By Patricia Bexis, Senior Consultant
It’s the start of the Fall job search season, and with Halloween just around the corner, ghosts of the “trick or treat” variety might not be the only ones you encounter.
As you kick off your job search and with the market continuing to pick up after summer holidays, it is important to know how to handle being ghosted after an interview. Unfortunately, this happens more often than we think – so if you find yourself being ghosted, here are some helpful tips to help manage the situation.
1. Have you sent a thank you note?
Thank you notes after an interview should be a staple in any job seekers toolkit. In this scenario, if you forgot to send a thank you note and it has been longer than expected for the hiring team to get back to you – make sure to send a thank you note and add in a follow up during that message. It shows you are still interested and appreciative of the time the team took to interview you in the first place. Not only are thank you notes a good practice in general for any interview round, but it is an easy way to tie in a strategic follow up if you haven’t heard back.
2. Follow ups through various mediums
If you have sent one or two follow up emails and have not heard back you could take an opportunity to follow up with the individual with a quick call or LinkedIn message. Be cautious with this method as you don’t want to send too many follow ups at once – there is a fine line between looking serious and interested in the role and bombarding a hiring manager. If you send one thank you note/follow up note the first week and don’t hear back – you could send a LinkedIn message, call, or even send a card (yes people still do that sometimes!) as a follow up the second week.
3. Networking and leveraging contacts
Whenever you’re in job search mode we recommend leveraging your network for various reasons. In this particular case, find out if you know anyone at the company and connect with them to see if you can get any insight as to why the company might be ghosting you. This could be the information you need to decide if you should continue your follow ups or let the opportunity go.
4. Build new connections
Throughout the interview process it is important to remember that the relationships you are starting during these conversations could help you in the long-term outside of the current opportunity you are exploring. And although you are currently interviewing for a particular role, make sure to leave a good impression as the strength of your network will help you with job search success down the road. This may not directly help with being ghosted but it will help with pursuing other opportunities and keeping your options open as you move through the job searching process.
Finally, the important thing to remember if you find yourself ghosted is that most interviewers likely do not mean to ghost – sometimes projects or other high priority tasks come up, or the individual has moved forward with other candidates that are a better fit and just have missed communicating the message back to you. Although a lot of these are not ideal excuses for being ghosted, it is important to remember all of this is not personal and can sometimes happen inadvertently.
Try to continue to keep your relationships strong and build on the tips above and hopefully this will help to avoid any future potential ghosting.