What happens when recruiters ghost graduates?

@Graduate_Coach, the UK’s leading graduate career and interview coaching company partnered up with Future Learn to create a course called: “How To Get A Graduate Job”.  

The launch was timely as it coincided with the class of 2020 entering the job market during these turbulent times. Pre-COVID, 80 graduates were competing for every job. Now, that number has skyrocketed to 230.

The free course has been designed to emphasise the importance of employability skills and the need to demonstrate them at every stage of the application process.

Over 3000+ learners have enrolled from 126 countries and the course is receiving 5star reviews

In one of the course discussions, Chris Davies, the founder of Graduate Coach, encouraged learners to share what they find most difficult about the job application process. 

He noticed a key theme. Several learners shared their experiences of being ghosted by recruiters.

As a graduate coach with 20+ years of experience, Chris knows the detrimental effect being rejected can have on graduates’ mental health and wellbeing. 

It knocks their confidence and self-esteem which leads to a downwards spiral as these two attributes are key when job hunting. 

Being ghosted in any context is a dreadful feeling. Nobody likes to be rejected, but being rejected with no explanation or closure makes things 10x worse. 

Whilst we can appreciate the sheer volume of applications recruiters have to sift through, with the technology we have access to today, sending out an email informing the candidate that their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion seems feasible. 

Here’s what some of the learners had to say: 

• “It’s discouraging when you try to find a job for so long and don’t get any responses or acknowledgement. It makes it feel like the efforts are going to waste”. 
• “I find it difficult to decide what jobs to apply for, the lengthy job application process and I find it upsetting when companies do not reply to job applications”.
• “What I find really frustrating is that after spending plenty of valuable time filling up applications, in most cases I don’t even get an email from the company saying I’m not considered for the role I have applied for. It can be very hard to remain optimistic when you are not even acknowledged”.
• “In my journey so far, the most difficult part of the job hunt/search is that some companies, schools, corporate bodies and corporate ministries receive your mail and don’t mail back. Sometimes, they mail back promising to get back to you but they don’t get back to you. And that’s very challenging and discouraging. Sometimes the requirement for years experience can be discouraging too”. 

Further research amongst 500 recent graduates revealed that over 95% had been ghosted at least once, and many several times.