Why do companies ghost right after requesting to schedule an interview?
First time was with Apple just before the New Year. At first, I was paranoid and thought Apple was reading my texts or reviewing my device service logs to determine if I was a good fit immediately after requesting to schedule a time to chat, but over the course of 2 months, it's happened 2 more times.
It's always "hey! thanks for applying! To kick off the interview process, we want to schedule a time for you to chat with the hiring manager! What times will you be available?" After I reply with a few timeslots, I don't hear back from them. Is there some sort of new-age algorithm that tries to detect if a potential candidate is "passionate" in his reply or something? I just don't understand.
I would not take it personal or as a reflection of your actions. Often times recruiters will get approval from a manager to move forward on a batch of people. People are interviewed usually back-to-back based on peoples schedules. If they find enough people to fill the role and use up all the FTE/contractor slots they had available, then the remaining people would be thanked for applying as a courtesy. They will always schedule more people than they have slots for in the event that some of the candidates turned out to not be a perfect fit.
Think of it this way "You just dodged a bullet. Any company that would do that you wouldn't want to work for."
It may not be entirely and literally true, but it's certainly metaphorically true and good to run with.
I think a lot of recruiters just drop the ball a lot, especially those in very large company. I imagine they get 10 applications an hour, sift through some resumes, schedule some interviews, then find someone and ignore the other 33 people who have scheduled an interview.
I experienced this as well with Twilio. I believe its bad luck or probably like what LinuxBender said.