Ghosting (workplace)

The word ghosting, meaning to abruptly cut off all communication without explanation, entered mainstream English through dating culture in the early to mid-2010s. Its application to workplace contexts followed quickly, as hiring managers, recruiters, and job seekers all reported rising instances of one party disappearing from the process without notification. Job candidates described completing multiple interview rounds and receiving no response. Employers described new hires who accepted offers and never appeared on their first day.

Surveys of hiring professionals documented the trend. A 2019 report by the recruiting platform Indeed found that job seekers' complaints about employer ghosting had risen sharply since 2015, with candidates reporting weeks or months of silence after interviews. Conversely, employers reported that candidate no-shows and post-offer disappearances had increased during the same period, particularly in tight labor markets where workers had multiple options.

The word's migration from personal to professional vocabulary reveals something about the changing boundaries between the two domains. The traditional professional lexicon assumed that hiring processes would follow formal sequences of offers, acceptances, and rejections, communicated in writing. Ghosting names the breakdown of that assumption, a situation in which one party simply stops participating. The fact that English borrowed a word from dating rather than creating a new term suggests that the behavior felt more like a personal rupture than a procedural failure.