Ghost jobs have been around for about 10 years. They are not to be confused with the standard recruiter practice of never getting back to the job applicant, although there are obvious similarities. This is from news.com.au
Sarah had just graduated from a communications and media degree in Melbourne and sent a “cold email” to an employer at her dream job.
She was shocked when she heard back and was told there was a role “that would be perfect” for her.
“The only problem is that it was in Sydney. I told them I was based in Melbourne but would be willing to move if the role suited,” she told news.com.au. “This was me potentially relocating my whole life so I took it very seriously.”
Things progressed fast and within days she was invited for an interview. It lasted 40 minutes and her interviewer seemed “very excited and enthusiastic”. After three weeks, Sarah contacted the office again. She was invited for a second interview that lasted an hour.
“They seemed very into me and really positive. They said to me, ‘Don’t wig out if you don’t hear back, we’ll get back to you’.”
That was mid-November last year. She has been ghosted ever since.
The co-founder and CEO of employment website Hatch, Adam Jacobs, said jobseekers were reporting disturbingly high rates of ghosting.
Hatch conducted a poll in which 80 per cent of respondents reported job ghosting.
They said it left them “frustrated”, “feeling unemployable although I am very skilled”, “questioning the whole system”, ”defeated, unsure and on edge” and “frustrated and anxious”.
“When we talk to candidates about their experience of looking for jobs,” Jacobs said, “ghosting is always top of the list of their frustrations,” he said.
“When someone’s applying for a job, it’s a nerve-wracking experience. They’re putting themselves out there and when they don’t hear back, it’s incredibly demoralising.”
Zoe Lo was ghosted when she applied for more than 100 jobs.
“It also gives the candidate a very negative impression of that employer and their brand. The risk for employers is not just that they demotivate that candidate, but that they build a reputation in the market of someone who doesn’t get back to you.”
Of those jobs, some were graduate programs and others were full-time roles in marketing, PR or social media.
“For many graduate roles you have to do an online assessment round as well, so I did a few of those for different companies,” she said.
In one recent video, the 24-year-old claimed that she was at the point in her job search where she did “not care anymore”.
At this point in time, she had applied to about 95 jobs and said that she knew it “sounded bad” but she couldn’t “fake” caring about getting a job.
Ms Lo said her mindset had shifted, noting that when she first started her job hunt she was worried about being unemployed and felt stressed about finding a job immediately.
“Now I am like, OK I am unemployed, I have no income, but I’ll be OK,” she said.