I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. At Intel, I got the silent treatment after getting an offer. It was for an implementation (RTL -> circuit) position. We chatted about schedule and it was apparent that they wouldn't actually have a pressing need for that sort of thing for at least six months, and that they were hiring as they could and they expected to be hiring implementation folks for at least another six months to fill all of their reqs.
When we got around to discussing start date I asked if I could take a few months off between jobs and start in a few months. The hiring manager (who was an engineer, not a recruiter) stopped responding to my emails and returning my calls. Months later, I asked a friend of mine what happened and was told "X is busy". Too busy to spend five seconds responding to an email? Really?
Today, that hiring manager is at ARM and I declined an a chance to interview in his group when I found out who was in charge. I think I dodged a bullet; I can only imagine what working for the guy is like.
By contrast, I applied for a job I was completely unqualified for at another company around the time I interviewed at Intel. I didn't expect to even get an interview, and I didn't. But I still got a nice snail mail rejection notice. Many years later, I now work for that second company.
Like I said, I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. Putting aside kindness and basic human decency, even if you're completely selfish, it costs basically nothing to be polite, and the benefits are pretty large. Conversely, being rude gains you nothing and has noticeable costs.
I got the silent treatment twice when trying to interview at Yahoo and once with Google. In all cases it was at the stage between initial recruiter contact and agreeing on a date for the first phone screen. I later found out (by looking up the recruiters on LinkedIn) that both of the Yahoo recruiters had left Yahoo and now worked at Apple. Ever since then I started wondering how big the impact of recruiters turnover is on candidates getting stalled.
I had a similar experience at TomTom. I applied for a position, got a positive reply, tried to schedule for an interview. After that I did not hear anything for quite a while, so I e-mailed again and, in case they had e-mail problems, called the recruiter. He promised to call me back, which he obviously did not. Later I learned (also from LinkedIn) that the recruiter had moved to another company around that time.
Funny enough, until this day (months later) the position is still open and it gets reposted every now and then.
I got the silent treatment from Intel as well, though in my case it came after I had gone through an initial interview at an event here in Dallas. I got a message from someone down in the Atom V&V group in Austin that they were interested in bringing me down for an additional interview, and that was the end of communications. I never got a response to any of the follow-up emails I sent.
Strangely, I got an email from someone in HR down in Austin about a year later that was very similar to the one I got after the Dallas interview event. Again, no one responded to me after that initial email.
In the last six months, my spouse interview in 20+ places and in 10+ places, they were silent after the in-person interview. We concluded that its just the way SV works...inspite of all the hype.
That's EXACTLY how SV works and frankly it annoys the hell out of me. You spend countless hours interviewing. Recruiters are overly excited and hyper when talking to you ("You're the perfect candidate. bla bla"). And at the end when they decide to not move forward with an offer they don't even have the decency of sending a quick "Sorry, it didn't end up being a match" email. Your emails inquiring on the status on the other hand are often not responded to anymore.
I can think of a likely potential scenario: There are some reservations, maybe they are first offering the position to someone else and are waiting to see if they accept, or they want to bring you back in for more interviews to make sure. They wait too long to talk to you, and now they feel guilty and awkward talking to you at all. So they just stop.
When we got around to discussing start date I asked if I could take a few months off between jobs and start in a few months. The hiring manager (who was an engineer, not a recruiter) stopped responding to my emails and returning my calls. Months later, I asked a friend of mine what happened and was told "X is busy". Too busy to spend five seconds responding to an email? Really?
Today, that hiring manager is at ARM and I declined an a chance to interview in his group when I found out who was in charge. I think I dodged a bullet; I can only imagine what working for the guy is like.
By contrast, I applied for a job I was completely unqualified for at another company around the time I interviewed at Intel. I didn't expect to even get an interview, and I didn't. But I still got a nice snail mail rejection notice. Many years later, I now work for that second company.
Like I said, I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. Putting aside kindness and basic human decency, even if you're completely selfish, it costs basically nothing to be polite, and the benefits are pretty large. Conversely, being rude gains you nothing and has noticeable costs.