ghost·ing 

/ˈɡōstiNG/ 

Verb 

1. When a person cuts off all communication with their friends or the person they’re dating, with zero warning or notice beforehand. You’ll mostly see them avoiding friend’s phone calls, social media, and avoiding them in public. 

Workplace Ghosting in 2025: Still Haunting Employers

Ghosting has gone well beyond bad Tinder dates and has made its way into the workplace, and it’s worse than ever. This year, 44% of candidates admit to ghosting employers, while 61% of job seekers have been ghosted after a job interview, a nine percentage point increase since early 2024. Pretty spooky, right?

Employees and candidates that wish to avoid uncomfortable conversations have decided to perform the greatest disappearing act of all time by simply ignoring all communication with the hope that an employer will eventually get the hint and go away.

Here are three common ghosting scenarios we are seeing in the workplace today:

• No-show for an interview – A recruiter or manager has scheduled their entire day around an interview only to be stood up and left waiting in the dust. The candidate never calls or shows up.
• No-show for the first day – A candidate has accepted a job offer and is expected to start on Monday at 9 am. Monday comes, and the new hire never manages to make it in or send an email. It’s assumed that this new hire received a better job offer and will not be joining the team.
• Quitting without notice – An employee decides that this current position or organization is not the right fit and takes a new job elsewhere. Instead of giving two weeks’ notice, the employee decides to stop showing up for work and avoids all calls and emails.

This whole concept may seem pretty unprofessional and well, witchy. But with shifting power dynamics in the job market, this has become the scary reality.

The ghosting phenomenon is seen across all generations, but Gen Z leads the way as 41% report ghosting potential employers. Even more alarming, 34% of Gen Z workers have actively “career catfished,” accepting roles only to vanish on their first day.

What to do about ghosting

There is no magic spell HR can cast to stop this ghosting madness, but there are a few steps HR can take to reduce the likelihood of falling victim to the disappearing act:

• Build Your Brand – Your organization’s reputation is important, so make sure you’re represented appropriately. HR may have to work closely with other departments to create content that showcases your organization’s unique culture, maintain its career page, manage Glassdoor reviews, and enforce social media policies indicated in the employee handbook.
• Improve Communication – With recruiter workload increasing by 26% in the past year, it’s tempting to let candidates fall through the cracks. But ghosting goes both ways—candidates notice when you disappear too. Keep communication transparent, provide timely updates, and give closure to all candidates.
• Review Onboarding Process – Employee turnover still occurs heavily within the first 90 days of employment. Review onboarding processes, analyze data, and look for any correlation between employee termination and the new employee onboarding phase.
• Focus on Your People – By 2030, Gen Z and Millennials will comprise 74% of the global workforce. Only 6% of these workers say their primary career goal is to reach a leadership position; they want work-life balance, continuous learning, and meaningful work instead. Invest in the growth of your people and align people’s goals with your organization’s goals. A culture that is focused on its people will yield higher levels of employee engagement and improve its retention rate.

It’s hard to say with certainty how long this ghosting in the workplace trend will last. To reduce the chances of being ghosted, revisit your organization’s talent management strategy to ensure its practices are aligned with the behavior of today’s workforce.