For those of you who don’t know, ghosting is the act of ending a relationship without any explanation whatsoever. No text message. No email. No phone call. No communication at all.
Brutal, right? Unfortunately, ghosting is something that many recruiters are all too familiar with. In the spirit of Halloween, we’re here to tell you why you shouldn’t ghost your recruiter.
1) Relationships are key
Recruiters have a very wide network and work hard to build good relationships with lots of different businesses. As specialists, they’re trained to not only find you roles, but help you with CVs, cover letters, interview tips and so much more.
If you’re in the process of interviewing or you’ve received an offer for a role, but it’s no longer for you or you’ve got reservations, tell your recruiter. Ghosting your recruiter leaves them confused with no information to feed back to the client – damaging two potentially crucial relationships.
In being open and honest, your recruiter will be able to look for other roles for you, taking on board the reservations you’ve had previously. It also establishes a relationship that you can return to, should you need help with your job search in the future.
2) Think long-term
This leads on nicely from our last point. If you feel that a job role isn’t right for you right now and you’re wanting to pull out of the process, we’d encourage you to think long-term.
Explain to your recruiter the reasons behind your decision, maintain that relationship and give yourself options for the future.
There’s every chance that your career path may change down the line or that you’ll want to move jobs in the future. By choosing to communicate with your recruiter, you’ll have a solid base to return to when the time comes.
3) Avoid any mistakes
Moving jobs or starting a new job can be very scary – and recruiters understand this! Sometimes this can be the reason why candidates drop out of interviews, other times it can be because they’ve received a counteroffer.
Talking to your recruiter about this will give them some information to feedback to the client and will reduce the chances of any bridges being burned – should you realise you’ve made a mistake later down the line.
We got Jack’s thoughts, Recruitment Consultant at Glu Recruit, who said, “I can’t speak for other agencies, but at Glu, both candidate and client relationships are really important.
“When a candidate doesn’t turn up for an interview or suddenly falls off the face of the earth, it’s just natural to assume something awful has happened – and we immediately panic.
“When we realise we’ve been ghosted, it’s just this sense of deflation and disappointment that takes over. I won’t lie, the trust at this point is gone and it really does deter us from working with them in the future.
“I’d much rather have an open and honest conversation with a candidate – as it helps me understand the situation better!”