More competition has entered the job market. And with unemployment rates at their lowest since the 1970s, it can be difficult for employers to find the specific skills they’re looking for. It doesn’t help that many jobseekers end up ghosting employers dying to hire them. However, candidates in some industries are more likely than others to leave potential bosses hanging.
Ghosting, of course, is a term popularised in the online dating scene where a potential love interest stops replying to messages. It works quite similarly in the modern workplace with jobseekers in business, finance and legal being the biggest offenders with 24% of them having ghosted an employer, according to a survey of 1,257 full-time employees in a range of professional fields conducted by The Knowledge Academy, the education and training company. They were followed closely by advertising and marketing sector and retail and hospitality industry, with 22% and 19% of workers in those fields having ghosted an employer respectively.
Flipping the table, 30% of employers in advertising had ghosted candidates, making it the most unreliable sector. It was followed by the finance sector where 21% of bosses had ghosted prospective employees.
Although, not all jobs contributed largely to ghosting; only 5% of both employers and prospective employees mentioned healthcare and education. The government sphere only saw 8% of employers ghosting contenders and a small 3% of applicants saying they ghosted the industry.
Ghosting, however, isn’t confined to just dating and to recruitment but is also prevalent among retailers as well. This can be to the detriment of shop owners as 65% of consumers would avoid buying from a retailer that had ghosted them after the purchase, according to a survey by Narvar, the retail-tech startup. This could take the form of failing to provide fast and reliable information about orders, predicting delivery dates or alerting customers about any delays.
It is evident a large number of employers and employees are contributing to workplace ghosting. It’s certainly enough to send a chill down our spines. 
