Avoid candidate ghosting: make the candidate update process a habit with one Snippet

According to Greenhouse’s 2024 State of Job Hunting report, which surveyed 2,500 workers in the US, UK, and Germany, 61% of job seekers have been ghosted after a job interview. Often, nobody decided to stop replying. The hiring manager hadn’t made a call, there was no news to share, and the update slid to tomorrow behind a dozen other open roles.

For job seekers in the middle of a job search, that silence reads like a rejection, or worse. They prepared, took time off, and met the team, so they expect to hear something. Every day without an update makes another job offer easier to accept.

For recruiters, hiring teams, and human resources leaders, preventing candidate ghosting comes down to a short update at every stage of the hiring process, one that says where things stand and when the candidate will hear from you next. A Snippet makes that update the fastest thing to send, even on days with no news.

What is candidate ghosting?

Candidate ghosting is when an employer or recruiter stops responding to a job candidate without explanation, at any point in the hiring process. It can start with an application nobody acknowledges, and it can happen after a final interview, when the candidate is waiting on a decision. Either way, candidate ghosting is one of the fastest ways to damage the candidate experience, because silence is the one message every candidate notices.

It feels most like ghosting after an interview. Many job seekers expect some silence after they apply. Once someone has interviewed and been told they’ll hear back, the expectation of a reply is much higher, and so is the frustration when none comes.

Indeed’s 2023 ghosting survey found the problem at both ends of the hiring journey, with 35% of job candidates saying an employer didn’t acknowledge their application in any way and 40% saying an employer ghosted them after they’d reached a second or third round of interviews.

The term also runs the other way. When a job seeker stops responding to a recruiter, that’s candidate ghosting too, and the two often feed each other.

Where candidate ghosting happens in the candidate journey

Every stage of the hiring process has a moment when the candidate is waiting on you, from the moment a candidate applies to the job offer or official rejection. Mapping those moments across the candidate journey shows where candidate ghosting is most likely to begin and what the update should say at each stage.

During the application process

Job applicants want to know someone saw their job application. An acknowledgment with a realistic timeline, even an automated one from your ATS, covers this part of the application process. If the job posting has closed or the role has changed, say so here so applicants don’t have to find out on their own.

After a screening call

Candidates want to know whether they’re moving forward. Send a yes, a no, or the date you’ll decide.

Between interview rounds

Whether interviews are conducted in person or via video, hiring managers can take days to deliver feedback. A short note that you’re still gathering feedback, with a date, keeps candidates engaged while you wait.

After the final interview

Silence hurts most here, because candidates have invested the most and may be weighing a job offer elsewhere. Update within 24 hours, even if you don’t have a decision yet.

After the decision

Close the loop either way. Unsuccessful candidates shouldn’t be left guessing, and new hires need to know what happens before day one. For them, the way you communicate during hiring is the start of the employee experience.

Why recruiters and hiring managers ghost candidates

In a busy recruiting process, the update usually slips for reasons any recruiting team will recognize.

• There’s no news to share. The hiring manager hasn’t decided, and “no update yet” doesn’t feel worth an email. To the candidate, it’s the most useful email you could send.
• Feedback is stuck with hiring managers. Interview panels can take days to submit feedback, and the recruiter can’t share what they don’t have, so communication gaps open between rounds.
• The hiring pipeline is full. With many open positions and plenty of qualified people in the pipeline, updates for candidates who haven’t moved get pushed to tomorrow, and tomorrow fills up too.
• Rejection notices are uncomfortable. A no takes more care to write than a yes, so unsuccessful candidates are the most likely to hear nothing.
• Every update starts from a blank email. A thoughtful note written from scratch takes time, so it waits for a free moment that rarely comes.

Why candidates ghost recruiters

Candidates ghost recruiters too, and employers feel it across the hiring process. In SHRM’s 2025 Talent Trends report, 41% of organizations said they’re seeing candidates ghost them during the interview process.

Some of that is a response to how candidates have been treated. In Indeed’s 2023 survey, 70% of job seekers said it was fair to ghost employers in retaliation. Vague job descriptions and unclear expectations play a part as well. In Greenhouse’s 2025 hiring report, 72% of candidates said the job they applied for turned out to be different from what was offered.

