What Should a Corporate Recruiter Get Paid?

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I’ve had some very specific conversations over the past month on corporate Recruiter compensation. It’s a hot subject when it’s brought up because everyone believes they are worth more than what they are for the most part.

Recruiter compensation is and has always been all over the board. There are so many variables that impact it, including industry, company size, market, what tools the recruiter has available, type of recruiting, expectations, how much the function is segmented, etc. I can find great recruiters right now in America that make between $65,000 and over $200,000. The problem is, I can’t tell you that the $200,000 recruiter is any better than the $65,000!

Therein lies the problem!

Your value or worth as a recruiter is what you can get paid.

I’ve lost really good recruiters in my career who came to me and said, “Hey, Company XYZ is going to pay me 25% more than you are!” At which I’ve got to make a decision. Do I believe this person is worth 25% more, or can I get someone of equal or great value for the same price or less than the increase in expense?

Let’s put it another way. Let’s say I’m paying each recruiter $75K, and a recruiter comes to me and says, “I’ve got an offer for $125,000.” What I’m really trying to decide on is $50,000. What can I get for that additional $50K? I already know what I’m getting for $75K. Is this recruiter going to give me $50K more in value if I match the offer? Most likely, no, since I’m probably getting everything I’m getting now. But, if I hired two recruiters for $62,500 each, that equals $125K. Will i get more from those two recruiters than I’m getting from my one at $75,000 (or the new salary of $125K)? I probably will get more with two!

Why am I not paying a corporate recruiter a ridiculously high salary?

  1. Upwards of 50% of the positions they fill will be internal hires on average.
  2. The vast majority don’t hunt. They post jobs, and their corporate brand fills the funnel with viable candidates. They are administering the recruiting process.
  3. Most are not held accountable to hard recruiting metrics.
  4. The vast majority, based on research, are not delivering a better-than-average candidate experience.
  5. You do not see a discernible difference in performance across corporate recruiters working in the same function.

Okay, just tell us what we should be paying a Corporate Recruiter!

Now that you can actually recruit anywhere, market compensation shouldn’t be a thing, but it’s still a thing. That being said, if you take market compensation out of it, I think you can find really great generalist corporate recruiters for $85k. People who actually find talent, fill positions, follow up well, and flat-out move the TA needle.

How did I come up with this very scientific number?

First, this is way over the salary data on recruiting you’ll pull off the internet, but it will still basically show the average recruiter’s salary in the $60K range. But that takes in a lot of factors, including the millions of entry-level agency recruiters who start with bases way less than $60K.

I’ve spoken to so many corporate recruiters who got laid off and corporate recruiting leaders who have been laying off $100K+ corporate recruiters and finding out once they are gone that they weren’t really worth that kind of money. Now, I don’t blame the recruiters for this! Girl, if you can get paid, go get paid! I’m your biggest fan! But also, don’t come crying when you get laid off because you were overcompensated for all that time.

Here’s the thing – you have top recruiters who are worth every single penny you pay them. Those are literally about 2-3% of recruiters. The problem is every single recruiter believes they are in the top 2-3%. They aren’t. Take a look at your own team. You most likely have a bunch of “B” players who are fine but shouldn’t be getting top dollar. You can hire a million of these recruiters. They are all the same.

There is a law of recruiting productivity that comes into play in every recruiter’s life. You can only do so much and deliver so many hires. Once you get to the top of the pay scale and you are basically doing the same as someone at the middle or bottom of the pay scale, you no longer seem like a great buy. Top pay requires the top performance. Very few recruiters getting top pay are doing exponentially more than those getting paid much lower.

I say $85K because I know if you’re in the Midwest, you can find great talent for $85K. Also, if you allow recruiters to work remotely, you can get great recruiters for $85K. You can also get great recruiters starting out for $65K, but they’ll soon start producing, and you won’t keep them for $65K.

You should be using performance compensation for Corporate Recruiters!

