Search “Gen Z in the workplace” and you’ll find plenty of complaints.
You’ll find results like, “They’re entitled,” “They don’t want to work,” “They quit too quickly,” “They won’t pick up the phone,” and “They accept interviews and don’t show up.” Some even accept job offers and never make it to day one, a behavior that has helped popularize another catchy workplace term: career catfishing.
The 2025 Future of Work Survey by CV Genius found that 34% of Gen Z workers admitted to career catfishing. But Gen Z hardly has a monopoly on the behavior: 24% of millennials, 11% of Gen Xers, and 7% of baby boomers reported doing it too.
So rather than chalking this up to another Gen Z character flaw, employers should be asking a much more useful question: Why are younger candidates disappearing in the first place?
Consider the employment landscape Gen Z entered. Many watched mass layoffs happen over email and Zoom. They’ve seen organizations preach loyalty while eliminating positions. They submit applications through automated systems, receive automated acknowledgments, complete automated assessments, and sometimes make it surprisingly far into the hiring process without much meaningful human interaction.
Behavior doesn’t develop in a vacuum. The hiring experience teaches candidates what kind of relationship they’re entering and what kind of behavior is apparently acceptable.
What’s Really Behind Gen Z Ghosting?
Here are three reasons Gen Z’s are ghosting employers, and what organizations can do differently.
1. Employers Have Been Ghosting Candidates for Years
Let’s start with the obvious one. Candidates apply for a position, spend time tailoring their resume, answer application questions, and submit everything into an applicant tracking system. Then…nothing.
Others make it much further. They complete phone screens, interviews, assessments, presentations, and follow-up conversations. Then…nothing.
Indeed’s research found that 35% of job candidates said an employer didn’t acknowledge their application at all, while 40% said an employer ghosted them after they reached a second or third round of interviews.
From the employer’s perspective, there may be perfectly reasonable internal explanations. The hiring manager got busy, priorities changed, the position went on hold, or someone assumed someone else sent the rejection email.
The candidate doesn’t experience those explanations. They experience silence. And silence communicates something: once we no longer need you, communicating with you becomes optional.
Then employers are shocked when candidates return the favor. Funny how that works.
How to fix it: Close the loop
Every person who applies for a job should receive an answer. That doesn’t mean recruiters need to write hundreds of personalized rejection emails. It means applicants shouldn’t be left wondering whether their resume was reviewed, the position was filled, or the hiring process is still underway.
At minimum, acknowledge the application, communicate meaningful updates when appropriate, and notify every applicant when they are no longer being considered. Greenhouse found that 79% of candidates would consider applying to a company again if they received feedback after interviewing but didn’t get the job.
2. Gen Z Doesn’t Automatically Give Employers Their Loyalty
Gen Z isn’t necessarily uninterested in careers or growth. They’re defining those things differently.
Deloitte’s 2025 global survey of more than 23,000 Gen Z and millennial respondents found that only 6% of Gen Z respondents considered reaching a senior leadership position a primary career goal. Yet learning and development ranked among the top three reasons Gen Z chose their current employers.
They’re ambitious. They just may not define ambition as spending 20 years climbing one company’s organizational chart. They’re also paying close attention to what employers offer beyond a paycheck. Deloitte found that 89% of Gen Z respondents considered a sense of purpose important to their job satisfaction and well-being.
That changes the power dynamic. Gen Z workers may be less willing to assume that an employer deserves loyalty simply because they offered them a job.
And frankly, why should any employee? Loyalty is a relationship outcome, not an onboarding requirement.
How to fix it: Stop trying to sell candidates a job and start showing them why the relationship is worth investing in.
Be transparent about the work, the manager, growth opportunities, expectations, compensation, challenges, and culture. And please retire the temptation to oversell.
If the job is chaotic, don’t describe it as “fast-paced.” If the manager micromanages, don’t call them “hands-on.” If there’s nowhere to move internally, don’t promise unlimited growth opportunities. Candidates will eventually find out.
3. Candidates Are Judging Your Culture Before They Ever Work for You
Organizations spend enormous amounts of money on employer branding.
- They create beautiful career pages.
- They post employee testimonials.
- They talk about their values on LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, a candidate has been waiting 17 days for someone to tell them whether they made it to the next interview. Your hiring process is part of your culture. If your recruiting process feels disorganized, misleading, impersonal, or disrespectful, candidates have every reason to wonder whether working for you will feel exactly the same.
How to fix it: Audit your candidate experience like you would your customer experience.
Go through the hiring process from an applicant’s perspective. How long does the application take? Is the salary range clear? How quickly does someone receive an acknowledgment? How many interviews are actually necessary? Are candidates repeatedly asked for the same information? Are assignments reasonable for someone who isn’t being paid? Does every candidate know what happens next and when?
Companies wouldn’t knowingly make customers jump through unnecessary hoops and then wonder why they abandoned their carts. Candidate drop-off deserves the same attention.
Candidate Ghosting Is Data. Use It.
None of this excuses candidates who schedule interviews and don’t show up or who accept positions and disappear without communicating. Professional courtesy goes both ways. But if candidate ghosting happens frequently in your organization, don’t immediately decide that Gen Z is the problem.
Look at where people disappear. Patterns tell you something. Treat ghosting as data. If candidates repeatedly disappear at the same stage, investigate that stage before blaming an entire generation.
Because while Gen Z may be participating in workplace ghosting, they certainly didn’t invent it.
The hiring relationship starts long before someone’s first day. Every email, interview, delay, follow-up, and interaction teaches candidates something about what it might be like to work for you.
You can’t demand relationship-level loyalty while providing transaction-level treatment.
Civility Partners helps organizations identify the workplace issues driving disengagement, turnover, conflict, and other costly people problems and build healthier, more effective cultures in their place.
If attracting and retaining great people has become a challenge, schedule a complimentary call with one of our experts. The conversation will help you uncover what may be getting in the way and where to focus next.
