You walked out of your job interview feeling great. You clicked with your interviewer, nailed every question, ticked all their boxes. They seemed impressed and excited to work with you, and you were sure an offer was in your near future. But since then … nothing. Maybe your interviewer even assured you that you’d hear from them within a week or two, but now twice that amount of time has passed and they still haven’t made contact. What is going on?!
In 15 years of writing a work-advice column, I’ve received more letters about this experience than probably any other. It’s incredibly common to have what seems like a truly great job interview, only to never hear from the employer again — even in cases where they promised a decision within a specific time frame.
Why do employers leave candidates hanging?
An awful lot of employers simply don’t bother to contact candidates until they have something definite to say, even when they’re well past the timeline they laid out for you. That’s not a great practice, of course — ideally they’d write back to say, for example, “Things are taking longer than we expected, but I should be in touch in another week or two.” But realistically, hiring managers are busy and often pulled in a bunch of directions, and hiring can end up lower on their list than more pressing projects with more immediate deadlines. (Since this is a common point of confusion: “Hiring manager” means the person who will be managing you once you’re hired, not the HR person who’s in charge of all the organization’s hiring. So they often have other, higher priorities.)
Plus you never know what’s going on behind the scenes. Maybe the hiring manager is out sick or unexpectedly had to go out of town. Maybe a last-minute candidate emerged, and they need time to interview them. Maybe the CEO surprised everyone by announcing that she wants to sign off on the hire, and they’re debating whether to bring people back in for a final round of interviews. Maybe a key person on the team resigned, and now they’re thinking about reconfiguring the role. Maybe they’ve had a project explode spectacularly and that’s all anyone over there is dealing with right now. Who knows. It’s impossible to tell from the outside what might be going on that could massively mess with their recruitment plans or timeline.
A job is never a sure thing — no matter how good your interview was.
No matter how well your interview goes, you should never assume a job is in the bag. First, some interviewers are skilled at connecting with candidates and putting them at ease, and that can give you a false sense of confidence about how well things really went. Second, and more important, even if you gave an absolutely flawless interview — in fact, even if you’re a perfect match for the job and everyone who interviewed came away convinced you were the person they should hire — things can still change. A stronger candidate could emerge at the last minute, or the job specs could be modified, or the CEO could decide to hire her neighbor. Or the company could have a sudden hiring freeze or cut the position altogether before filling it, deciding another role is a higher priority. All of that is out of your control, and it’s just how interviewing goes sometimes.
Okay, but what’s up with ghosting?
It’s bad enough when employers take far longer than planned to get back to candidates or end up rejecting someone who thought the job was a lock. It’s even worse when they never bother to get back to you at all — and yet, it’s a bafflingly common experience.
Employers who ghost candidates tend to explain it by saying they couldn’t possibly find the time to get back to each person who interviewed, but for the record: This is b.s. Electronic applicant-management systems can send rejections with barely any work required on the employer’s side, and even companies that haven’t automated hiring-related communications can spare the minute or two it takes to copy and paste a form rejection to people who interviewed with them. It’s appallingly rude to leave candidates hanging after they take the time to interview (which often means clocking out of work, perhaps traveling or buying a new suit, and investing time and energy in preparing). It’s even worse when companies do it after putting candidates through multiple rounds of interviews and exercises, which is increasingly the case.
Unfortunately, it happens frequently, so if you don’t hear back for a long time after your interview, there’s a good chance you’ve simply been ghosted.
So what are you supposed to do in the face of silence?
The frustrating thing about not hearing back after an interview is that you can’t know for sure what’s going on. Maybe you’re being ghosted and will never hear from the company again, or maybe you’re about to hear back tomorrow, or maybe you’ll suddenly get an offer in two months, long after you’ve given up hope. The most important thing to remember is that if an employer wants to offer you a job, they’ll be in touch. If you’re their top candidate, they’re not going to forget about you just because you don’t keep checking in. So you don’t need to worry that you need to keep nudging them or to find ways to stay on their radar.
When you’re past the point when you would have expected to hear something, it’s fine to check in once. Wait about a week past their stated deadline and then send an email saying something like, “I’m still very interested and wondered if you had an update on your timeline for next steps that you could share with me.” But beyond that, there’s not a lot of use in repeatedly following up. If at some point they want to move forward, they’ll let you know.
Meanwhile, the best thing you can do for your own peace of mind is to assume you didn’t get the job and move on. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in an angst-filled limbo, wondering if you’re going to hear from them today, or maybe tomorrow, or what the silence means, and did you offend someone in the interview, or maybe your skills aren’t as impressive as you thought they were, and agggghhhh. Better to conclude you didn’t get the job and put it out of your head. Then, if they do contact you at some point, it can be a pleasant surprise, rather than the thing that you have been pinning all your hopes and anxious energy on.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email askaboss@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here).
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