'Just got blanked': Expats in Australia say job applications vanish into silence

Over two years, Alan Reynolds put together a polished resume and wrote individual cover letters for close to 50 full-time jobs in Australia. The Irish expat was freelancing while he waited, and he knew his visa status might rule him out of some roles. He heard back about ten times, and some of those replies were instant rejections. By his own count, that is a hit rate of around 20 per cent.

The applications, he told nine.com.au, were only part of the effort. He also messaged people directly, arranged coffees and followed up, and says that work took up much more of his search than the formal applications did. His visa shaped everything. On a working holiday visa, there are limits on how long he can stay with one employer, so he needed a company willing to consider sponsorship. He wanted a longer-term position, not a string of contracts.

Reynolds describes himself as a reluctant member of what the article calls generation ghosted: young Australian workers who are ready to start but are ignored by hirers. Data from Employment Hero suggests the experience is common. One in three Australians has been ghosted by an employer, and workers under 35 are even less likely to hear back after applying or interviewing. Around 22 per cent of applicants say they lose interest when the wait gets too long, even though they are eager to get a foot in the door.

Sophie Carlton-Greaves, a 24-year-old sports scientist and fellow expat, finished her PhD and began looking for work in her field last year. She ran into the same visa limbo. She applied for around 25 roles and heard back from five hirers. In her case, the silence also followed interviews. She said she expected some applications to go unanswered, but it was frustrating to get through multiple interview stages and then hear nothing. Even a little feedback, she said, would have shown her what to improve instead of leaving her guessing after so much time invested.

Her field makes it harder. Jobs are few, and many graduates end up waiting for someone to leave before a role opens, which she says happens maybe once a year after a season.

Lucy Farmer, a 28-year-old British woman, moved to Australia two years ago and searched job ads for a role in transport planning. She sent 80 applications and estimates that about 70 per cent never got any reply. In her experience, not hearing back is more common in Australia than in London, where an application might get no feedback but would still get a yes or a no.

Farmer concedes some of her choices were ambitious, yet she was surprised to be ghosted on more junior roles too. Ads often listed no contact for the person managing the hire, so she turned to LinkedIn, adding company staff and asking whether they fancied a coffee. She said she felt like a stalker, and then, in her words, she just got blanked.

The three jobseekers are dismayed by the state of recruitment, and the article says it is a key reason companies lose good candidates even in a healthy jobseeker economy. David Holland, Employment Hero's managing director of talent solutions, says employers are not meaning to be rude. Behind a ghosted CV, he says, there is likely a recruitment team or business owner struggling to keep up with compliance. Small business owners, he says, are drowning in recruitment admin, while job hunters hit a brick wall.

The cost runs both ways. Because so many businesses still coordinate hiring by hand, cycles drag on, and 51 per cent of employers told Employment Hero they have lost their dream candidate because the process took too long.