Another miss, in my opinion, is corporate TA leaders are not using performance pay strategies with their teams. I was told by one TA leader that she couldn’t do that! I then asked if they used performance compensation with their sales team, which they did. It’s not that you can’t. It’s that you are unwilling to change or figure out a better way.

PRO TIP – Your best recruiters, by productivity (filling jobs), should be making exponentially more than your worst recruiters. Yes, even in a corporate setting. You should not be paying recruiters based on tenure. Tenure doesn’t matter in recruiting. Filling positions does.

I believe that corporate recruiters should be working on a 2/3 base salary and 1/3 performance compensation. This means that the total for a solid performing recruiter would land in that $85K range. Your best recruiters should be able to go above that range because they’ll make more in performance compensation.

I’ve seen agency recruiters who can and have made well above $150K, and some IT agency folks in the valley upwards of $500k and more, the same for executive agency folks. Corporate recruiting is a different game and you don’t need to pay $150-$200K+ salaries to get great performance.

Alright, corporate recruiters, take your shot and kill me in the comments!

The UAW is making its last stand, but really it’s already dead!

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I’ve never been a fan of unions. I grew up with many grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents who belonged to unions. One of my first jobs forced me to join a union and pay dues. Since I was “summer help,” I had to pay full union dues, but I got no protections or benefits from the union. I was told that specifically. I was then repeatedly threatened by union members to slow down my work, even though I was struggling to barely keep up with what was expected.

In Michigan, you are surrounded by organized labor, mostly UAW. Generations are raised only knowing two sides: labor and management. Kind of reminds you of a two-party system in politics, almost like the two are working together to keep everyone in line!

The reality is that we once lived in a time when companies took advantage of workers and did horrible things—locked workers in unsafe working environments. Paid low wages, one could barely survive. Unions had a time and place when they protected workers. Unions no longer do that. Labor is too competitive. The Big 3 vehicle companies now struggle to hire hourly workers. They are getting their lunch handed to them by foreign manufacturers and Tesla.

Union membership is at an all-time low, and it continues to decrease and will decrease because Unions have reached the point where they no longer make companies competitive. In fact, they work in the exact opposite direction. They work to make corporations as least competitive as they can make them without going under, and in many cases, they put them under.

We used to have strikes when companies treated workers like shit. Unions then began to realize strikes aren’t good for business, which is why you barely see them happen anymore. You cost millions, if not billions of dollars, to the companies you are supposed to be partnering with, and that makes the next negotiation really hard. Kind of hard to negotiate for more when there isn’t more.

The UAW knows this, but when you have union leaders who are constantly stealing union dues and doing other bad stuff, you have to take the focus off of your own bad deeds and do something spectacularly stupid, like striking an industry that is going through a major transformation.

But Tim! These CEOs are making millions of dollars per year!

Yep. They are. Do I think that’s right? In some cases, maybe. In most cases, no way. It’s outrageous. Two wrongs don’t make a right, my grandma always said.

We tend to forget that a hundred years ago, when you worked until you were 65, if you lived that long, a company could afford to pay you a generous retirement because if you did make it to retirement, you were most likely dead soon after. That’s a reality. Today, if you retire after thirty years of working an hourly job, you’ll probably live another thirty. Hello, Teacher’s Unions have entered the chat…

Organizations. Companies. Society. Can not survive on that math. It turns upside down where you know 80 cents of every school budgeted dollar going to pay for retirement and benefits of teachers and not educating kids.

What’s the solution? Hell, if I know, but it’s not continuing down this path, thinking that it’s all just magically going to work out in the end. News Flash – it won’t. It ends in bankruptcy. The UAW will eventually bankrupt the Big 3, and all those members and former members who are getting benefits will be high left and dry. I know this because this cycle continues to repeat itself with unions. This is why unions are dying across the world. The system doesn’t work.

The UAW is the walking dead at this point. They fail to realize that the entire auto industry is going through fundamental change, and because these companies have seen record profits, they feel like it’s time for them to get some, which I can understand the desire for. But getting what they are asking for now will hasten the inevitable.

