Ghosting Candidates Is Not Just Bad HR, It Is a Governance, Risk, and Compliance Failure

Companies like to pretend bad hiring practices are a minor operational issue. A recruiter forgets to follow up. A role stays posted too long. A candidate falls through the cracks. Leadership shrugs and calls it inefficiency.

That framing is no longer defensible.

When companies knowingly post roles they do not intend to fill, routinely ghost candidates after interviews, or mislead job seekers about timelines and intent, they are not making process mistakes. They are creating a governance failure, a risk exposure, and a compliance vulnerability.

This is not an HR issue. This is a GRC issue.

Governance: Leadership Is Accountable for Ethical Conduct

Governance is about how power is exercised and how accountability is enforced. It includes tone at the top, ethical standards, and whether behavior aligns with stated values.

When executives allow deceptive hiring practices to persist, they are making a leadership choice. They are signaling that honesty is optional when the audience has less leverage. That is a governance breakdown.

If a company’s code of conduct says it values transparency and respect, yet its hiring process relies on silence, misdirection, or false promises, then the organization is not governed by its values. It is governed by convenience.

Boards increasingly claim to oversee culture risk and conduct risk. Hiring practices are one of the clearest, most observable expressions of both. You cannot claim strong governance while tolerating systematic dishonesty toward job candidates.

Risk: This Behavior Creates Real, Measurable Exposure

Bad hiring practices create enterprise risk across multiple dimensions.

Reputational risk is the most visible. Social platforms are filled with documented stories of ghosting, fake roles, and misleading recruiters. Entire communities now track and publish lists of companies posting “ghost jobs.” Journalists are starting to investigate the trend. Once a pattern becomes public, brand damage happens quickly and at scale.

Operational risk follows closely behind. Companies that burn candidate trust struggle to attract strong talent. They face longer hiring cycles, weaker pipelines, higher recruiter costs, and increased turnover. Those costs rarely show up on a dashboard labeled “hiring ethics,” but they show up in missed targets, slower execution, and poor performance.

There is also strategic risk. Trust is now a competitive advantage. Companies that are perceived as deceptive lose credibility not only with candidates, but with customers, partners, and investors. People assume that how you treat applicants reflects how you treat everyone.

This is exactly how risk accumulates quietly until it becomes visible all at once.

Compliance: The Legal Exposure Is Growing

The compliance dimension is no longer hypothetical.

Pay transparency laws require accuracy in job postings. Consumer protection laws prohibit misleading representations. Employment laws require consistency and fairness in hiring practices. If companies post roles without intent to hire, misrepresent urgency, or collect candidate data under false pretenses, regulators have frameworks they can use to scrutinize that behavior.

And once bias enters the equation, whether intentional or not, the legal exposure increases significantly. Patterns of ghosting, inconsistent follow-up, or selective engagement can quickly become evidence in discrimination claims.

Regulation tends to follow abuse. That is how most compliance regimes emerge. When organizations normalize deceptive behavior, they invite oversight.

The Human Cost Makes This Worse, Not Better

This behavior is happening in one of the most punishing job markets in years.

People are unemployed longer. Savings are shrinking. Healthcare is tied to employment. Parents are job hunting while managing households. Professionals are submitting hundreds of applications just to get one interview.

Candidates are spending hours researching companies, preparing presentations, completing assignments, rearranging schedules, and showing up with genuine effort, only to be met with silence.

Wasting someone’s time in this environment is not a neutral act. It is not just inefficient. It is irresponsible.

And when companies treat people as disposable during the hiring process, those people remember.

Why This Belongs Squarely Inside GRC

GRC exists to ensure that organizations operate with integrity, manage risk intentionally, and comply with expectations of law and society.

Hiring practices touch all three.

They reflect ethical governance. They create or mitigate reputational and operational risk. They increasingly intersect with legal and regulatory obligations.

If this were finance, it would be an internal control issue. If this were cybersecurity, it would be an exposure to remediate. If this were privacy, it would trigger policy review.

The fact that it sits under HR does not make it exempt from scrutiny. It makes it overdue for oversight.

The Fix Is Straightforward, But It Requires Leadership

Only post roles you intend to fill. Be honest about timelines and uncertainty. Close the loop with every candidate who interviews. Do not collect data under false pretenses. Audit recruiting behavior like any other risk domain.

These are not courtesy gestures. They are governance controls.

The Bottom Line

Companies that continue to dismiss this as “just HR” are building silent risk into their organization every day. They are training the market to distrust them. They are eroding their own credibility one interaction at a time.

And eventually, someone will connect the dots. A journalist. A regulator. A plaintiff’s attorney. A board member. A customer.

If your hiring practices would be indefensible under public scrutiny, then they already represent a GRC failure.

You are not just losing candidates. You are losing trust.