“Ghosting,” as far as employment is concerned, is the shorthand term for when you’re trying to find a job via a recruiter, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, the recruiter completely vanishes from your life, no longer taking calls or emails. It’s troublesome, but thanks to a currently tight labor market, people looking for work have been experiencing it less. However, due to the increase of available jobs compared to those looking for work, it seems the ones who are experiencing recruitment troubles the most are the recruiters themselves.
According to The Wall Street Journal, recruiters have had the toughest time finding people who want jobs in decades. An anonymous recruiter told the Journal that they haven’t had so much trouble finding a tech engineer since the dot-com boom in the 90s. Many recruiters have themselves experienced “ghosting” from their potential recruits. Clients cancel phone calls, even after going through multiple rounds of interviews and paperwork, and ultimately don’t even show up for the job they signed up for. This is in line with a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank that reveals that many US workers quit their jobs without actually telling the companies they work for.
When recruitment falls through, someone has to take the blame, and since the client has vanished off the face of the Earth, the recruiter is the target. Many recruiters are loosing quite a bit of money in potential commissions because of these ghosts.
