By Three-quarters of Australians have experienced at least one recruitment horror story, according to research by HR software company Employment Hero reported by Information Age on 3 November 2026. The survey of more than 1,500 Australians found that a third had spent hours preparing a job application only to be completely ghosted by the potential employer.
Nearly a quarter identified being ghosted altogether as their biggest frustration during the recruitment process. David Holland, Employment Hero managing director of talent solutions, said: “Behind every ghosted application is a person trying to get a job and behind every slow process is a business trying to grow.”
The age split in recruitment ghosting
The Employment Hero data shows a clear generational divide. Thirty-two per cent of respondents aged under 35 reported experiencing recruitment ghosting, compared with 20 per cent of those aged over 35. Younger workers were also more likely to have applied for a fake job advertisement or a role that was never genuinely available.
This cuts both ways. Research published last year found young workers were ghosting employers themselves, sometimes after accepting a job offer or working just a handful of days. The pattern suggests a feedback loop: candidates who are ignored during applications feel less obligation to respond when they lose interest in a role.
What ghosting costs hiring teams
The employer-side findings point to internal process failures rather than deliberate rudeness. More than half of those surveyed said they had lost top talent because their internal recruitment processes were too slow. Nearly 60 per cent said they were weighed down by manual administration.
Earlier research found Australian companies were taking three times as long to hire someone as job seekers expected, resulting in employers losing their preferred candidates. When a hiring process drags on, candidates accept other offers or simply stop responding. The ghosting problem is partly a speed problem.
The feedback gap after rejection
More than 40 per cent of those surveyed said their biggest complaint about the recruitment process was receiving little or no feedback after being rejected for a role. This is a fixable issue that does not require new software or policy changes.
Hiring teams can set a simple rule: every interviewed candidate gets a two-sentence response within five business days. The response does not need to be detailed. It needs to exist. For candidates who reached a late stage, a short phone call takes ten minutes and prevents the silence that drives negative employer brand perception.
Where payroll and HR systems fit
Slow recruitment processes often trace back to manual steps that sit between HR and payroll. Offer letters, contract generation, background checks and onboarding paperwork all create delays when they require human handoffs. Employment Hero’s finding that nearly 60 per cent of employers feel weighed down by manual administration suggests the administrative burden is a direct contributor to ghosting on both sides.
Kim Seeling Smith, AI and business futurist, said: “Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the human connection in the job search process.” She added: “For candidates and hiring managers alike, recruitment has become time-consuming, frustrating and often unreliable.”
The practical response for HR teams is to map the steps between verbal offer and first payroll run. Each manual step is a point where the process stalls and a candidate goes quiet. Automating offer approval, contract signing and payroll setup removes the gaps where ghosting happens.
What candidates are doing differently
Research earlier this year found nearly two-thirds of Australian job seekers had three interview processes underway simultaneously, although they were becoming more cautious about accepting new roles. This parallel interviewing behaviour means employers face a shorter window to make decisions before a candidate commits elsewhere.
The implication for hiring managers is straightforward: if a strong candidate is identified, the offer should follow within days, not weeks. A slow process no longer means a candidate waits patiently. It means the candidate accepts another role and the employer starts the search again.
| Recruitment stage | Common failure point | Practical fix |
|---|---|---|
| Application to screening | No response to applicants | Automated acknowledgement within 24 hours |
| Interview to offer | Slow decision-making | Set a five-day decision deadline after final interview |
| Offer to start date | Manual onboarding paperwork | Digitise contract and payroll setup before the offer is made |
| Post-rejection | No feedback to candidates | Two-sentence response to every interviewed candidate |
Holland said: “When recruitment breaks down, nobody wins. Jobseekers miss out on work they’d thrive in, and businesses lose the people they need.”
The Employment Hero research does not point to a single cause of recruitment ghosting. It points to a system where both sides have learned that silence is normal. Changing that starts with the employer side, because employers control the process and set the tone for every interaction that follows.
Sources: Information Age
Photo: Job Cohen interview by Jos van Zetten, CC BY 2.0
