‘Job ghosting’ haunts Turkish companies

ISTANBUL

As is the case in other parts of the world, ‘job ghosting’ is becoming a problem for Turkish companies; both SMEs and larger firms.

Job ghosting refers to the disappearance of a potential employee during the recruitment process. Those ‘ghost workers’ apply to many jobs at the same time, then sometimes never show up for an interview or leave the job after working only a couple of days.

The main complaint of companies presently is ‘job ghosting,’ said Mert Yılmaz, from the online recruitment platform 24Saatteİş.

“We have 4.5 million potential job seekers and 200,000 companies. Different problems become more pressing in the job market from time to time. We witness the job ghosting issue in the countries where the services sector grows fast,” he explained.

Some 5 percent of the jobseekers on their platform work at companies such as McDonald’s and Burger King, Yılmaz said. “Most of them last no more than two weeks. Such problems occur at places where all workers receive the minimum wage or all the benefit for employees are the same.”

He stressed that the labor shortage is becoming an important problem and different kinds of problems are surfacing in the job market.

Human resources departments cannot finalize the recruitment process, because the potential candidates often fail to show up for an interview, Yılmaz said.

“Those who start working at a company sometimes disappear during the lunch break or two days after. They do not even tell the company they quit,” he added.

The biggest recruitment problem the companies face is that candidates for blue collar jobs do not turn up for an interview, showed a survey they conducted among 781 firms, according to Yılmaz.

As for the white-collar jobs, companies are having problems finding a suitable candidate, he said.

“When companies fill the vacant position with an unsuitable candidate, their monthly turnover declines by around up to 14 percent,” Yılmaz said.