Unions, at one point, could claim they have the most productive and best-trained workers. They can no longer claim this and haven’t been able to in a long time. Now, all they can claim is they have the most entitled workers. I don’t blame the workers. They’ve been taught this by a corrupt complex of people who got rich off their labor. No, not management and CEOs, but their own union leadership.

At some point, the strike will stop. The UAW will claim victory. The truth is they are a dying vestige of time long gone. Because of demographics, workers have the power and will continue to have the power for a long time. Younger generations don’t believe they need older people to represent their best interests for a portion of their wages. That concept seems silly to them. Why give someone else your money when you have the power?

I’m Back!!!

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Some of you might have noticed it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I was writing my second book, The Talent Fix, Vol. 2! The new book should be released in April 2024, and the plan is to launch it at the SHRM Talent Conference in Las Vegas!

Last week, I was in Nashville at RecFest USA – the first time RecFest has come to America. RecFest is a large outdoor recruiting festival, and it’s such a fun and interactive event. I can’t wait for next year’s event, and I’ll definitely be taking my full team to Nashville to experience RecFest!

What was the tea coming out of RecFest?

  • Recruiters and Recruiting leaders out of work – This was a little strange for me to hear because in reality, this is very industry-specific. The tech industry has gotten hit hard with layoffs, and TA teams are some of the first to go. At the same time, many of those companies had TA teams that were way too big for the hiring they were doing. So, some of this is simple right-sizing. The problem is, you had recruiters making $150-$200K, and they honestly believe they are worth that much. They aren’t. The downturn is hard on people who were making monopoly money and not really performing at that level.
  • AI was all the talk, but it was mostly talk. My friend Matt Charney says roughly 69% of TA teams currently do not have AI in their recruiting tech stack. I think some of their vendors would disagree with this as most vendors are utilizing machine learning, but the tech nerds would argue this isn’t really AI! AI will transform how we recruit talent, but this will be an evolution that will take years, and most of the true AI will be buried in your tech in a way you won’t even notice most of the tactical pieces of recruiting going away until one day you wake up and we no longer do tactical work in recruiting.
  • There’s a major Candidate and Employer Disconnect. I ran across a GenZ/Millennial candidate panel, and it was laughable listening to it. Candidates complain that they get ghosted and don’t get great feedback. They also are unapologetic about applying for 300 positions in 30 minutes. TA pros complain about being ghosted and do not understand why candidates don’t reply to their spam emails. The Talent Board still shows that 47% of candidates still don’t even get dispositioned for the positions they apply for. Both sides feel wronged, and neither side is willing to take any responsibility for the behaviors. All this means is that the candidates who act professional and the TA pros who act professional will stand out and be rare in today’s world.
  • There is still a lot of talk about DEI, but the talk is changing. If we are honest with each other, the entire DEI talk began as simply we need more black faces in our organization. That started probably twenty years ago. Since then, the world has changed a bunch, and the conversation amongst HR and TA pros has evolved, but in reality, most of the C-suite still sees this as counting faces. The faces might have expanded to include more, but we still are stuck in so many areas. We still are not willing to use data around DEI and have real conversations about what is possible and what is just posturing.
  • Everyone is a unique and special butterfly. Which, for all intents and purposes, makes no one unique and special. We now have Trans Recruiters and Nero-divergent Recruiters and Furry Recruiters and fill in the blank of whatever you are recruiter. If you are a Gay Recruiter today, sorry, you’re just a recruiter! Oh wait, that’s right, we are all just recruiters! Honestly, the next evolution is this will be my AI telling me what kind of recruiter they are! Just fucking recruit! Okay, I say this, but honestly, this is also the solution to more inclusive recruiting. Want more female engineers? Hire females to recruit engineers. Want more Black Sales Reps? Hire Black Recruiters to recruit your sales reps. Want more military hires? Hire former military professionals and teach them how to recruit. We aren’t launching spy balloons, people. This isn’t that hard!
  • Technology recruiting vendors are currently struggling to make their numbers. So, why should you care? I love to get a bargain, and right now you can get a bargain! If you’re super smart, you’ll sign a multi-year contract and lock that bargain in for when it will no longer be a bargain! Right now, you have some major negotiating power if you are in the market for technology or if you’re getting pushed to sign your next contract. Vendors are super competitive with their pricing at this moment.

