It’s one of the most popular questions people ask about recruiters: why they don’t respond to my emails!
People get angry, or depressed, when they never hear back from a recruiter. Is it something that they did that caused the recruiter to ghost them? Did the recruiter never even see the email?
Well, it turns out it’s a lot more complicated than you might think. There are actually many reasons why a recruiter would not respond to emails.
In order to understand why recruiters are not responding to your emails, it’s a good idea
They’re Busy and Don’t Have an Update
If you are already working with a recruiter, and they are not responding to your emails, then it’s normally a case of no new information.
Sometimes the recruiter is waiting on word from the hiring manager. In most cases, the hiring manager is slow to respond—this is why they use recruiters, they can’t do the job themselves, so they hire a recruiting firm.
While the recruiter could update you on the lack of feedback from the hiring team, they might just want to keep the email correspondence to a minimum.
Another reason why the recruiter does not have an update might be due to the hiring manager being overwhelmed. If they are busy and are not responding to the recruiter, then it’s not possible for the recruiter to update you.
You Won’t Make Them Money
The sad truth is that unless you can make a recruiter money, they won’t respond to you. If you are someone who does not have the skills or experience that the recruiter is looking for, then they’re not going to respond to you.
Time is money in recruiting. Why would a recruiter bother to spend time emailing back and forth with someone unless that person is going to be able to fill an open role. Recruiters make money by putting people to work, they are not case managers who find people work.
It helps to understand what exactly recruiters do, and how they operate. If you understand how recruiters make money, then you’ll understand why they can’t spend time answering every email that is sent to them.
For most people, if a recruiter does not respond to them, it should be clear that the recruiter does not have a job opening that the person is a good fit for.
The Recruiting Company Doesn’t Have A Job For You
Simply put, if you are not an in-demand candidate, you won’t get a call back or an email. What does in-demand mean? Well, it means that you have a resume that fits exactly what they want.
If you’re an account executive with experience with a Financial product, and the recruiter is working on a A.E. role that has to deal with a financial service or product, then you’ll get contacted.
If you are someone who is a P.R. specialist, or a IT professional, or someone who works as a director of giving for a non-profit? Well, in none of these cases would you be useful to the recruiter.
Similarly, if you’re reaching out to a company that handles nurse staffing and you are someone who works in an office or does other professional work, there is no reason for them to communicate with you.
You have to be a fit for the type of role that the recruiting company works on. This is why it’s important to check out the company and see what they work on. You can do this a few ways. You could view their company website, you can read reviews on Google, Yelp or Glassdoor, or you could look up the company on LinkedIn.
Bad Experience: Mistakes Matter
A final reason that a recruiter might not contact you is if you’ve caused a problem for a recruiting agency. If you are someone who ghosts recruiters, if you took a job and didn’t show up (otherwise know as a “no show”) or if you have done something inappropriate in an interview, then it might be a reason why recruiters are not responding to your emails.
This is why it’s important to behave in a professional manner whenever you are dealing with people in the business world. Even if you do not think that the job is a good fit, or if you have to cancel an interview, it’s important to follow all professional decorum and make sure that you don’t behave in a rude manner.
Recruiting agencies keep notes on how people do: if they respond to emails in a timely manner, if they send follow up thank you notes, and if they show up to interviews on time and dressed professionally.
If a recruiter looks up your resume in their ATS and sees that you have ghosted other recruiters after interviews were set, there is no reason why they would want to move forward and work with you.
Reputation matters and because of this, if you are someone who has behaved in an unprofessional manner, it’s possible that professional recruiters will not want to work with you. In fact, in a previous article we posted, this came up as one of the most common reasons for a recruiter to ignore communication.
You’ve Been Sending Emails To The Wrong Person
It can happen, even to the best of us. You are sending emails to the wrong person. Perhaps you don’t know the name of the agency or you’ve misspelled the name of the agency in your email contact list. Whatever the reason, trust me, it happens more than you would think.
Many people email find that they don’t get a automated response from their email server when they email the wrong person. This is true, sometimes. It’s also true that sometimes the person will actually exist, it might just be the wrong person.
For instance, if you are looking to email with a recruiter and are entering the email for a sales team member because you have mixed up who is who---then you’re in essence emailing with the wrong person.
This is why it’s important to check who it is you want to reach out to. It’s one of the main reasons why I suggest that you use LinkedIn to connect with people. If you are using LinkedIn to connect with recruiters, then you know exactly who it is that you’re connecting with and won’t be confused as to who you are supposed to be reaching out to.
If you do decide to reach out to a recruiter on Linkedin, realize that even there you will have trouble if you're not targeting your outreach and doing approprirate research.
There are more, less common reasons, such as a company posting a fake job or doing research on the job pool. It's such a common question that even a popular newspaper such as the NYPost has done articles covering it.
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