New Jersey’s unemployment rate stands at 3.2%, the lowest level ever since records started being kept in the early 1970’s.

That means many companies are fiercely competing with each other, bending over backwards to try and attract qualified job applicants. But an increasing number of them are being “ghosted” by job seekers.

Ghosting is when someone who has an interview scheduled never shows up, or never fills out required paperwork if they’ve been offered employment, or simply fails to appear when they’re supposed to start a new job after they’ve been hired, usually because they’ve received a better offer from someone else.

According to a recent survey by the employment search engine Indeed, 4 out of 5 employers have been ghosted over the past two years.

Barbara Pachter, a business etiquette expert at Pachter & Associates in Cherry Hill, said ghosting is simply rude and there’s no excuse for it.

She said job-seekers have the upper hand but “things change and next month, next year the economy may not be as good and these behaviors do come back to haunt people. You don’t know whether you will be that one they remember or not, so why take the chance?”

She said individuals looking for employment may wind up ghosting a company because they get nervous, not because they’re bad or nasty.

“People are uncomfortable — they don’t know what to say and so they do nothing in the hopes that it goes away," she said.

Pachter said no matter what the reason is, if you don’t show up for an interview or a job, it’s poor manners and a big mistake to not communicate your decision beforehand.

“Just simply reach out and let the person know, and be polite about it. Say I was going to show, something has happened and I’m no longer interviewing. It is awkward, I understand that, but it’s more awkward not doing anything.”

“They may not be happy about it but they’ll be less unhappy about it because you’ve said something than if you just ghost them.”

According to the survey young workers, between the ages of 18 to 34, were twice as likely to ghost a company as workers in the 45 to 64 age range.

You can contact reporter David Matthau at David.Matthau@townsquaremedia.com

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