In today’s topsy-turvy job market, a strange new thing is happening. Employers are increasingly grumbling about job seekers “ghosting” them. These job candidates just don’t show up for their scheduled interviews. And in some cases, new hires accept a job only to disappear....Employers, unsurprisingly, do not like this. It’s rude, they say, and unprofessional. And sure, it is. But employers have been doing this to workers for years, and their hand-wringing didn’t start until the tables were turned.For years I’ve fielded questions from job seekers frustrated at being ghosted by job interviewers. They would take time off from work, maybe buy a new suit, spend time interviewing—often doing second, third, and even fourth rounds of interviews—and then never hear from the employer again. They’d politely inquire about the status of their application and just get silence back. Or they would make time for a phone interview—scheduled at the employer’s behest—and the call would never come. When they’d try to get in touch about rescheduling … crickets. It’s been so endemic that I’ve long advised job seekers to expect never to hear back from employers, and to simply see it as an unavoidable part of job searching.
It's not clear to me how much true "ghosting" happens in the chemical enterprise. We hear about it enough from both academic and industrial applicants to the point that it's clear it still happens in the time when
Still, I would like it to be less than 5%, and it's pretty darn clear that it happens at rates far higher than that. If I could do one thing with my (lol) influence, it would be to end this practice in the American chemical enterprise, and that any and all job applications would be met with a response within 90 days of application or sooner.
