A woman was ghosted by a recruiter after 9 interviews following a slow down in hiring

Employers clamored for workers during the pandemic, giving employees the upper hand in job hunting. Now the roles have reversed.

• Megan Burr completed nine interviews for a job in marketing.
• After the ninth interview, the company ghosted her.
• Her story is indicative of a shift away from the rampant hiring of the pandemic.

Ghosting isn't just for dating any longer.

Megan Burr, 41, completed nine rounds of interviews for a marketing position — only to never hear from the company again.

Burr was featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article, in which she detailed her trouble finding work after she was laid off from her job in November. Her job search lasted four months and required multiple rounds of interviews and presentations, she told the Journal. When she'd previously applied for jobs, it had only taken weeks before she would receive multiple offers, she said. 

After applying to about 150 jobs, Burr eventually landed a position as a marketing consultant with Kaiser Permanente, she told Insider.

Her story illustrates a shift in the labor market: Employers were clamoring for workers during the pandemic's labor shortage, giving employees the upper-hand in job hunting. Now the roles have reversed.

As layoffs have shaken up many industries and the economy has been plagued by uncertainty, employers are stalling their hiring processes. That leaves those who are unemployed sitting through endless rounds of interviews, only for the hours put into the job-searching process to sometimes result in a dead end, the Journal reported.

"I've easily spent 20 hours on a single interview process," Burr, who has a decade of experience working in marketing, told the Journal. "From a business perspective, I don't understand it." 

Burr told Insider that she believed the number of rounds of interviews she encountered in her job search were excessive. For one position, she completed eight interviews over two months before the company told her they selected another candidate. 

"The purpose of many of the interviews was unclear, and they were often repetitive," Burr told Insider over email. "Same questions and answers, different audience."

At the end of last year, some companies, like Apple, began imposing hiring freezes, while others, like Meta, underwent rounds of layoffs in anticipation of an economic downturn. But, at the time, workers were optimistic about navigating the job market, with around two-thirds of workers saying they were considering switching jobs in 2023. 

Since then, the number of job postings have declined for white-collar roles in real estate, finance, insurance, and advertising, per the the Journal.

White collar workers are now forgoing job-hopping and opting to stay at their current positions — signaling an end to the "Great Resignation," Insider's Madison Hoff reported.  

The situation is different for blue-collar workers, with jobs in healthcare, architecture, and hospitality seeing increases in job openings, per the Journal.

"If you read about the Great Resignation on your computer while working from home in your pajamas, it's been over for a couple of months now," Aaron Terrazas, the chief economist at Glassdoor, told Insider earlier this month. "If you heard about it while on the frontlines as an in-person service worker or a skilled vocational trades person, it's still very real."