The word ‘ghost’ has something of a poor reputation with daters and job-seekers alike, having come to mean to cut contact without any communication about why – or even that it’s happening at all, leaving the prospective hopeful waiting for a message that just never arrives. Ghost headhunting is a bit different, and it is (or can be) a force for good instead.
What is Ghost Headhunting?
The practice has been around for longer than the fairly recently coined name for it, and it basically involves businesses – or the recruiters at an executive headhunters agency working on their behalf – finding suitable candidates for their vacant positions without advertising the job, or even talking to the prospective candidates! This is especially prevalent in niche industries when the best candidates are easy to spot at networking and industry events, but can occur in any industry where a canny recruiter has a good grasp on his or her industry.
What’s the Point?
Ghost headhunting candidates is a useful tactic for recruiters and hiring managers to see what the candidate is like when they are in their usual surroundings, rather than on their ‘best behaviour’ at an interview or while networking with an eye to future employment. This can sometimes help to weed out candidates, but should be treated with caution: crossing someone off a list they didn’t even know they were on because of one potentially bad day can mean that you miss the opportunity to snap up your dream employee. The best way to go about it is to ghost headhunt your top five candidates to get an idea of what they’re like – but then interview them in the traditional way, to give them a chance to redeem themselves, should that be necessary. (Obviously, there will be some exceptions to this and red flag behaviour (bigotry, criminality, cruelty, etc) absolutely should count against them scoring that interview!)
Is It Ethical?
That is a trickier question to answer. And it’s not a simple yes or no answer. As with so many things, it all depends on how it is done, the motivation behind it, and how invasive the ghost headhunting gets! It is perfectly fine to look up someone’s public information: their staff profile at their current place of employment, their social media accounts, and to engineer a meeting at a social networking event or industry conference. This will give you a reasonable idea of what they are like, and let you ask some pertinent questions without raising any concerns with them.
Less ethical would be befriending them to access locked or private profiles, posing as a client, and misleading them about your interest in them. In short, if you would be embarrassed or uncomfortable at being caught in the act, it is problematic!
Ghost headhunting is a valid part of the recruitment process, but it should be only the first step – a tool that helps you narrow down a longlist to a shortlist, for example, rather than the whole of the process. It can give you some insight into your chosen candidate, but getting to know them overtly will give you so much more!
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