates handle the logistics throughout the process - like do they confirm interviews promptly, show up exactly on time, follow up when they say they will? It's not foolproof, but I'm noticing some patterns. The "warm backup" idea is brilliant though - I've been so focused on finding THE candidate that I haven't been thinking strategically about keeping other strong contenders engaged. Still figuring out how to do that without leading people on, but it makes total sense from a risk management standpoint.