Hey there!
Welcome to Work in Progress, a how-to series that's meant to help with everything from
prepping for a job interview to boosting your confidence or negotiating a raise.
Here's today's question.
You've probably experienced some form of ghosting before, especially if you've spent a little
bit of time on Tinder like I have.
But this is a real issue that happens in the workforce as well, in the form of professional
ghosting.
So today, I'm going to talk about three times that you could be professionally ghosted at
work, and how to spot them, as well as how to fix them.
This is actually based on an article that I wrote for our website that includes some
additional instances of ghosting, so if you feel like you're being ghosted in your office,
you might want to read that, as well, later on.
One of the most obnoxious forms of professional ghosting is also one of the most common, which
is when you're job interviewing.
So let's say that you went into an interview and you had an incredible time, you shook
everyone's hands and you're thrilled about the opportunity, and then you write a beautiful
thank you note that no one responds to.
It's the worst.
But, it's also not over yet.
The first step of trying to offset this ghost is to send a follow-up note.
And I would recommend doing that after about five or six days, if you haven't heard back.
It's entirely possible that your interviewer is still interviewing other candidates, and
that's why they haven't gotten back to you.
If you send them a follow-up note, it might remind them that they need to respond to you,
and it might actually make the situation move along faster.
That said, if you haven't heard back after you send a follow-up note, this is when you
take a cue from the ghosting of your Tinder days, and you think about this in terms of
the, "They're just not that into you" move.
You are going to find a perfect job somewhere, and if they are not excited enough to write
back to you, it's probably a sign that this is not the right one for you, so move on,
and leave them behind.
So the next form of professional ghosting you're probably familiar with as well.
And this tends to happen in your company, and just sort of at your daily work.
The idea behind this is that you know that someone owes you something for a project,
or they've even missed a deadline you've assigned them, and you're sending them emails, and
you're just not hearing back.
And we're talking, you know, one, two, three emails.
The first step to fixing this problem is to actually go and find them in person, if possible.
The idea behind this is that a lot of ghosting occurs because people are so used to being
on their phones or behind their laptops all day, and if you go and find them in person,
they're forced to make eye contact with you and explain to you why it is that they've
missed your deadline.
That's usually a pretty good motivator for anyone.
If that's not an option for you, or if that still hasn't solved the problem, the next
option takes it one step further via email, and that is, I'd recommend that you cc your
supervisor or your boss, depending on the context.
Now, there are a couple of caveats with this.
One is that this is dangerously passive aggressive, so make sure that you word your email carefully,
and make sure that it's a last resort.
The other is that you should probably let your boss know first, that you're planning
on doing this, and explain the situation so it doesn't come as a surprise to her, either.
But typically, if you start cc'ing someone higher up, it's a pretty fast motivator for
anyone to get their butt in gear.
The third instance of professional ghosting is one that, again, you're probably very familiar
with.
This is when you ask someone to volunteer for a project, and they never respond, typically
in the form of, say, sending a group email to your team and asking someone to help you
with the presentation.
And usually, what happens is, the email just falls flat.
The first solution is to actually split up that group email into individual emails to
the different members of your team.
The idea behind this is that it's a lot easier to hold someone accountable if you reach out
to them directly.
In those emails, you can also give them an "IOU", which I think is a huge motivator for
people.
The idea is, "Please help me with this project, I'm in so much need, it would mean so much
to me, and I will definitely do you a solid next time."
If that doesn't work, again, I go back to this idea that you should walk over to their
desks, if possible.
And if it's part of your team, it's likely that you're probably pretty close together,
but there is something to be said about face-to-face contact when you're trying to catch up with
a professional ghoster.
So those are just a few instances of professional ghosting that drive me and everyone else crazy.
In the article I wrote, I cover some more, including what to do if you reach out to a
friend to introduce you to a potential network connection, and they don't get back, as well
as what to do if you do someone a favor, and when you ask for a favor in return, they don't
respond.
We also have some great networking templates available on our site that you can download
to start using in all these emails that you're going to be sending to all of your ghosters.
All of those links are in the description.