Workplace ghosting this Halloween

The act of ‘ghosting’, common in dating, is now making rounds in the professional sphere.  And with Halloween fast approaching, are some sectors more prone to this phantom practice than others?

There are many causes for increased workplace ghosting, but with Halloween fast approaching, Education and training specialists TheKnowledgeAcademy.com wanted to assess which sectors are most prone to this phantom practice.

1,317 full-time employees from a range of sectors* in the UK were surveyed between July and September of this year (2019), to discover how often they had ghosted or been ghosted themselves.

The sector experiencing the most ghosting from applicants is Business, Finance and Legal – 26% were guilty of this at some point.  This is followed by Advertising, Marketing, PR and Media – 23% of companies have been ghosted by a prospective employee.

In descending number of ‘ghosters’, the remaining sectors place as follows:

• Retail/Hospitality (19%)
• Technical Services (12%)
• Government (7%)
• Miscellaneous Other (6%)
• Education (5%)
• Healthcare (2%)

Flipping the tables, the applicants that have been ghosted the most by a potential employer come from Advertising, Marketing, PR and Media – a whopping 29% of applicants have not heard back from anyone before.

Next in line is the Business, Finance and Legal sector with 21%, and the remaining sectors place as follows:

• Retail/Hospitality (14%)
• Government (10%)
• Technical Services (9%)
• Miscellaneous Other (8%)
• Education (5%)
• Healthcare (4%)

Allisa Lindo, Growth Marketing Manager at Brandox shares her experience of ghosting; “My first interview after moving to Sweden went extremely well. After a productive interview with the CEO, as I left, he shook my hand and smiled broadly, saying “You’re going to be a great fit here. I look forward to working with you.” I waited two days and sent a follow-up ‘thank you’ email but got no response. After 3 weeks, I discovered they’d hired someone else. Fast forward a year and I was working for a different company in the same area. A new woman started working there, and she mentioned she used to work for the company that ghosted me. Turns out she was the woman they’d hired, and from what she told me, it sounds like I dodged a bullet”.

For further information on this study, visit The Knowledge Academy website.