Ghosting occurs in the hiring world all the time. For many years now, ghosting was something recruiters and hiring managers have done to job candidates. When the unemployment rate was high, they didn’t see a downside to ghosting since new, qualified candidates were easy to find, recruit, and hire. However, in 2018 the unemployment rate dropped, and candidates and employees have turned the tables on employers. Nowadays, it is common for candidates to not return calls from recruiters and people have begun not showing up for work rather than giving two weeks’ notice. Many recruiters are learning the hard way that assuming that candidates would always be available isn’t necessarily true and the fact is that job seekers now have the upper hand. This is why it’s so important to have staffing insurance solutions and know how ghosting effects a business.
Recruiting Meets PR
This may seem ridiculous—recruiters don’t talk to the press or try to get magazine articles written about the company, so why should they be concerned with public relations?
Consider whom recruiters spend a good portion of their time speaking with. Non-employees, right? And the majority of them will never become employees. That’s just the nature for recruiting.
If you ghost candidates and treat them poorly, they will speak to their friends, and you will lose out on future candidates and future clients. The recruitment process must be treated with just as much care as customer service in order to focus on the company’s growth. Once a bad reputation is taken with prospective employees, it is difficult to overcome.
Shrinking Pipeline
Everyone who applies for a job believes that they are, in some way, qualified for that job. Sometimes, this stretches the imagination, as people send in their resumes to job postings with one matching keyword. But often, candidates are good matches. And everyone who comes in for an interview is a good enough match, right?
You certainly don’t hire everyone you interview, but that doesn’t mean all of those people are bad fits for your company forever. Many of them would be great fits for a different position or even the same position in a couple of years. Good recruiters don’t just post ads, they learn about those in the industry and keep a pipeline running so that when a job opens, she can fill it quickly.
If you ghost applicants, you’ve essentially kicked them out of the candidate pipeline. Sure, you can contact them 18 months from now, but they will remember that they came in for three different rounds of interviews and then never heard back. Who wants to put themselves through that again?
About World Wide Specialty Programs
For the last 50 years, World Wide Specialty Programs has dedicated itself to providing the optimal products and solutions for the staffing industry. As the only insurance firm to be an ASA commercial liability partner, we are committed to that partnership and committed to using our knowledge of the industry to provide staffing firms with the best possible coverage. For more information about Staffing Professional Liability Insurance or any other coverage, we have available to protect your staffing business, give us a call at (800) 245-9653 to speak with one of our representatives.