That’s what I got today.

Moving forward for the rest of the year, I’m going to be hitting the reviews and updates hard on the recruiting technology market. There’s a lot of stuff being developed and the space is moving really fast again with AI development, so my hope is I can help keep you all informed on what’s new and hot and worth your money!

Welcome back!

The #1 Trend in HR, in the world, is the Hiring Crisis!

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For many of us, it probably feels like we’ve been in a staffing crisis for half a decade. Before the pandemic, it was very hard to hire and then the pandemic, in many ways, made it even more difficult. The reality, though, is the current US staffing crisis is hitting employers unevenly.

Prior to 2019-2020, the staffing crisis was thought to be in the technology space, primarily. But if you are in healthcare, trucking, or skilled trades hiring you also felt that crisis in a big way. Today, technology doesn’t seem like it’s in a crisis, but it’s still hard to hire great tech talent. Healthcare is still hurting, no one can find teachers, local, state, and federal government can’t hire, the military is having massive trouble hiring civilians, and hospitality and dining are getting killed.

It’s 2023 and we have a massive hiring crisis that most non-HR and Talent pros don’t understand because the media doesn’t talk about the reality. If it bleeds, it leads, so let’s talk about MASSIVE LAYOFFS! In reality, layoffs are at a predictable historical amount as compared to other years. We don’t have a layoff problem, we have certain industries that overhired for years using free money and banker came calling.

I did a webcast a few weeks ago on my mid-year HR trends. My friends, Madeline Laurano and Kyle Lagunas, are doing their mid-year trend webinar today. Neither of us talked about a trend being a hiring crisis! Why?

A crisis is something that is short-term in nature. We’ll find a solution and we’ll solve our crisis. Our hiring issues are not short-term in nature. Hiring was hard. It’s getting harder. It will continue to get harder. It will ultimately cost our economy because we don’t have enough workers. Politicians don’t care. They don’t care because they love having 9 million open jobs. You know what a politician doesn’t want to see, no jobs open! Those politicians, regardless of party, lose their re-election.

There is no end in sight to how hard it is to hire great talent!

Our demographics are working against us. We are not making enough humans to replace the workers we are losing. There are only 3 potential solutions that I can think of:

1 – Make more babies! Like, start paying your employees to go home and have sex and make babies! Heck let them have sex in the stairwells like they did at Uber! Uber got crushed for what might be the best replacement strategy of all time. I’m only partly joking. Our younger workers are not having enough babies and it’s mostly because of how expensive it is.

2- Immigration reform! This is another tough one because neither Democrats nor GOP want to tackle this. It’s a lose-lose situation. But we need many more skilled and unskilled immigrants let into this country! We need this changed today. We need our CEOs of companies to rattle politicians’ cages and start putting money toward those politicians who will actually do something.

3 – Technology/Automation/Robots! This is already happening in the natural course of things. We hear how AI will kill us and save us every day. What we need it to do is make one human into 2 or 3 humans. The promise of 10X humans is a great story, but I’ll take a 2X human first!

There will be winners and losers in this crisis.

Some organizations will take a victors mentality to this fight and find ways to attract and hire more talent. They build better hiring machines. They’ll lay out a better vision for their employees who will stay longer and work harder. They experiment more in delivering the experiences that both candidates and employees desire.

If you’re in HR and TA right now you need to make one thing very clear to your organization. There is a big problem in our world. There isn’t enough talent to go around. Our battle is to get our fair share of talent and hang on to the talent we have. That is the only battle we care about. That is the only “trend” that matters.

DisruptHR Lansing 3.0 Tickets On Sale Now!

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You already know the deal for those who have been to a DisruptHR event. Get your tickets now before they sell out, and you can’t come! It’s 6 pm, Thursday, September 21st, at The Graduate in East Lansing, and it’s going to be a party!!

