Ask HN: Is it normal to be ghosted for senior position job interviews?
In the first 2 cases, I emailed the recruiter about 5~10 minutes after the interview was supposed to start, to check if I had the right meeting link (I know I did, but wanted to frame it politely). After the meeting was supposed to end, I sent another email saying that unfortunately I was not able to reach them, but that I'm still interested and would like to reschedule. Again... crickets.
In the 3rd scenario I confirmed the proposed interview date/time, but never received the meeting invite. Only after the interview was supposed to take place, the recruiter proposed a new time.
The companies mentioned are Grafana (no reply at all, not even from the head of people who I reached out to after being ignored by the recruiter 3 times), Miro (the recruiter replied several days later with a very vague non-apologetic message, but never reacted to my proposal of rescheduling) and Microsoft.
Is this a normal experience or is something weird going on?
(and yes, I know shaming companies with their name is not nice, but ghosting candidates also isn't nice imho)
105 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadIs this in the USA or Europe or somewhere else?
Anyway, seems bizarre to me to do that to any candidate, let alone a senior one (who are in demand these days).
The companies are explicitly mentioned. Are you asking about the location of the poster? If so, why?
Though apparently plenty of others have, as mentioned in sibling comments.
These are roles in Amsterdam. In case of Microsoft, I think it's a very recent development that they started hiring engineers in Amsterdam, so that might play into it.
Sorry about that, that’s just kind of how it works. It’s like looking at Expensive House A, Budget Nice House B, and Potential Cheap House C. Check out all three before deciding.
No matter what you hear about it being a hot job market, always know that it’s the company that gets the luxury of shopping around, not the candidate. It’s still a buyers market.
Personally I have not experienced this or know anyone who has (I'm in EU if it matters).
In response to the original post: In each case you refer to a recruiter. Is this an external recruiter (and always the same one) or an HR person at the company you wish to work for? If it is (an external recruiter) then I can imagine it being something that has little to do with you (Maybe the recruiter is requesting advance payment or unreasonable amounts, demanding all further communication go through them to ensure they get paid/have evidence of having "recruited" you, have terms that say they get paid if an interview takes place or whatever).
If that is not the case it seems odd to me that you wouldn't simply get some kind of message along the lines of:
"We are sorry for your inconvenience but we have already filled the position in question. The interview will no longer be necessary."
[edit]: clarification
I find it somewhat acceptable to not respond to applications (sometimes companies get too many to handle all of them, especially if they don't have a well-resourced HR dept), but intentionally not appearing on an interview should be a firing offence I believe.
I can see the Microsoft one being a routine mistake in an overloaded manual process. I have had recruiter working for a large company randomly disappear mid-process because they no longer work there. Took them a while to get back to me.
More than a year later I get an email out of the blue from google saying they saw I did great on the phone interview, when would I like to come in for the next round! LOL.. no.
So it has been happening for a long time.
But in general when dealing directly with a company I'd say: no reply to an application is completely normal, but not turning up to scheduled interview is not at all.
[edit]: If you don't trust them. It might also be advisable to ask your data be deleted and recend permission of them sending your cv, name or other data to companies.
I've been ghosted by 3rd-party recruiters since before we had the term. I've had 3rd-party recruiters make materially false claims about the job, the location, the pay bands. This is just bog standard industry behavior.
I've also had one 1st-party recruiter recruiter ghost me (oddly, from a world-famous law firm) that took the time to bring me in for on-site interviews.
Just as "go in person with a firm handshake to get a job" is a social norm of a bygone era, treating applicants with enough respect to at least send a generic "thanks for applying" is a dying norm. Folks feel they don't owe their fellow man any basic courtesies, be it replacing a shopping cart, or sending a rejection email.
But I think you are right that senior level positions also probably get a lot of submissions.
At that point you basically have 3 layers of people (Hiring Manager, HR, Recruiter), that will do their best to make it sound like something other than:
Our interviewer didn’t show up to the interview because they were still in bed/too busy with other stuff/never informed they had to interview anyone
To have it happen 3 times in a row, with different companies, seems pretty improbable though.
Keep trying OP!
* Early screen, then ghosting, not replying to my follow-up.
* Nobody turning up to the scheduled interview, then a day later an automated email thanking me for my application and asking me to pick a slot. It seemed like I was stuck in an automated loop. I later checked Glassdoor and there were loads of reports of this.
* No response to my application for 3 weeks, followed by a recruiter trying to schedule the first interview for another month from then (I managed to make it happen the next week instead).
If you have any friendly contacts at those companies (referrals), maybe they can give you a hint about what happened.
During a FAANG onsite I was given the same exact question twice and they did the wrong type of interview—so I could believe disorganization as a possibility. But I've never had someone not show in an interview, and 3 times in a row is beyond unlucky.
The hiring company could have simply had a good candidate much further along in the pipeline that signed an offer, then then company/recruiter simply forgot about OP (or choose to not address the elephant in the room, the company had multiple suitors for the role and OP was not a top contender)
If you're looking to roll a 5 or 6, do you keep rolling after getting one?
Hah. Since it happened 3/3 times, I started wondering if it was just me. As far as I'm aware there is nothing bad about me on the internet, so I don't think it's that :P
But it somewhat reassures me to read that others have been in the same boat.
This same pattern seems to be repeating a lot these days.
It's quite possible the manager who wanted the post you applied for has gone and your appointment had been forgotten about. HR would have been involved but don't like to leave their homes at the moment so this happens.
I'll raise it internally to find out what happened in this case as I care that this is not how we act.
To some degree ghosting before was at least less common, most businesses had boiler plate responses that you didn't pass the first filter they'd send out. After an interview it was expected to hear a timely response. At the very least, inform you the process is taking longer than expected, a decline, or an offer. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 10 years we see more ghosting on actual interviews.
It's just plain bad business behavior to not follow through with easy scheduling commitments like a person to person meeting. I've missed a handful of meetings I didn't reschedule prior in my entire career and all of them were emergencies (car accidents, transport issues, rushing to a hospital for a loved one, etc.) I can distinctively remember each of them.
Employee and employer relationships have always been a bit like the current culture of dating but businesses usually were the more courteous of the two relationship cultures. Now it appears ghosting people from the dating world has moved full pace into the business culture, not showing up for dates and all.
They show great candidates how they can fit culture. They show strong companies why everyone should want to join.
So - while I'm just a lowly developer I'd like to give escalating this a shot. If interested email me at bgruenbaum@microsoft.com
To reiterate: this is not normal and not representative of what an interview process looks like in Microsoft (regardless of whether you're an intern or a big-shot manager).
(This comment is just based on my experience and I'm speaking for myself and not Microsoft)