Recruitment season in international schools runs on hope and inboxes. A teacher or middle leader spends an evening researching a school, rewriting a letter so it speaks to that school’s mission, updating a CV, chasing a referee in another time zone. They press send. Then nothing. No acknowledgement, no decline, no “thank you, but not this time.” Just silence.
Ghosting has quietly become one of the accepted costs of the international school circuit. It deserves a harder look, both in how schools treat applicants and, more painfully, in how some leaders treat the people who resign from their teams.
“We simply get too many applications”
The explanation is familiar, and it isn’t wrong. A single advert on a recruitment platform can draw hundreds of applications from across the world. Recruitment fairs compress months of conversations into a weekend. Small HR teams and busy heads are sifting through volume that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
The wider job market tells the same story. Greenhouse reported that 61% of job seekers had been ghosted after a job interview by December 2024, up from 52% in April that year, and its 2025 report put the figure at 63% of candidates left in the dark after interviews. Nearly half of candidates say they would not apply to the same organisation again after being ghosted. These are general hiring figures rather than education-specific data, but anyone who has applied on the international circuit will recognise the pattern.
AI is being used on both sides
Part of the surge is driven by artificial intelligence. Candidates use AI to draft letters and polish CVs, which means more applications, written faster, often sounding the same. Schools, in turn, use screening tools and automated workflows to cope with the volume. It is understandable that recruiters feel buried, and that a stack of near-identical letters does little to inspire a personal reply.
But the logic has to work both ways. If AI has made it easier for candidates to apply, it has also made it easier for schools to respond. An acknowledgement of receipt can be automated in minutes. A well-written decline can be templated once and sent hundreds of times. The tools that created the flood also remove the main excuse for silence.
Adam Grant’s new book, Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, names the outsourcing of communication to AI as one of the forces behind modern disconnection. The point for schools is not to avoid automation. It is to use it to protect the basic courtesy that keeps people connected, and to save the human touch for the moments that matter most.
What good looks like
Schools don’t need a perfect candidate experience. They need a floor. Three tiers are enough:
- Acknowledge every application. An automated confirmation that the application has arrived, with a realistic timeline for when shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
- Decline clearly, even if generically. A well-worded standard email that tells unsuccessful candidates the outcome is far more respectful than silence. People can move on from a no. They struggle to move on from nothing.
- Personalise once someone has invested time. Anyone who has interviewed, taught a demonstration lesson or completed a task deserves a personal message, ideally with one or two lines of genuine feedback.
A generic decline does not have to feel cold. For example:
Thank you for your interest in the [role] at [school] and for the time you put into your application. We received a very strong field and, after careful consideration, we will not be taking your application further on this occasion. We appreciate the care you took in applying and wish you every success in your next step.
That email costs nothing to send. Its absence costs a school its reputation, one candidate at a time, in a circuit where people talk.
The quieter ghosting: after you resign
There is a second kind of ghosting that is rarely discussed, and it often hurts more.
International school teams are close. People live far from family, build friendships at work, and form strong working alliances with their leaders. When someone resigns, often for entirely ordinary reasons such as family, career growth or a change in direction, the relationship can shift overnight. Replies slow down. Invitations dry up. Conversations that once flowed become formal or disappear altogether. And, most worryingly, the request for a reference goes unanswered.
Some distance is natural. A departing colleague will rightly be stepping back from long-term planning. But there is a difference between a professional transition and being frozen out, and staff feel that difference keenly.
The psychology of being ghosted by leadership
Psychologist Kipling Williams’ research on ostracism shows that being ignored threatens four basic needs: belonging, self-esteem, a sense of control and a sense that we matter. Neuroscience research on social exclusion has found that being left out activates some of the same brain regions involved in physical pain. Ghosting is not just awkward. It registers as a genuine injury.
Three features make ghosting by a leader especially damaging:
- Ambiguity. Silence gives no information, so the mind fills the gap, usually with the worst explanation. Was it something I said? Have they spoken about me to others?
- Power. On the international circuit, references are often given by phone or confidential form, and heads talk to heads. When the person holding your next reference has gone quiet, the anxiety is about your future as well as the relationship.
- Loss of identity. For many educators, the team and the role are a large part of who they are. Being shut out as they leave can feel like having that identity taken away before they are ready to let it go.
It is worth being fair to leaders here too. A resignation can feel like rejection, especially from someone they invested in, defended or promoted. If there were disagreements along the way, a leader may feel hurt or criticised.
When silence is healing, and when it isn’t
In Vibe, Grant doesn’t treat ghosting as malice. The research he cites suggests it rarely reflects a lack of care; more often it is a misguided attempt to spare the other person pain. And sometimes distance is genuinely needed. When Metallica’s James Hetfield went into rehab in 2001, he had very limited contact with his bandmates for months while he recovered. But that silence left the band in the dark, and drummer Lars Ulrich felt disrespected. The need for space was real. So was the cost of saying nothing.
That deserves understanding on both sides. If either person is pulling back to heal, the other should try to see it for what it is rather than read it as an attack.