Buy DisruptHR Lansing Tickets!

For our first-timers! What’s DisruptHR?

– 5-minute HR-inspired talks by people like us – nerdy HR pros who love what we do! We’ll do 12-14 talks, so it’s a quick two-hour evening. It can be longer if you come to the after-party!

– The talks are fast and fun. Some will make you laugh. Some make you cry. Some will inspire you. We support every brave soul who comes to the stage!

– Each talk has a slide deck of 20 slides that auto-move every 15 seconds. So, there’s always a chance for a train wreck!

– It’s a free open bar! What could go wrong? HR pros. Unlimited drinks. Fast presentations.

I genuinely believe it might be the best HR team-building activity out there. You learn something. You have fun. You can network with a fantastic community of HR professionals in the Greater Lansing Area.

DisruptHR was developed to build an HR community at a local level. It’s about developing ourselves and strengthening our ties to our profession and each other. We look to rise all boats.

Please come join us on Thursday, September 21st, at The Graduate in downtown East Lansing. The doors and bar open at 6 pm. Talks begin at 7 pm. The after-party starts at 9 pm!

Want to get a feel for what the night will look like? Here’s a link to all the DisruptHR Talks that have been done over the years.

Watch
Thousands of previous DisruptHR Talks from around the globe.

DisruptHR runs events in over 150 cities globally. This is our third event in Lansing, and we like to think ours is the best!

The DisruptHR Lansing Site.

What does it mean to be a male leader in today’s business world?

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This is a complex subject to write about because it’s a hot-button issue for so many. Men still make up 2/3 of Congress. There have only been male US Presidents. Roughly 90% of the Fortune 500 have male CEOs. All that being said, over the past few decades women have made some tremendous strides professionally, and those strides are accelerating.

For every 74 males who receive a college degree today, 100 women receive their degree, and the gap is growing. Men account for 70% of the decline in college enrollment. 50% of women now outearn their male partners. That number was 4% in 1960. Women now hold 50.04% of all jobs in the US (Women in Canada hold 61%). Pay equity is still an issue. In 1980 women were paid 40% less than men. Today that number is 15.5% in some fields, like Software Engineering, pay equity has flipped to favor women over men.

As I said, this is a complex issue because so much work still needs to be done to elevate women. A successful female business owner raised me. When my mother started her business is was rare for women to own businesses. Today over ten million women are business owners.

All of this also doesn’t change the fact that the role of men in work is also drastically changing during this time. Both of these concepts can be true at the same time. The Washington Post recently had an article discussing the issue of these changes to men: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness by Christine Emba. Here are some takeaways from the article:

“It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing: Finally, the freer sex is being held to a higher standard.

Even so, not all of the changes that have led us to this moment are unequivocally positive. And if left unaddressed, the current confusion of men and boys will have destructive social outcomes, in the form of resentment and radicalization.

The truth is that most women still want to have intimate relationships with good men. And even those who don’t still want their sons, brothers, fathers and friends to live good lives.

The old script for masculinity might be on its way out. It’s time we replaced it with something better...

…for all their problems, the strict gender roles of the past did give boys a script for how to be a man…People need codes for how to be human. And when those aren’t easily found, they’ll take whatever is offered, no matter what else is attached.“

What is a good definition of new masculinity?

The phrase “toxic masculinity” gets thrown around too much in today’s world. Yes, there are traits of men that are historically toxic. But it’s also a mind-f*ck we are throwing on heterosexual young men who still hold the majority of roles in our society as men. Don’t act like a “man,” but women are only attracted to you if you act like a “man.”

More from the Washington Post article:

“This is especially compelling in a moment when many young men feel their difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don’t feel part of. For young men in particular, the assumption of a world built to serve their sex doesn’t align with their lived experience, where girls out-achieve them from pre-K to post-graduate studies and “men are trash” is an acceptable joke...

