What to do when ghosted halfway through an interview process

Whenever I find myself in a situation like this, I always ask myself "what can I do to move things forward?"

The answer is always to not wait for other people. They have their priorities and you are rarely one of them.

Call the engineer you spoke to.

Call the recruiter. Don't email: find his number and call him.

Call anyone else there you had contact with.

It's perfectly normal to want to know what's going on after any phase of an interview. Be proactive.

There can be all sorts of reasons for this, many completely outside your control, and possibly outside the control of your recruiter.

In one of the first situations where I had to hire someone, I got caught up in politics during recruitment. I kept procrastinating on the difficult conversation I needed to have with somebody I interviewed. I’m not proud that I effectively ghosted somebody, but the whole thing made me feel so rubbish that I wanted to stick my head in the sand. Another time, somebody told me they’d called all the candidates - turns out he only called some of them due to an innocent mistake.

In your position, I’d make clear that you’re worried about losing other offers, so you need a response by end of Thursday or you’re going to withdraw your application (or something like that). See if you can also go through the generic company address, in case somebody’s off sick and not dealing with emails.

Where is the company located? I know that in some regions, 'ghosting' is a common way to reject candidates. (Which I find absurd). But maybe the recruiter is just sick/sacked/scum. Do you have the name(s) of the technical interviewer? Perhaps you can contact them directly(company email addresses typically follow the same pattern).

I worked for a company once that went through an extended period of "cost controls." The end result was a cycle of hiring and hiring freezes, and many people would start interviews during a hiring period and then partway through the interview process would get caught in a hiring freeze.

Some HR people basically stopped responding to interviewees during these hiring freezes. It was stupid and extremely unprofessional. We had some great candidates who got caught in this.

Maybe your recruiter went on vacation and didn't set their out of office properly. Or maybe it is a case of severe stupidity like what I described above.

Either way, it's not your fault. I'd wait a week or two and email again. If you really like the job/company I'd try to find somebody who interviewed you on LinkedIn and contact them. Otherwise just forget it.

The same that I'd do when a girl I'm dating don't reply my invitations:let it go and go for the next one. Obsessive behavior rarely leads to fruitful outcomes. They might have their own reasons not necessarily related to you. Move on.

Follow up. They get busy often. The common advice is to spend 80% focus on recruiting when recruiting, but usually companies that are hiring have a lot of excess things to do. They may hesitate as they have no manpower to start training people, but deep down inside they know they need to. I've been in some companies where they waited about 2 months to get back to the best candidate.

You also have to keep in mind the secretary problem here. Once rejected, an applicant cannot be recalled. You could be among the top 3 candidates, but there are still 20 uninterviewed, and they want to hold it out as long as possible.

Just move on to the next one. A lot of recruiters and companies lack professionalism and will just ghost you. Could be for any number of reasons related or unrelated to you.

Could be all kinds of reasons, most having nothing to do with you. Agree with others that there's little harm in being a squeaky wheel--ping them several times at reasonable intervals.

Beyond that, though, always ask yourself whether you want to work for a company that seems incompetent or rude in their recruiting. They're generally on their best behavior now. What will things be like after you're hired?

The recruiters work hard to get you placed at a company. Ping the recruiter and let him work hard for you. The people interviewing you are working and you don't know what kind of fires or priority shifts have occurred. It's a hard pill to swallow but you're most likely not the #1 priority on anyones mind.

No malice is probably intended by the team, they just forgot about you.

I have to give some props to facebook. Even though I didn't get the job the recruiters there kept me in the loop the entire way.

You might be a good candidate, but the recruiter has scheduled another interview next week with another candidate, and might want to see all candidates before answering.

Move on.

Simply if they had their ducks in a row AND they wanted you they'd call you. Either of those could be negative. None of those three combinations require your input.

The company doesn’t feel it has gone as well as you do or they would be in touch quickly. Most likely, they want to interview other candidates. They aren’t ghosting you but I bet they will take a month or two before they tell you they are moving forward with other candidates. It’s a weird system used by bad companies.

That or the recruiter already placed another candidate or left the firm. Two weeks is a long time.

Have you called the recruiter? Remember that they don't get paid unless you get placed.

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