Conversation Starter: Prospective Employer ‘Ghosting’ More than Doubles Since Before the COVID-19 Pandemic

Picture this scenario: you apply for a job, make it through enough rounds of interviews to feel enthusiastic about the opportunity, and suddenly all communication from the prospective employer inexplicably screeches to a halt. You’ve been ghosted. Perhaps you don’t have to picture it at all because, just like a growing number of professionals on Glassdoor, you’ve experienced it directly. 

Source: A Glassdoor Bowls™ conversation about being ghosted in the interview process

Ahead of Halloween, here’s a bone-chilling stat: the total share of interview reviews on Glassdoor that mention ghosting have more than doubled (+112 percent) since before the pandemic began. In October, 3.1 percent of interview reviews submitted on Glassdoor mention ghosting, up 7 percent year-over-year. 

Stopping all communication with a candidate with no explanation is obviously poor form, so it’s not surprising that 87 percent of interview reviews mentioning ghosting report an overall negative experience with prospective employers. With this type of behavior on the rise, we dug into the data to look at how it’s trending.

Does the interview source play a role? Ghosting is mentioned in 5.4 percent of interview reviews where the candidate obtained an interview opportunity through a recruiter—making them 1.4 times more likely to be ghosted than candidates who simply applied online (3.8 percent of those reviews mention ghosting). That means candidates who received direct comms from a recruiter are more likely to complain about ghosting than those who applied blindly, perhaps because they feel even more disappointed or disrespected to be ghosted. What about candidates with a referral? They’re less likely to be ghosted, but ghosting is still mentioned in 2.2 percent of referral-based interview reviews.  

Now for a look at the data by industry. Here are the industries where candidates mention ghosting the most: 

Industries by the Share of Interview Reviews on Glassdoor that Mention “Ghosting”

An important note on industry data: just because one of the above industries have more mentions of ghosting than others does not necessarily mean candidates in those industries are experiencing ghosting more. Those industries could have candidates who are either more surprised and upset  about the behavior or just generally more likely to mention ghosting in their review. Professionals in some industries may experience this type of behavior more often than others, making them less likely to mention it in their review. 

It’s hard to confirm with certainty why exactly the topic of ghosting is being mentioned at an accelerated rate on Glassdoor. But it is easy to see with certainty that it’s not only causing a negative candidate experience, but those candidates are also becoming more comfortable sharing that experience in a public forum. 

Methodology

This analysis examines over a million interview reviews left on Glassdoor by U.S. job seekers for mentions of ghosting or similar phrases (e.g., ghosted, ghost me, ghosts you). Interview reviews submitted between January 1, 2016 and October 23, 2023 are analyzed and grouped together by when the review was submitted.

Conversation Starters are a periodic series of charts and data points from Glassdoor’s Economic Research team aimed at sparking conversations on timely trends in employee satisfaction, workplace community, the future of work, and the labor market more broadly. 

To speak with Glassdoor Economic Research about this report, please contact pr@glassdoor.com. For the latest economic research, subscribe to Glassdoor Economic Research.