I’m convinced that men are in a crisis. And I strongly suspect that ending it will require a positive vision of what masculinity entails that is particular — that is, neither neutral nor interchangeable with femininity. Still, I find myself reluctant to fully articulate one. There’s a reason a lot of the writing on the crisis in masculinity ends at the diagnosis stage…

“Where I think this conversation has come off the tracks is where being a man is essentially trying to ignore all masculinity and act more like a woman. And even some women who say that — they don’t want to have sex with those guys. They may believe they’re right, and think it’s a good narrative, but they don’t want to partner with them.”

I, a heterosexual woman, cringed in recognition.

“And so men should think, ‘I want to take advantage of my maleness. I want to be aggressive, I want to set goals, go hard at it. I want to be physically really strong. I want to take care of myself.’”

Galloway leaned into the screen. “My view is that, for masculinity, a decent place to start is garnering the skills and strength that you can advocate for and protect others with. If you’re really strong and smart, you will garner enough power, influence, and kindness to begin protecting others. That is it. Full stop. Real men protect other people.”

I like Galloway’s definition of “real men”! Real men protect others because it positively shapes behavior. It’s easy for men to follow.

Many people don’t see this as a crisis. Being a dad of three young men, I try to see the trends before it’s too late. A friend of mine is keen on saying “Idle men are bad business for America.” We are heading down that slippery slope.

Society has gotten comfortable in not supporting men. The view is women need support, but men have had such a historical headstart they don’t need support. All of our young people, regardless of gender, need our support. We should not diminish any of them and their potential in our societal structures. The world needs men who are masculine and care for others as much as the world needs strong, feminine women. These are not competing forces. They should be complimenting forces.

I tried not to make this a gender issue, but it’s complex. In our world today it’s not just male and female anymore. My intent for writing this was to share an insightful article by a really good writer, Christine Emba. I encourage you to read the piece as it goes much deeper than the few pieces I shared here. In the end, we are quickly going down a path that ignores men. While men still hold so much power, we can see a horizon where that won’t be the case. My hope is that women will do a much better job in the next century in holding that power than men did previously.

Working from home is not more productive for most people!

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The WFH home army hates to hear this! Yikes! But it’s true. While a small percentage of workers, overall, around 10% are actually more productive, the vast majority of people just don’t have the self-awareness and drive to be as productive as they are when they are in an environment that is designed to have them do work.

The media will never tell you this because it’s not popular and won’t get clicked.

Do you know what has happened since the beginning of the pandemic? The golf industry has exploded! Some Stanford researchers, who golfed, started to realize that the golf courses seemed really busy. Like really, really, busy! And these courses were busy during times when they shouldn’t be busy, like mid-afternoon on a Wednesday. You know, the time when folks should be working!

They discovered they could use satellite technology paired with GPS and cell phone data to map out traffic at golf courses. This gave them a picture of what this looked like pre-pandemic and what it looks like today. What do you think they found?

First, you have to understand that prior to the pandemic the golf industry was hurting. Average rounds of golf were down and trending down year over year for a long time. They had this old white guy problem. Meaning old white guys were the biggest participants in golf, and that demographic was getting older and dying.

Here’s what Stanford discovered about working from home and golf:

  • There was an 83% increase in mid-week day golfing from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic. All those WFH folks weren’t actually working all they said they were working!
  • There was a 278% increase at 4 pm. So, we have some hope for those who maybe just were cutting out a little early.
  • The pandemic has led to a golf boom with folks wanting to get outside, but weekend trips to courses were far less of an increase to weekday visits. So, yes, more people are golfing overall due to the pandemic, but weekday golf has exploded with WFH.

I know! I know! This is only one small little study. I’m sure you’re still WAY more productive working at home than you were in the office. But you’re not, or most likely you’re not, but that’s just because you have low self-awareness!

I think most of us just get confused with short-term productivity vs. long-term sustained productivity. The BLS shows productivity of workers has dropped off a cliff, so we really can’t make the WFH productivity argument any longer. I do think for short-term bursts of productivity working from home or someplace where you don’t get interrupted can make you feel way more productive. But day in, day out, over the long haul, working around others who are working will help you sustain your productivity.

