Love, Lies, and LinkedIn: Ghosting, Breadcrumbing, Catfishing, and Workplace Dynamics
Online dating platforms and user behavior hold clues for employee well-being challenges — and opportunities to do better when we remember to see each other as human beings, not just objects.
Please join the conversation on LinkedIn, too!
The stress we report from work often stems from poor relationships or interpersonal problems and demands that don't match our resources. That thwarts our spirit and impact.
Basically, unlearn what dating apps (and many social media platforms) trained us to do:
- attract attention to ourselves and exaggerate our attributes;
- present as we think others want us to be;
- go for large numbers and make snap judgments; and,
- cancel / unlike / unfollow — or even worse — ignore each other, instantly, in relative emotional and physical security, without seeing or feeling anyone else’s emotions.
AI and now GenAI came for our jobs and, more discreetly, seem to have come for two of our most important relationships — romantic partners and work. Technology should have made these important matches better — but it hasn't. So our questions are:
How do we ensure that using technology does not encourage us to use each other? How can we develop and use next-gen technology in such a way that makes us take a beat each time we treat people as objects in both our personal and professional spheres?
Love for sale: searching for the right match
What was once considered the desperate (or ostracized) person’s only hope for human connection is the modern standard: dating apps, around since 1995. About 39% of couples in America claimed to have first met online. The notion and research that technology-enabled marriages exhibit more diversity but less longevity endure — match formation vs match duration.
Over 44 million people used dating apps in the US in 2020 (out of 260 million adults, 13 million are over 80). Despite headwinds and layoffs, platforms hope to have over 53 million users by 2025. They are projected to grow nearly 8% from 2023 to 2030. (Good overview here).
As is the case with many technological solutions, dating apps have many advantages over depending on others or serendipity:
- Accessibility and Diversity vs. Proximity. They enable us to connect with people we would not cross, might be outside of our social circles, or have desired sexual particularities.
- Rational vs Primal. They enable us to know more about others before meeting them — and also think harder about our preferences and what we seek in relationships. We can neutrally decide on people with common values, hobbies, and dislikes rather than pairing up due to primal attraction or temporary desperation (or intoxication).
- Written/planned vs. Oral/spontaneous. Some of us are not our best selves when we meet in person, and it can feel very awkward. Online dating often starts with text, giving people time to think about what to say and how to respond.
- Speed vs Discovery. The early discovery phases can feel faster and more efficient online. Both parties are interested in an outcome — and hopefully honest about intent and circumstances.
From the usage data spanning three decades, we can conclude that many employees and managers of peak working age have interacted with these platforms — and probably been shaped by them. So has this shaped behavior in other platform contexts, such as job matching?
In the good old days…
The art and science of pairing people evolved with technology.
For centuries, representatives of wealthier classes met via social events such as debutante balls, elite schools, or high-society events, and often around clubs or societies or religious and philanthropic activities. Families introduced potential partners to marry well or pooling assets and power.
Before the digital age, people with fewer means and connections turned to classified ads in newspapers and magazines to advertise their availability. A 30-year-old’s classified in a British agricultural journal from 1685 noted that he “would willingly match himself to some good young gentlewoman that has a fortune of 3000£ or thereabout.”
An early incarnation of platforms in “industrialized” romantic matches across social classes and professions is the marriage bureau, which opened in 1939, with WWII looming, by two 24-year-old socialites. From a tiny office on London’s Bond Street, they used organization and good old-fashioned intuition to provide matchmaking services.
Joan Ball, a 27-year-old employee of just such a bureau, founded her own agency, Eros Friendship Bureau Ltd., in 1962. The name made it hard to advertise in newspapers, and there was concern that marriage bureaus were actually fronts for prostitution. Instead of a street sign and newspaper ads, she took to the radio.
Two years later, Ball became the Mother of all Swipes. In her new venture, St. James Computer Dating Services, clients filled out long questionnaires, and computers suggested matches. In 1965, Ball merged with another marriage bureau to form Com-Pat (Computer Dating Services Ltd.).
