Candidate Ghosting: Strategies for Tech Recruiters to reduce it
Insights and Solutions for Recruiters Facing the Radio Silence Conundrum
There is a question that I always ask to people when discussing work: What are your biggest problems right now?
As a naturally curious person, entrepreneur and also a Software Engineer, I just love to hear about problems so I can identify solutions. When talking to tech recruiters, there are always two problems that come up in the conversation:
Lack of time (the day only has 24 hours and it’s nowhere near enough!)
Candidates ghosting them
I will talk about the first one in another post because even though I can’t add more hours to a day, I can show you how to create and manage a network of tech talent effectively. In this article I want to approach the second problem.
I asked an AI to make an image of a ghost ghosting and it came up with this.
You have spent hours in talks, researching candidates, sending information, discussing with your team and clients, preparing requirements, getting to know the role and the candidate… and then they have the audacity to ghost you! How dare they!
I’m with you, ghosting is completely unprofessional. Regardless of who does it, it’s just disrespectful. But we can’t just leave it here right? While venting feels good, failing to address the issue when it recurs might imply a certain level of responsibility on our part.
Let me say now that completely avoiding ghosting is just not possible. There will always be circumstances that we are not aware of or people that just don’t care at all. Reducing the amount of ghosting candidates though, is possible.
As a Software Engineer who has worked alongside recruiters and has trained them to upskill them in tech, I’ve seen both sides of the coin and I’ve managed to get a pretty good picture of the situation. Let’s start by deconstructing it:
Why would a candidate ghost you?
Some of the most common reasons that happen and even some colleagues engineers of mine have used to ghost recruiters are not shocking at all:
They were never interested in the role and were just seeing what’s out there.
They lost interest throughout the process
Their company made a counter-offer and they decided to accept it.
They accepted a different role and couldn’t be bothered to update every single recruiter they were talking to (or forgot some in their list).
They felt unprepared for the process
They just didn’t connect with the recruiter
Here I will proceed by focusing on two points:
1. Filtering out uninterested candidates the right way.
Filtering out candidates who are just looking what’s out there can be tricky. You can’t just dismiss someone because you feel like they are not fully commited to the role. They could end up being the hired candidate and you have to play your cards. Here your ability to convince them that this is an amazing role will come into play. Unfortunately just selling the role as amazing will not do the trick.
To make a good assessment on whether they are really interested or not you will need to figure out what motivates them:
Is it money?
Are they looking for more flexibility?
Do they want to do something new / are they bored of what they are doing?
Is it the culture of their current place?
Too much work / not enough work?
No career progression?
Are they just having a bad reaction to something that has happened at their workplace?
A bad manager?
To figure out their main reason to be interested in a role, asking why are they leaving their current role will not work. No one answers that question with honesty. In fact, no one answers loaded questions with honesty, and yes, “why do you want to leave your current role” is a very loaded question because the other person goes into interview mode straight away. They think they are being judged and that there could be consequences with their current employer and / or with the future one if they don’t give the right answer. So they just lie or tip toe over their honest reasons. The fact that someone assumes that there is a right answer already biases their answer and will completely change the conversation.
The best way to figure out why a candidate is interested in leaving a role is asking a very simple question,the question that I ask all the time:
What are your biggest problems right now at your job?
Accompanied with a little explanation letting them know that you are asking because you want to make sure that you can lay out the road for them to have the job they want, this question is a game changer.
It comes with a lot less judgement, they are not as used to this question and therefore there is no default answer and on top of that it feels a lot more genuine. They can also feel less pressured to talk about things they don’t like about their current role without feeling like they are criticising their current employer. And on top of that, people LOVE talking about their problems.
By asking this question you can genuinely engage in a conversation where you both can talk honestly about what you are looking for and see if there is a match. If there is, great! If there isn’t, you can look if there are any roles that you might now that are more suitable for that person or at least you’ve engaged with a person who you might have a role for in the near future. There is no loss here.
2. It is a competitive market
Regardless of whether it’s a candidate market or an employer market it always feels like it’s never a recruiter market. I don’t know what the ratio recruiter to candidate must be on average but it feels like it’s 1.000 to 1.
There are so many recruiters competing for candidates, especially for top talent.
Earlier I mentioned that some reasons candidates that made candidates ghost the recruiter were not feeling a connection with the recruiter, feeling unprepared for the interview or having accepted another offer. All of these issues can be tracked to the same root: a lack of connection and genuine conversation.
I get it, when you talk to so many people each day and have ridiculously long working days as a norm, it’s impossible to be the most charming person on earth all the time and best friends with everyone. However, there are some tricks that can help you connect better with tech candidates and even when you are having a bad day they will help you stand out from the competition:
Ask them genuine questions (like the one I mentioned above). Although don’t confuse small talk for genuine questions!
Be clear about the role, salary and perks. Leave being cryptic to your dates.
Explain clearly the steps of the process (from first interview to final round)
If you feel like there is a potential interest from the candidate, give them tips about what the company is looking for and what other candidates might have done wrong. If there are no other candidates who have done “wrong things” then use candidates from other processes just to give guidance.
Mention the timings of the process. Even if it’s not on you or your client hasn’t been very clear, give a rough estimate. If you really are not sure then offer an average and keep them updated if there any changes. This might feel like it will take a lot of work but it’s worth it. Candidates will really appreciate it and they will be less likely to let down someone who is actually making an effort for them.
Speak their language. This is a very important point. I really remember a call once where a recruiter was describing a role to see if I could be interested. I mentioned that it wasn’t really within my scope to do that role but then they talked about the compatibility of both tech stacks and how the skills were transferable. I was genuinely impressed. I had never discussed technical aspects to that level with a recruiter and I don’t think I have ever done it again since, and I’ve spoken to lots of recruiters. Name dropping things like AWS, React, JS, Agile etc. is one thing, but being able to actually understand their compatibility, use and purpose just put that recruiter into a whole other level.
I ended up (very sadly) not going for the role because I was moving cities and the role was not remote but honestly, that was the best conversation that I’ve had with a recruiter and I would have gone for it had I stayed in Barcelona.
The capacity to understand tech beyond the names and a basic overlook offers many opportunities to any role within tech, but specially to those who are facing clients and candidates constantly like recruiters and sales.
If you are looking to standout from the competition, offering your clients and candidates a much better experience and being able to spot solutions where others just see problems, Tech Revolution can help you with that!
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At this point you should have a much better understanding on what goes on in the head of a candidate when going through a process and what could lead to them ghosting you.
As I said, you can’t foolproof the process but you can make a difference and reduce the likeliness of candidates going radio silent. Filtering out the right candidates, understanding their real motivations, being honest, clear, and speaking their languages will help you in this mission.
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And I would love to hear your opinion. Do you have any interesting stories of candidates ghosting? Perhaps you really connected with a candidate and want to share your experience or some tips? Feel free to leave a comment!