SHINE A LIGHT ON YOUR PROCESSES TO HELP REDUCE GHOSTING
Your candidate looks good. They’ve checked out well. You’ve exchanged some texts or emails. But the day comes for the interview—or worse, the first day on the job—and they don’t show. You write and call and get nothing. You’ve been ghosted. Unfortunately, most people in organizations know about this phenomenon from experience. It’s so com- mon that the Federal Reserve Bank of Chi- cago added the term to its “Beige Book,” a noted reference on employment trends. An Indeed survey says you’re not alone
in the dark. The online job board company reports that most employers say it has only become a serious problem in the past two years, but it’s a big one: 83 percent of em- ployers said they’d been ghosted. And in senior living? In a quick poll taken at
an Argentum webinar on the subject, 59 per- cent called it a “major issue.” Although nei- ther poll is sound enough for science, both give an indication of the extent of the problem. Articles and experts have weighed in on
possible causes: generational behavior, peo- ple’s lives moving faster, mobile communica- tion, the tight labor market, all of the above. But key to preventing it, experts say, is ex- amining hiring processes and practices with a goal of getting and keeping engagement.
Make the process dynamic The Indeed survey showed “hiring process was too slow and too long” as the top com- plaint, no matter what the age. Among the 18- to 24-year-old group, 27 percent got im- patient, compared with 18 percent of the 45- to 65-year-old group. “This suggests younger job seekers have
different expectations of how much time the recruitment process takes, whereas older generations might have a more realistic un- derstanding (or they’re simply in less of a hurry),” Indeed reported.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
ARGENTUM.ORG 13 The experts in Argentum’s webinar con-
cur. “With the tough labor market, a lot of the candidates will drop out of the process,” said Anthony Ormsbee-Hale, vice president of people operations at Civitas Senior Living and a former community executive director. “If it’s redundant, if it’s time-consuming,
if it’s not mobile-friendly, then you’ll see a significant drop-off rate from your ‘website visit’ to your ‘application completed by’ scores.” Yet many steps in the senior living hir-
ing process, such as TB tests or getting an idea of a person’s capacity for caring, can’t happen fast. To counter this, Civitas works in stages.
It starts the process quickly, collecting basic information and a resume. If a candidate doesn’t have a resume, there’s an online re- sume builder right there to help create one. Screenings, references, and other checks also go in stages.
The multiple contacts and touchpoints
give the potential employer more opportu- nities to show they care—and won’t leave a candidate going through long periods of wondering what’s happening.
It’s not about generations There’s a widespread perception that ghost- ing is done only by young people. But the Indeed survey and other sources on the subject say that’s not quite accurate, though younger people do tend to do it more often. The Indeed survey reported a good percent- age of younger people ghosted because they simply didn’t know what to do or how to say the words. One no-show to a digital company had a
friend call the employer with the news that the “ghost” had died, BBC World Service Business Daily reported. (He was later ex- posed, via a social media post.) The BBC also reported that in Japan—strongly a
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