Shortlistr is a hiring intelligence platform built on the candidate experience. It helps candidates find roles worth their time, prepare properly and track every application, and turns what candidates experience into evidence employers and recruitment agencies can act on. Every experience counts.

The Cost of Ghosting

What silence actually costs.

Model the value destroyed when a candidate is silently rejected mid-process, ghosted, from where they're sitting, split across the employer whose brand is on the line and the candidates who invested their time. Every rate is an editable assumption; adjust the model to your own data.

Shortlistr makes ghosting measurable. The Silent Rejection Rate records how often candidates confirm they were ghosted, and the Silent Rejection Risk Score flags the risk early, using indicators in hiring behaviour such as how long applications stall at a stage.

How are you hiring?Choose 'Via agency' if a recruiter is running this search, or 'Direct recruitment' if your in-house team is hiring. This controls which fields are shown.

The engagement Details of the recruiter engagement, the fee context you're comparing silent-rejection costs against.

Placements madeThe number of roles successfully filled in this engagement. The total recruiter fee is calculated from this × the per-placement fee.

Placed-role base salaryeachThe base salary for each role that was placed. The placement fee is a percentage of this figure.

Placement feeThe recruiter's fee as a percentage of the placed role's base salary.

GSTapplied to invoiceThe GST rate applied to the recruiter's invoice, to show the full invoice total.

The silent rejections The candidates who were silently rejected and the role they were applying for.

Candidates silently rejected, by exit roundHow many candidates were silently rejected at each stage. Later exits mean more time invested by both sides before the silence.

2nd

3rd

Final

Candidate base salaryeachThe base salary for the role candidates were being considered for. This values each candidate's preparation time and search reset.

Candidate situationWhether the silently rejected candidate was employed (hedging) or between roles. Between-roles candidates bear the full search reset; employed candidates bear ~20%.

Advanced assumptions Fine-tune the model's hourly rates and candidate-behaviour percentages to match your own data.

Employer interviewer costloaded, per hourThe loaded hourly cost of your interviewers, salary, on-costs and overhead, for each hour of interviewing.

Won't reapply or referLiveCareer 2026: 48%Share of silently rejected candidates who won't apply to this employer again or refer others. LiveCareer's 2026 candidate survey put this at 48%.

Replacement sourcing costper lost candidate, modelled, $0 defaultWhat it costs to source a replacement for each candidate lost from your pipeline. Defaults to $0 so the headline stays defensible until you set it from your own data.

Combined value destroyed

The sum of the employer's cost and the candidates' cost, the total value destroyed across everyone affected by the silence.

$34,730

20%of the recruiter's ex-GST fee, borne by others, in the employer's name

Cost to the employer

Interviewer hours at loaded rates, plus modelled replacement sourcing for each candidate lost from the pipeline.

$11,880

Sunk interviewer time Silently rejected candidates × cumulative interview hours per round × loaded hourly rate.$11,880

Replacement sourcing , modelled Candidates lost from the pipeline × your per-candidate replacement sourcing cost. Defaults to $0 until you set it.$0

Cost to the candidates

Preparation hours valued at the candidate's hourly rate, plus the search-reset weeks they lose restarting.

$22,850

Time invested Silently rejected candidates × cumulative preparation hours per round × the candidate's hourly rate (salary ÷ 2,080).$13,098

Search reset Added weeks of job search per round × weekly rate (salary ÷ 52), scaled to 20% when the candidate is employed and hedging.$9,752

Applicant-pool erosion: the leading indicator

5of 10 won't apply here again · 48%, LiveCareer 2026

4will trust the employer less · 42%

Your Silent Rejection Score counts exactly these journeys, so it reads as future pipeline draining away, not just past service. Clemson (Roth et al., 2026) finds the effect large and durable: candidates don't simply get over it.

The engagement, for context

Recruiter fee (ex-GST)$169,480

GST collected , remitted to ATO$16,948

Invoice total (inc-GST)$186,428

Per placement$42,370 ex-GST

Effective fee rate20%

Read the numbers as a model, not a measurement. The two hard lines, interviewer time and candidate time, are bottom-up from hours × rates and hold up under scrutiny. Search reset and replacement sourcing are modelled; sourcing defaults to $0 so the headline stays defensible until you set it from your own data. Pool-erosion percentages are survey-based (LiveCareer 2026, n≈1,000; CareerPlug 2024) and the durability finding is Clemson (Roth et al., 2026, n=390). Time-per-round: employer 4.5 / 10.5 / 13.5 hrs and candidate 7 / 16 / 20 hrs cumulative by exit round; reset 0.5 / 1.0 / 2.5 added weeks (×20% when hedging). Candidate hourly = salary ÷ 2,080; weekly = salary ÷ 52. Rates are generic international benchmarks, replace with your AU beta data.