I know you hate to hear this. Working at home is so lovely! Plus, you get those great golf tee times during the day!

5 Mid-Year HR Trends You Should Be Thinking About for 2024!!

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Is the world moving faster after the pandemic or is it just me?! It seems like for all the bad that Covid brought, it did make us slow down a bit. Now, we are back on the treadmill running faster than ever.

I’m sitting down this week and doing a live webinar (if you can’t make the live time, just sign up and we can send you the recording) discussing the biggest trends in HR and Talent Acquisition that are happening right now but that will also have a tremendous impact to our 2024 planning!

Click here to register for the HR Trends Webinar

The webcast will be live on Wednesday, July 19 at 3 pm EST.

Shout out to the amazing team at Pillar for making this happen…

Here are some more details.

We’re halfway through 2023 (crazy, right?!), so now seems like the perfect time to reflect on the top 5 trends that have shaped the year thus far. And who better to do it with than Tim Sackett, President of HRU Technical Resources & top 100 Global HR Tech Influencer?! Join us as we sit down with Tim to discuss what is trending today in the HR & talent acquisition space and what he sees as the trends that will continue into 2024 and beyond.

Here’s what you can learn during the session:

  • Practical strategies to leverage these trends for maximum impact
  • How to gain a competitive edge by understanding how these trends can transform your HR/TA practices
  • The key drivers shaping the way organizations attract, engage, and retain talent

…& more! Looking forward to seeing you on July 19th as we have the opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s most respected thought leaders! It’s also been a year since we launched our webinar series with Tim himself, so join us as we celebrate our webinar series 1-year anniversary.

Click here to register for the HR Trends Webinar

The Reason You Got Ghosted by a Candidate!

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Yesterday I answered a question from a candidate about why an employer ghosted them after their interview. Many readers were upset because they were also getting ghosted by candidates. In fact, like all the time, way more than then they would ever ghost a candidate. Oh, two wrongs do make a right!

All ghosting is sh*tty behavior by candidates and by those of us who hire. Period.

The reality is that this is hard to admit, and as a professional, we own a portion of the candidate ghosting. Are candidates awful for doing it in the first place? Yes. I will not let them off the hook. But I also only control what I can control, and that is my process, behaviors, etc.

Why are candidates ghosting us?

1. We are moving too fast. Wait, what?! We are told to move fast because that’s what candidates want!? Yes, but when you move so fast, the candidates don’t really know you (your company and you personally), the job, the boss, or the reasons why they should come and interview. It all doesn’t seem real. So, it becomes easy to just not show up. (Que Taylor Swift – We need to slow down!)

2. We aren’t giving candidates a way to easily tell us they moved on with another offer. Hourly candidates, especially, are moving fast and have multiple offers. You might have scheduled them for an interview later in the week, but they have already decided to go with another offer. While we gave them instructions on where to go and when we could have made it easier for them to opt out. Many organizations are using auto-scheduling tools like Paradox, which sends reminders and lets candidates choose to reschedule or cancel via text. Those organizations get significantly less ghosting!

3. We believe that once a candidate schedules an interview, our job is done. The most powerful human emotion in existence is being wanted by others. Candidates come to you for a number of reasons, all of which they can most likely get from someone else as well. But, you showing them more desirable than someone else is a key to great talent attraction. You still need to do that with your messaging even after the interview is scheduled.

4. We allow it to happen without any ramifications. (Okay, this might be a bit aggressive!) What if, every time a candidate ghosted you for an interview, you posted their picture and details on social media!? Yikes! Right?! “This is Tim Sackett, a cute redhead. He ghosted us for an interview yesterday at 3 pm. If you see him, tell him we are thinking about him!” Do you think it would get noticed? Heck, yes, it would!

5. We are making it too easy for candidates to interview. This is a catch-22. We need talent, so we reduce every roadblock possible for candidates. It’s so easy. Most don’t care if they burn the bridge or not. That is truly why employee referrals are so valuable for most employers. Referrals are far less likely to burn a bridge. That might be a trick to use. Ask a candidate: Do you know anyone at our company? Begin to tie the personal connection back to them, and they will be far less likely to ghost. Also, make it super hard to get an interview, and people will hold it as a higher value! “Only 1% of people who apply to our company ever get an interview! it’s a rare thing we offer to only the top candidates.” If you knew that was the case, you would show up for that interview!

