There is a behavior so common in professional life right now that most people no longer register it as a choice. A candidate accepts a job offer and never shows up on day one. A hiring manager completes three rounds of interviews with someone and simply stops responding. A mentor sends a follow-up email that disappears into silence. And a colleague who asked for an introduction receives two messages, then nothing.
Ghosting, the act of cutting off communication without explanation or closure, has moved well beyond its origins in online dating. It has become a standard feature of professional life in a way that would have been considered genuinely unusual a decade ago.
The New York Times called it an epidemic of unsatisfactory conclusions and unexplained rejections. The data confirms it. As a LiveCareer study surveying more than 1,000 U.S. workers, published in July 2026, found that 48% of workers would not apply to a company again after being ghosted during the hiring process. Forty-two percent said they would trust that company less after the experience. A separate survey of 2,000 Americans found that more than half, 53%, admitted to ghosting a new employer themselves. Korn Ferry research found three-quarters of employers report being ghosted by a new hire, while a similar percentage of job seekers say an employer did the same to them during the interview process.
We are doing to each other, at scale, what we hate having done to us. And most people, on both sides of that statistic, have never stopped to consider what the behavior is actually costing them.
How Ghosting Became Ordinary
The rise of digital communication didn’t just change how we reach each other. It changed how we experience the absence of a response. When professional relationships were conducted primarily in person or by phone, disappearing required active effort. You had to physically avoid someone, redirect calls, invent reasons for not being available. The friction made ghosting costly enough that most people defaulted to some form of communication instead.
Digital communication removed that friction entirely. An unanswered email requires no effort at all. An ignored LinkedIn message costs nothing. Declining to respond to a recruiter, a mentor, a former colleague, or a job offer is now as simple as not doing anything, and doing nothing has become the path of least resistance in almost every uncomfortable professional situation.
Researchers studying the psychology of ghosting note that it often occurs because the relationship still feels new enough that it doesn’t seem worth the effort or discomfort to have a difficult conversation. In the workplace, as Christine Marino, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at a talent advisory firm, observed, ghosting is often less about the individual being irresponsible and more about disengagement occurring before the professional relationship has fully formed.
That observation is accurate and important, but it addresses only one direction of the problem.
What Nobody Is Talking About
Almost every conversation about professional ghosting focuses on the person being ghosted. The damaged employer reputation. The candidate’s experience of confusion and rejection. The organizational cost of a new hire who accepted an offer and never walked through the door.
Clemson University researchers found that applicants who were ghosted experienced what the study describes as ressentiment, a cluster of emotions including anger, resentment, and hostility that had major downstream effects. Those feelings translated into lasting negative perceptions of the organization and significantly reduced likelihood of future engagement.
All of that is real and worth addressing, but I want to offer the perspective that almost none of this research examines. What ghosting does to the professional who does it.
I spent more than twenty years inside global organizations in People and Talent, sitting in the calibration rooms and succession planning conversations where the real decisions about careers get made. And the most consistent thing I observed about the professionals who rose the furthest, who received the opportunities that weren’t posted anywhere, who had advocates speaking their name in rooms they weren’t in, was something that sounds simple until you watch its absence play out in slow motion.
They followed through, not perfectly, not always with good news, and not always with the response the other person was hoping for. But they communicated, they closed the loop, and they treated the person on the other side of the email, the offer, the introduction request, or the professional relationship as someone whose time and investment deserved a response.
The Asset Being Quietly Destroyed
Your professional reputation is not built in the moments when you perform well in a high-visibility situation. It is built in the hundreds of small moments when you decide how to treat people who have invested something in you. The recruiter who spent three rounds getting to know you and then heard nothing after you accepted another offer. The mentor who offered to open a door and followed up twice. The former colleague who sent a warm reconnection message after years of silence that was never acknowledged. And the hiring manager you decided not to inform that you were withdrawing from consideration.
Every one of those moments produces a data point in another professional’s informal assessment of who you are. Not a formal assessment, but an informal one. And the informal assessments are the ones that travel.
Professional networks, especially within any single industry, geography, or functional area, are significantly smaller than they appear from the outside. The recruiter you ghosted knows the hiring manager at the company where you’re interviewing next year. The mentor whose follow-up you ignored is a first-degree connection to the person reviewing your promotion. The former colleague you left in silence became a director at a firm where you eventually need an introduction.
These connections are invisible at the moment of the ghosting decision. They become visible, painfully, later. As I watched candidates lose offers because someone in the hiring process knew someone they had treated this way. I watched referrals quietly disappear because a former colleague, who had fully intended to make an introduction, decided at the moment of action that this person wasn’t worth the credibility risk of vouching for them. Not because of a dramatic falling out, but because of silence.
The Psychology Worth Understanding
Ghosting feels like avoidance. It is actually a choice, even when it doesn’t feel like one. Every time a professional goes silent on a relationship, an obligation, or a communication they find uncomfortable or inconvenient, they are making a specific decision about the kind of professional they are going to be in that moment. And professional identity, like organizational trust, is not built in the exceptional moments. It is built in the ordinary ones, compounded over time into the reputation that precedes you everywhere you go.
The professionals who build the strongest reputations, the ones that travel across organizations and open doors that were never advertised, almost universally share a specific quality I’ve never seen on any resume. They can be counted on to close the loop. Even when the loop is uncomfortable, even when the message is no, and even when the relationship is new enough that the other person would probably accept silence without consequence.
They respond anyway, because they understand something that ghosting culture has quietly eroded in the broader professional world. Other people’s time and investment in you is a form of trust. And trust, once broken by silence, is rarely rebuilt by a later message that begins with sorry for the delayed response.
The Practical Case For Communicating Anyway
None of this requires perfection. It doesn’t require a lengthy explanation for every difficult professional decision. A candidate who has accepted another offer can send one sentence: I wanted to let you know I’ve accepted another opportunity, thank you for your time. That message takes forty-five seconds and produces a professional impression that lasts years.
A professional who can’t take on a mentorship request can reply once: I’m not in a position to take this on right now, but I appreciate you reaching out. Thirty seconds. The other person moves on with clarity rather than confusion. A job seeker who is withdrawing from consideration can send a brief note of thanks and withdrawal that costs nothing and protects everything.
The discomfort of a difficult or disappointing message is temporary, but the reputation of someone who cannot be counted on to communicate is not.
What This Moment Requires
Ghosting has become normalized in professional life because the short-term cost of silence is usually zero. Nobody confronts you. The relationship simply dissolves. The discomfort of the moment passes without requiring anything from you.
The long-term cost is different. It is accumulated, invisible, and significantly larger than most professionals realize until they are standing on the wrong side of a closed door wondering why someone who seemed warm and connected didn’t come through for them when it mattered.
The professionals who will finish their careers with the strongest reputations, the deepest networks, and the most durable credibility are not the ones who performed perfectly in every visible moment. They are the ones who communicated honestly in every uncomfortable one. As that discipline is available to every professional, starting with the next message they choose to send rather than ignore.
About Isaac Adesugba
Isaac is a Southern California-based Global People & Talent Management Executive, author of The Ultimate Impression (available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese on Amazon), and corporate readiness speaker. He works with professionals, universities, and organizations on the trust and credibility disciplines that determine career trajectory before any formal evaluation process begins.
First 90 Coach, his free AI coaching tool built on these frameworks, is now rebranding to The Impression Advantage Coach, available on the OpenAI GPT Store.
The Impression Advantage Workshop, a half or full-day engagement for new hire cohorts, newly promoted managers, and organizations navigating transition, is available. Request a proposal at careeradvicebyisaac.com.
