What to do if I’ve been ghosted by a recruiter?

What to do when recruiters ghost on you?

Getting ghosted: What to do if you’ve been ghosted by a recruiter or hiring manager ?

You need to find out WHY!

As shared in our previous blog article on “what is recruiter ghosting and why is it happening”, sometimes, candidates get ghosted because the recruiter isn’t doing a great job or company priorities change.

If however you get ghosted over and over again, you may want to reflect on your own actions and figure out if there is anything may be doing wrong.

For instance, applicants often don’t know what skills, competencies or values the organisation is looking for in a candidate; UCCs advice is to do effective research on the agencies values and to read the job vacancy carefully in order to speak the same “language” as the recruiter and hiring managers.

The UN system for example differentiates between:

• UN organisational core values

• UN competencies

• Managerial competencies

Why is this important to know? Well, depending on which role you apply for you may want to highlight job relevant skills that best match the role requirements.
For example, for an internship role, rather than focusing on managerial competencies such as good leadership or negotiation skills, which are skills that are essential for employees in more senior roles with supervisory responsibilities such as P4 roles or higher, we would recommend you focus on soft and transferable skills. 

You could for example highlight:

• good time management

• communication skills or

• team-working skills; the UN is a big family with lots of different cultures and personalities and good multicultural team working skills are vital.

Another tip on how to find out why you were ghosted over and over again is through reaching for professional help; unfortunately, recruiters are not incentivised to give candidates feedback and hardly ever take the time to do so.

Our advice is try to get personalised feedback from a trusted source. Having someone on the inside to look at your application document or hold a mock interview with you can go a long way.

Get in touch with one of our UN insiders: https://unitedcareercoalition.org/how-to-work-in-the-un

Or book a 1:1 personalised 45min video consultation with one our UN insiders