But a head of school or principal is not just a former colleague. In international education, providing references is part of the job, and so is offering reasonable support to people who have served the school, especially when times have been difficult. The professional relationship may have moved on. The professional obligation has not.
So a leader who finds themselves unable to reply needs to ask an honest question: is this self-preservation, or is it dislike? Preservation is understandable. Dislike presented as distance is a choice about how to treat people, and it says more about the leader than about the person who left.
A short, honest email beats silence
Grant’s evidence on this is striking. In a pair of experiments, people who had been messaging someone for a few days were either ghosted or told directly that the other person no longer wanted to talk. Both groups felt equally bad at first, but over the following days the ghosted group felt worse. Being ignored hurts more than being rejected, because ending a relationship without explanation strikes at self-esteem, belonging, and our need for clarity, closure and control. A direct message stings briefly; as Grant puts it, “silence leaves an open wound.” Three lines that are hard to write are still kinder than none. For example:
I’m sorry that we haven’t seen eye to eye. I will provide your references and respond to any reference requests fairly. Beyond that, I’d prefer we keep communication to a minimum, as I don’t think we’re aligned. I wish you well in your next role.
It is not warm, and it doesn’t need to be. It is clear, it honours the obligation, and it removes the ambiguity that makes ghosting so damaging. People can accept a boundary. What they struggle with is a void.
A tool for leaders: walking down the ladder
Grant’s most practical tool here is the ladder of inference, a model from organisational psychology. Its core idea is that conflict is rarely caused by what people do. It comes from how we interpret it. We climb from what we observe, to what we assume, to what we conclude, often without noticing the climb.
After a resignation, both people can be climbing at the same time:
| Rung | Leader’s view | Departing colleague’s view |
|---|---|---|
| Conclusion | They were never really committed | My work here didn’t matter, and my reference is at risk |
| Assumption | They’ve checked out and don’t value the school | I’m being deliberately shut out |
| Observation | They resigned and have stepped back from planning | My head hasn’t replied to my email |
Neither conclusion may be true. And the longer the silence lasts, the more time those false conclusions have to harden into caricatures of each other.
Grant’s remedy is to ask rather than accuse: open questions that invite the other person’s perspective, on the basis that you may be missing something. With one colleague, he now uses a simple shared ritual for raising friction, asking whether they can walk down the ladder together. For school leaders, that might look like this:
- Notice your own climb. Before going quiet, write down what you have actually observed, separate from what you have assumed.
- Ask one open question. “Help me understand how you saw the decision” invites a conversation rather than a verdict.
- State your intent first. Grant cites research in which students responded far better to critical feedback when teachers prefaced it with a note about their high expectations and belief in the student. A leader can do the same: make clear you are raising something because you want the person to leave well.
- Aim for understanding, not agreement. Grant argues that conflict doesn’t need to produce consensus, only understanding. The best outcome with someone who disagrees is often that they see your view differently, not that they adopt it.
Walking down the ladder takes humility from both sides. But for a leader, it is a far better use of power than silence.
Disagreement is not disloyalty
The test of a professional relationship is not whether two people always agreed. It is whether they can stay civil and fair when they haven’t.
In Vibe, Grant tells the story of astronauts who learned to trust crewmates they didn’t like, and of a band that grew closer by learning to argue more. The lesson for schools is clear: trust and agreement are not the same thing. A colleague who voiced disagreement with a decision, or who changed their view on a situation, was doing their job. That history should not cost them a fair, honest reference.
A reference is not a reward for loyalty. It is a professional account of someone’s work. Leaders can be honest about differences of opinion and still be fair about contribution, character and capability.
Practical steps for leaders
- Acknowledge the resignation properly. Meet in person, thank the colleague, and follow up in writing within a couple of days.
- Agree the reference early. Confirm who will give it and how, so it never becomes a source of anxiety.
- Separate the decision from the person. Someone choosing to leave is not a verdict on you or the school.
- Keep them informed about what still concerns them. Their classes, their students, their handover and their final months.
- Finish well. A genuine goodbye shapes how departing staff talk about your school for years.
Practical steps for departing staff
- Ask for your reference early and in writing. Make the request clear, polite and specific about timelines.
- Have more than one referee. A line manager, a previous head or a senior colleague who knows your work well gives you options.
- Ask directly, once, if things go quiet. A calm, professional message is better than days of guessing.
- Keep everything you write professional. Your words in a tense moment may be the last impression you leave.
- Protect your wellbeing. Lean on your network and people outside the school. Silence from one leader is not a judgement on your career.
Civility is the floor
AI has changed how people apply for jobs and how schools screen them. It has not changed what it feels like to be ignored. Whether the silence follows an application or a resignation, the message received is the same: you no longer matter here.
Schools that want to attract and keep good people don’t need to agree with everyone, reply in detail to everyone, or stay close to everyone who leaves. They need to remember that a reply costs a minute, while silence costs a reputation. On a circuit this small, reputations travel further than any candidate ever will.
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