My Dharma teacher once shared that when you are judging someone by an act as bad or inferior to your expectations, you are only seeing a sliver of reality. She reminded our Sangha that we are forgetting that there were billions of moments that occurred before the moment we were affected. The question then becomes, “is it possible that we are judging something that we don’t fully understand?”
This question can easily be asked in a situation where an employer “ghosts” you. Ghosting is often associated with dating but can be easily applied to any relationship where communications have ceased without an explanation offered. I have been ghosted and I remember how I felt – rejected, invisible, ignored. Many job seekers admit they feel the same way when a hiring manager doesn’t get back to them, despite multiple attempts to contact them. What often ensues is anger and resentment. It sucks. What I am asking you to do is to take a moment and ask yourself, “are you looking at the event of ghosting as one solo, independent action, or a result of many moments before it?”
What Hiring Managers May Be Facing
Is it possible that just like every human being, the hiring manager was faced with every day challenges just like us? Perhaps your ghoster is:
- Managing a workload that can’t possibly be executed by one person alone.
- Working with an archaic software platform to manage the hundreds of applications that come through a week.
- Tasked with ensuring the well-being of all their current employees, which needs to be their priority #1.
- Regularly ghosted by candidates.
- Having a crappy week and just can’t balance it all.
What it comes down to is a realization that hiring managers are human, just like us. They face the same struggles as we do. We are the same. Accepting this truth leads to understanding and compassion.
A Reflection
Allow me to get Buddha on you and share a passage from a story I read by Christina Feldman, author of Compassion and The Buddhist Path to Simplicity, that summarizes what I am talking about.
“The conceit of self is said to be the last of the great obstacles to full awakening. Conceit manifests in the feelings of being better than, worse than, and equal to another. Conceit perpetuates the dualities of “self” and “other”—the schisms that are the root of the enormous alienation and suffering in our world. The cessation of conceit allows the fruition of empathy, kindness, compassion, and awakening. The Buddha taught that “one who has truly penetrated this threefold conceit of superiority, inferiority, and equality is said to have put an end to suffering.”
Christina Feldman, “Long Journey to a Bow,” Tricycle Magazine, Fall 2008
By no means am I condoning ghosting by employers. However, next time communications from a hiring manager cease, remember that they are human, just like us.