Clear expectations and regular updates can’t eliminate candidate ghosting entirely. They do remove two of the most common reasons, which makes a timely update one of the simplest ways to reduce ghosting on both sides.

Why candidates drop off when your hiring team goes quiet

Slow communication shapes the candidate’s perception of your company, and the research keeps showing that job seekers notice it.

• It’s getting more common. Criteria’s 2026 Candidate Experience Report found that 53% of job seekers were ghosted by an employer in the past year, up from 38% in 2024, according to Fortune.
• Lack of communication is the top red flag. In Greenhouse’s 2023 survey of 1,200 US candidates, 70% said a lack of communication in the hiring process is the biggest red flag.
• Many candidates wait a month or more. In the 2025 CandE Benchmark Research, 31% of North American candidates said they hadn’t heard back from employers one to two months or more after applying.
• Most rejected candidates get no feedback. The same research found that 56% of candidates received no feedback after being rejected during screening and interviewing.
• The best-rated employers move fast. Speed is part of what sets a few employers apart. Among the top 10 North American CandE winners in 2025, 60% dispositioned candidates within three to five days of the application.

For a recruiting team, those numbers show up as candidates who drop off between the interview stage and the job offer, lower offer acceptance, and a longer time to hire when a finalist walks away. 

When the job market is competitive, top talent and other quality candidates often have several options, and the right candidates may not wait. A candidate who hears nothing for two weeks has every reason to keep interviewing.

Every update, or the lack of one, also tells candidates something about your company culture. One poor experience shared with other job seekers can follow your employer brand long after the role is filled.

Candidate experience best practices that prevent ghosting

Candidate experience refers to how job seekers perceive your company at every step of the recruitment process, from the job posting to the first day. 

A positive candidate experience comes down to a few communication habits that hold up when the hiring process gets busy. These candidate experience best practices focus on the moments where candidate ghosting usually starts. For a broader look at the topic, see our guide to improving the candidate experience.

1. Set expectations in the first call. Tell candidates how the interview process works, how many interview rounds to expect, and how often they’ll hear from you, then keep that promise. Keeping expectations clear from the first call helps candidates prepare and leaves less room for unclear instructions later.
2. Follow up within 24 hours of every stage change. Send a note when something moves or stalls, even without a decision. Twenty-four hours is our recommendation, a target short enough that updates don’t pile up.
3. Always name the next date. “We’ll be in touch soon” leaves candidates guessing. A specific date gives them something to plan around and gives you a deadline.
4. Close the loop with a respectful no. Notify candidates who aren’t moving forward. A clear no lets them move on and keeps the door open for future roles. These candidate rejection email templates make it easier to write a kind one.
5. Share one line of candidate feedback where your policy allows. With 56% of rejected candidates getting none, a single specific sentence stands out.

To measure candidate experience day to day, track two numbers in your ATS:

1. How many candidates are waiting without an update
2. How long it’s been since each of them heard from you

Over time, drop-off rates between stages show where waiting costs you candidates the most.

It’s all about fast and easy communication with candidates and stakeholders. There’s no question that TextExpander helps us do that, while really improving our productivity and consistency.

Alice Chu, Recruitment Coordinator, CircleCI

How to follow up with candidates when there’s no update

The update candidates need most is the one recruiters are least likely to send, because it’s the one with no news. Keep it to the stage, what’s happening, and a date. Three versions cover the situations that most often stall.

• Waiting on feedback: “Hi Sam, a quick update on the Product Designer role. We’re still gathering feedback from the interview panel. You’ll hear from me by Thursday, even if there’s no decision yet.”
• Finalists under review: “Hi Priya, you’re one of the finalists for the Account Executive role, and the hiring manager is reviewing everyone this week. I’ll update you by Monday.”
• Role on hold: “Hi Jordan, I want to let you know the Operations Manager role is on hold while the team revisits the budget. I don’t have a new timeline yet, and I’ll check in again by the 15th either way.”

Each one takes less than a minute to send and tells the candidate they haven’t been forgotten. The ;cupd Snippet writes this kind of update for you.

