Recently, a candidate gave it straight to one of our team members, Christina, while she was conducting a phone screen interview:
“Why is it that every recruiter I’ve ever talked to disappears the moment the interview’s over? Is your company going to be any different?”
It’s a fair question. So here’s the undiluted, unfiltered, and frank answer.
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We Lose Job Requisitions and Don’t Always Say So
Something we don’t like to admit: Earlier this year, we had a job requsition for two job openings that got cancelled three days after we’d already scheduled interviews with 5 candidates.
It happens to all staffing firms. We ghost people too. Not often, and not on purpose, but we do it, and we describe what it looks like when we do. It is almost a given that some candidates will not hear from the recruiter again.
Not because anyone forgot to call them back, but because nobody wants to be the one to say “the job you interviewed for doesn’t exist anymore.”
Yes, it’s unfair and yes, it’s on the staffing firm when that happens. It shouldn’t take a candidate calling three times to get that answer. Staffing firms aren’t absolved when ghosting occurs.
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Order Adjustments Happen More Frequently Than Staffing Firms Would Like to Admit
A client requests 7 customer support people on a Monday, but by Thursday the volume forecast shifts and now the order only becomes for 3 people. Or maybe sometimes the order disappears entirely.
Right now, roughly 15-20% of the requisitions we open for professional positions get cancelled, or in some way readjusted on the staff count, before we have a chance to fill the positions.
Again, that’s not a reason to ghost you. It’s a reason to call you and tell you the truth.
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Client Silence is Real
If we could waive a magic wand and change the one thing that candidates don’t fully realize, it is this: We never make the hiring decisions. Clients do. We never set the timeline for making the decisions. Again, clients do.
When a hiring manager goes quiet, everything goes quiet. Our average time-to-decision on temporary office and professional roles runs 24-72 hours and up to 14-21 days for direct hire positions. When a client takes a “pause,” it means that it is automatically going to be a longer hiring process than most candidates expect.
And certainly, longer than we would like it to be.
We know that a recruiter should tell you “I’m still waiting on the client” instead of leaving you to assume the worst. Sometimes when work capacity is at a peak is when it becomes a real challenge to get back to everyone.
And while we are talking about it, too many recruiters also don’t follow up because it means admitting they’re just as much in the dark as you are. These are not excuses. But it is an unflinching reality of staffing. We cannot entirely eliminate that. But we do everything we can to mitigate it.
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Requisition Freezes are Even More Real
Picture this: The role gets approved, posted, and staffed. And then, for whatever reason, it gets paused. Budget review, a reorganization, a sudden headcount freeze nobody saw coming. There are many reasons for a requisition freeze.
None of this excuses silence. It explains it. Once you know what’s happening on the other side, you can stop guessing and start pushing.
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Our Three-Step Method to Get a Callback
1. Ask the direct question, not the polite one.
Skip: “Just checking in.”
Ask: “Is this requsition still active, or has the client paused it?” We can usually answer question that immediately. We can’t always tell you whether you got the job. That’s the client’s call but we can always tell you where things stand.
2. Request a status, not a decision.
A recruiter who can’t or won’t give you a real status update after a direct ask is a signal worth noticing. At TempExperts, if you ask a recruiter for req status and get silence instead of an answer, that’s a miss on our end. Tell us.
3. Stay visible across more than one opening.
Candidates tracking a single req vanish the moment that req freezes. Candidates actively engaged across two or three openings stay top of mind, because they’re solving more than one problem for us at once.
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What We’re Changing
The part most candidates don’t see? A team of recruiters juggling 48 open job requisitions at once doesn’t lose track of you because they don’t care. They lose track of you because the system rewards moving fast on active, high priority requisitions, all the while having to manage candidates that are out on assignment with our existing clients! This often provides recruiters, who serve not just as “recruiters” but as HR generalists too, with no clear moment to circle back on the ones that died quietly.
Why? Because a cancelled order doesn’t generate a task to follow up on. A frozen requisition doesn’t trigger an email. The silence isn’t malice. It’s the absence of a process that forces someone to close the loop.
There is a fix, and it’s not complicated. But it’s not a better applicant tracking system or a smarter algorithm. It’s recruiters who treat “the req is dead” as information you‘re owed, and not as a rationale to move on to the next task.
It’s the difference between “I’ll let you know,” which means nothing, and “Hey, this job req got cancelled Tuesday, so here’s what that means to you,” which means something.
We’d rather tell you the job disappeared than let you find out by never hearing from us again. That’s the standard we’re holding ourselves to, and it’s the one thing that actually moves ghosting from “expected” to “not acceptable.”
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Ready to work with recruiters who won’t leave you guessing? Apply today.