I think most of the candidate ghosting is truly reflective of the poor morals and values of the people who are doing it. You made a commitment to someone. You keep that commitment, or at the “very” least, you inform that person you will no longer be able to keep that commitment. It’s a pretty basic human condition. Those who ghost probably had crappy parents and mentors in their life who didn’t teach them the basics. I’ve never once spoken to or met an upstanding individual who thought highly of themselves that would ghost. High-quality people don’t ghost. Low-quality people do.

People don’t like to hear that. They want to talk about circumstances and bad employers, etc. The reality is high-quality people will contact someone and let them know they no longer want to be considered, regardless of how crappy the employer may or may not be. Low-quality people just don’t show up. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. I’m just telling you the truth. You already know.

If you’re an employer and you ghost candidates after interviews – You (not your organization). You, personally, are of low quality, just like the candidates who ghost you. I don’t like to hire low-quality people. But I also want to give every opportunity for a low-quality person to become a high-quality person.

The Reason You Got Ghosted After Your Interview

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Dear Timmy,

I recently applied for a position that I’m perfect for! A recruiter from the company contacted me and scheduled me for an interview with the manager. I went, the interview was a little over an hour, and it went great! I immediately followed up with an email to the recruiter and the manager thanking them, but since then, I’ve heard nothing, and it’s been weeks. I’ve sent follow-up emails to both the recruiter and the manager, and I’ve gotten no reply.

What should I do? Why do companies do this to candidates? I would rather they just tell me they aren’t interested than have them say nothing at all!

The Ghost Candidate

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Dear Ghost,

There are a number of reasons that recruiters and hiring managers ghost candidates, and none of them are good!

Here’s a short list of some of these reasons:

– They hated you and hope you go away when they ghost you because the conflict is uncomfortable.

– They like you, but not as much as another candidate. They’re trying to talk into the job but want to leave you on the back burner, but they’re idiots and don’t know how to do this properly.

– They decided to promote someone internally, and they don’t care about candidate experience enough to tell you they went in another direction.

– They have a completely broken recruitment process and might still be going through it believing you’re just as happy as a pig in shi…

– They think they communicated to you electronically to bug off through their ATS, but they haven’t audited the process to know this isn’t working.

– The recruiter got fired, and no one picked up the process.

I would love to tell you that ghosting candidates are a rare thing, but it’s not! It happens all the time! There is never a reason to ghost a candidate, ever! Sometimes I believe candidates get ghosted by recruiters because hiring managers don’t give feedback, but that still isn’t an excuse I would accept. At least tell the candidate that!

Look, I’ve ghosted people. At conference cocktail parties, I’ve been known to ghost my way right back up to my room and go to sleep! When it comes to candidates, I don’t ghost! I would rather tell them the truth so they don’t keep coming back around unless I want them to come back around.

I think most recruiters ghost candidates because they’re in over their heads with the amount of work they have, and they mean to get back to people but just don’t have the time. When you’re in firefighting mode, you tend to only communicate with the candidates you want, not the ones you don’t. Is this good practice? Heck, no! But when you’re fighting fires, you do what you have to do to stay alive.

What would I do if I was you? 

Here are a few ideas to try if you really want to know the truth:

1. Send a handwritten letter to the CEO of the company briefly explaining your experience and what outcome you would like.

2. Go on Twitter, and in 140 characters, send a shot across the bow! “XYZ Co. I interviewed two weeks ago and still haven’t heard anything! Can you help me!?” (t will work on Facebook as well!)

3. Write a post about your experience on LinkedIn and tag the recruiter and the recruiter’s boss.

4. Take the hint and go find a company that truly values you and your talent! If the organization and this manager treat candidates like this, imagine how you’ll be treated as an employee.