First, thanks so much for sharing your experience on the HR/hiring side!
I recall in the multiple post-pandemic layoffs (especially in tech industry) that hiring teams were some of the first to be gutted. Made sense on a practical level since, at least in theory, layoffs > fewer job openings > fewer applicants to go through > less people needed to go through them.
However, I'm sure that's also led to more people applying for the fewer job openings that are available.
Does that seem like an accurate read? Maybe a contributing factor to lack of communication, even if it's simply a templated decline?
so to be clear, i'm engineering leadership - my exposure is probably greater than most individual contributor engineers but don't take my word as the experience of a dedicated recruiter - they have a much better view of the lay of the land than i do. i just wind up having a certain percentage of hiring/recruiting responsibility as part of my job.
for sure i think that might be a part of it, but i can say from experience that the market is flooded with recruiters, so if capacity was the issue, i'd imagine salaries are depressed right now and tons of talent is available... they could just hire their teams back up.
i genuinely can't explain to you why people aren't getting "no's." i wish i could. it makes me sincerely angry. the way ATSes are usually set up is you have a button to remove them from consideration or put them in some "not at the moment" disposition and every tool i've ever used has an option to automatically send a relevant form email as the result of that action. sending the email would take the same effort as not sending the email.
the only thing i can imagine (and have heard some hr folks say) is that rejecting someone is an action that elicits an emotional response in the person rejected - they might be hurt, they might be offended - and can lead to requests for an explanation why, or also hurt the chance that that person might be interested in working for you in the future. thus, just going dark and acting like "it got lost in the mail" is a way for them to keep the option of hiring you open in the future, or keep you receptive to a response if they reach out 6 months later.
i personally don't know if that's real, and i also don't think it reflects how actual humans respond to being ghosted, but the lack of a rejection email for a role i think is honestly a completely indefensible practice and i do not understand what is going on in the minds of the people who operate that way.
I recall in the multiple post-pandemic layoffs (especially in tech industry) that hiring teams were some of the first to be gutted. Made sense on a practical level since, at least in theory, layoffs > fewer job openings > fewer applicants to go through > less people needed to go through them.
However, I'm sure that's also led to more people applying for the fewer job openings that are available.
Does that seem like an accurate read? Maybe a contributing factor to lack of communication, even if it's simply a templated decline?