The candidate update Snippet (copy it free)

The update that prevents ghosting has three parts:

1. Where things stand
2. What happens next
3. When the candidate can expect to hear from you next

The ;cupd Snippet prompts you for the first two and writes the date for you.

Each number in the screenshot marks one of the Snippet’s four field types. The single-line Fill-ins (1) are blanks you type into, like First name and Role. The pop-up menu (2) lets you pick the Stage from four options. The optional section (3) adds the Next step line only when you check Add next step. Date math (4) adds three days to today’s date when the Snippet expands, so every update names a specific day. See Fill-ins for how each one works.

When I worked for Dartmouth, I would use TextExpander literally every day to balance the nuances of communicating with 30+ hiring managers and hundreds of candidates about essentially the same topics over and over. It helped save me full days of work.

Celia, Recruiter, Dartmouth College

How to add the Snippet

1. Create a new Snippet in TextExpander. Label it Candidate update and give it an abbreviation, like ;cupd.
2. Add the message. Type or paste your update wording into the text field. Leave gaps for the name, role, stage, and date.
3. Add the fields. From the Fill-ins menu, add single-line Fill-ins for First name and Role, a pop-up menu for Stage, and an optional section for Next step. From the Date menu, add a date three days from today.
4. Test it once. Type ;cupd in a blank email, pick a stage, and check the date before you send a real one.

How to make the candidate update a daily habit

Of all the candidate experience best practices, a daily update is the easiest to keep once it’s automatic. It forms the same way any work habit does, with a cue that starts it, a structure that makes it easy, and enough repetition that it runs on its own.

• Cue: tie the update to something you already do, and write it as an if-then plan, like “When I close my pipeline view at the end of the day, I type ;cupd for every candidate who moved or waited.” In a meta-analysis of 94 independent tests, Gollwitzer and Sheeran found that if-then plans had a positive effect on goal attainment of “medium-to-large magnitude (d = .65).” Your abbreviation becomes the second half of that plan.
• Structure: the Snippet lays out the stage, what’s happening, and the next date, so you never start from a blank email. The pop-up menu shows the four stages you send most often.
• Repetition: in a study of real-world habit formation, Lally and colleagues found a median of 66 days for a new daily behavior to become automatic, with a range of 18 to 254 days. Missing one opportunity “did not materially affect the habit formation process,” so a skipped Friday won’t undo it.

Date math also keeps the promise specific. The date is written for you every time, so “I’ll be in touch soon” turns into a day the candidate can plan around and a deadline you’ll see in your sent mail. With the routine wording handled, recruiters have time to focus on more strategic work, like sourcing and preparing hiring managers for interviews.

I send many emails with the same wording to recruiting candidates over and over again. TextExpander helps so that all of my wording is uniform for each candidate to streamline information. It also reduces the time it takes me to send out emails to every person significantly.

Haley M., Recruiting Business Partner, Amazon

Three more Snippets that keep candidates engaged

• ;cfirst for the first call. Set expectations up front with a line like “You’ll hear from me at least every few business days, even when there’s no news.” It’s the promise ;cupd helps you keep.
• ;cno for a respectful no. A short, kind rejection with the role and one line of feedback where you can share it. Start from these candidate rejection email templates, and use these job offer follow-up email templates after a final interview.
• A shared Snippet Group for the whole recruiting team. When every recruiter uses the same updates, coordinators can cover for each other, and candidates hear the same thing from anyone on the team. See TextExpander for recruiting.

A lead recruiter at a fast-growing HR platform uses shared Snippets to keep a large team’s candidate messages consistent and personal.

TextExpander lets us handle high-volume recruiting without sacrifice. We can standardize messaging across our 70-person team while keeping the personal touch candidates expect.

Lead GTM Recruiter, fast-growing HR platform

No news is still news

Behind the 61% of job seekers in Greenhouse’s survey are a lot of updates that never got sent. A two-line note with a stage and a date closes that gap, and ;cupd makes it the fastest thing to send at the end of the day.

Try TextExpander free and add ;cupd before your next pipeline review. For a whole recruiting team, see TextExpander for recruiting. To keep building habits like this one, see how other customers turned their first Snippet into a daily habit.