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Comment by orphereus | Hacker News Reader

My anegdotal experience in EU is that ghosting AFTER the company responds to your application is very, very rare.

I would always get the usual "Unfortunately, we have decided..." charades. At least no ghosting.

I can think of only one situation, and it was kinda peculiar in its own right (they called me 8 months after my application because they were in a jam and I said I won't be able to start in such a short notice they wanted, and they warned me in advance they would ghost me because the HR was I presume in a crunch).

As for the ghostings BEFORE they even respond to the job application, I'd say that it is around 40% of job applications that I never get a response after "We have received your job application yada yada yada".

Again, this is just my anegdotal experience. Maybe my experience in EU job market is a rarity.

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My experience in France was that almost everyone ghosts you, including after three rounds of interviews.

It's probably because they don't want to be liable for giving a reason.

Well, then they might just respond: Thank you, but no thank you… No liability, but at least they wouldn’t leave the person hanging…

Which should be illegal. You should be able to formulate why you prefer someone.

And it would prevent companies from ghosting people.

Making this "illegal" does not solve the problem at all. People really need to stop providing this knee jerk outlawing reaction to things they don't like. I assume you'd also make it illegal for a person to turn down a company without a reason, right? How about we make that 6 months in prison.

> Making this "illegal" does not solve the problem at all.

Sure it does. You send an email politely reminding them they need to write out a basic reason, and then you get the reason. If they're crazy stubborn and absolutely refuse, small claims court is probably next.

I'm pretty skeptical about the idea of making this a law, but a law could solve the problem.

> I assume you'd also make it illegal for a person to turn down a company without a reason, right?

There's a huge power imbalance here, but okay sure why not? Not many people are turning down job offers after interviewing, but if they do they can spend two minutes writing why.

> How about we make that 6 months in prison.

This strawman is a good way to indicate you didn't spend a single second thinking through the actual implications.

> I'm pretty skeptical about the idea of making this a law, but a law could solve the problem.

We need more labor laws in general, but this one should be more of a good ol' fashioned social shaming situation. make it painful to try and outright ignore people you started talking to.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this, actually. If this silly idea became law, companies would find some lawyer-approved boilerplate that would satisfy the silly law and accomplish nothing. Nothing would change. I guess you would say the candidate could sue because the company didn't provide warm fuzzy custom-tailored apologies about why they didn't fall in love? Or a specific "reason"? Is a judge going to adjudicate that "reason"?

It's not a strawman. It's either jail time or a fine, right? Have you thought about the implications?

Listing six months in jail and acting like full punishment would have to be the first resort is a clear strawman.

Fines are all we need. But even if we ignored fines entirely, one day of jail would be plenty.

Your original comment makes it sound like there's no reasonable way to enforce the law. There is. You send reminders and warnings and escalate to a fine after a certain point.

Also I think you could figure out a big list of boilerplate answers and make everyone roughly satisfied.

But come on, surely there exist laws where reasons have to be given and they're not corrupted into doing nothing.

Again, what is the benefit exactly? Avoiding hurt feelings? Are people's skins that thin?

You cannot enforce this one way and not the other. Interviewing and hiring and managing a company takes a lot of time. What if a candidate "ghosts" me? Can I sue him for hurting my feelings?

I seriously have to think this is a parody or joke. Nobody with a real job can think this way haha.

> Again, what is the benefit exactly? Avoiding hurt feelings? Are people's skins that thin?

Knowing what you did wrong.

Wouldn't a reason for rejection potentially increase hurt feelings, and that's why there's so much ghosting? I don't understand this objection, I thought I was the one annoyed at thin skins in the interview scenario.

> What if a candidate "ghosts" me? Can I sue him for hurting my feelings?

The reason you think this is a parody or joke is because you keep jumping to ridiculous scenarios that have nothing to do with the actual request. The actual request is to spend one or two minutes on an email, which is barely anything compared to the entire interview you already did with them.

If this rule applied, they would just have to say why they ghosted you. That's it.

>People really need to stop providing this knee jerk outlawing reaction to things they don't like.

No, we need way more regulation on jobs in the US. This country is sacking millions in real time but reporting record profits. That isn't right nor healthy.

>I assume you'd also make it illegal for a person to turn down a company without a reason, right?

Who holds the cards in the relationship, again? It's illegal to distriminate against hirees, but a person can choose any reason to take an offer over another.

The EU has tons of regulations on this stuff and we see what "innovation" they have. No thanks.

Relationship? There is no relationship. It is a business transaction. Both parties are free to leave at any point.

>we see what "innovation" they have.

Yes, a much more stable job market, the ability for its leaders to pass bills, and actual resistance against the so called immigration people are all up in arms about.Turns out you can manage that without creates a domestic scare campaign.

And what have they done with it practically? Breakthroughs in sustainability and environmental technology, materials engineering, neuroscienc, and yes: even semiconductors. You can do great things for the world without sucking up to shareholders and abusing your labor.

>Both parties are free to leave at any point.

Spoken like someone who's never had to live paycheck to paycheck.

There are employed people who still need to rely on food stamps to live. No, it is not a balanced relationship, and one party keeps lobbying to make it worse.

Really no offense, but in all truth, I would probably skip an application with simple misspellings. Anecdotal is what you're looking for.

This comment really has no purpose other than being petulent.

We're talking about being ghosted or rejected for applications and interviews. It actually seems very relevant. Details matter. Don't give anyone a reason to reject you, because there are hundreds (or thousands) of applications who are also qualified and ran spellcheck. I'm really not trying to be a jerk.

petulAnt

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