That didn’t last long. Across the pond was Operation Match. In the Spring of 1965, Harvard undergrads Jeffrey C. Tarr, David L. Crump, and Vaughan Morrill, tired of and unsuccessful at blind dates and mixers, founded Compatibility Research, Inc. Users responded to 75 questions about themselves and 75 about their ideal dates. They mailed the answer to Cambridge with $3. The system matched them with potential partners via a room-sized IBM 1401 computer. It was expensive; it took three weeks to get six names. It was a wild success.
Then Sally Matched Harry: “Algo, algo on the wall, who is the best match of them all?”
The advent of computers (especially PCs) and the internet in the next decades provided an ever-increasing number of venues for accessing potential romantic partners, including groups. Then came dating sites.
Match.com came on the scene 30 years after the Harvard venture, allowing people to search for attributes. JDate (1997) focused on the Jewish Community and inspired Christian Mingle (2001).
eHarmony (2000) focused on compatibility matching via a comprehensive personality test to assess users’ traits and preferences, aiming to connect individuals with compatible partners, as did OkCupid (2004). Plenty of Fish (2003) was more maximalist and “fun,” as its name suggests. In 2009, Grindr provided the LGBTQ+ community with location-based matching and social networking features.
By 2010, mobile dating was fairly mainstream, and 2012 saw the advent of Tinder (swiping on the go), Bumble (putting women in charge of initiating conversations), and Hinge (encouraging more personal sharing via prompts). Many niche platforms have since been launched, including a recent one matching people based on credit scores.
All these options, and many more since then, provide potentially endless romantic possibilities, and yet the efficiency of technology has disappointed, in part because of the behaviors it enables and perhaps encourages.
“The grass is not always greener on the other side. There seems to be a lot more grass out there.”
In a winner-take-all (and depress the rest) market, the “best candidates” get the most matches, and those left behind get frustrated and engage in suboptimal behavior. Terms for counter-productive online dating behavior entered our vernacular.
Catfishing refers to presenting a false reality, fraudulently using someone else’s likeness or just using old pictures. A set of terms evoke disappearing suddenly out of conversation or relationships without explanation or closure (ghosting or the nicer caspering). Hoping for better matches, users gate and hedge, stringing someone along just for the satisfaction of it or as potential backups (breadcrumbing and bench-warming or just benching).
However, in real life, individuals must live up to the online persona and the persona their match imagined. This can disappoint when the ChatGPT-fueled romantic poet of your online dating dreams sounds like Beavis and Butthead or both at once!
After an anemic date, or when we are annoyed by our current partner, we return to what we assume are options — which are often just imaginary or ephemeral. The apps train us to distract ourselves or look away from issues in our existing relationships instead of facing them head on and potentially emerging stronger — as pairs or/and individuals.
In this respect, modern relationships are like modern technology — both are easily replaceable. Instead of investing time in relationship development, people turn to the abundance of users on dating apps in search of an alternative ideal. And many users manage several apps (and relationships) at once.
We start to see people as objects in a catalog. The sites also habituate quick judgment based on looks, often just the face. They train us to judge and discard in milliseconds, often based on looks and what we make them mean... As with other social media, we can feel smug in our judgments without any growth. In the analog world, we are usually a few sentences in before learning about someone’s religious or political leanings — now, we use these as exclusionary criteria, further reinforcing the walls of our echo chambers. We use the same types of exclusionary judgments when looking at someone’s professional profile.
We think we are pole-dancing unicorns, and others are all boring horses.
However, as is the case with mental health apps, the novelty of using dating apps wears off. After this, our answers might be more reckless and aggressive. One rejection is hard — thousands either sting more or make us more immune to caring about the pain or the pain we inflict on others. Either way, our emotional regulation can be impacted negatively when we issue snap judgments or are on their receiving end.
When things go wrong, we can turn to TikTok, where we can easily outsource and crowdsource imaginary empathy and compassion with and from strangers. Our virtual interactions simulate a sense of belonging and togetherness, although they leave us feeling empty after the fact. Digital dependency is fueling a loneliness epidemic.
What does this have to do with well-being at work?
The evolution of the role of the human resources (HR) function parallels the automation of dating. In the 1920s, few companies had so-called “personnel departments.” Within a few decades, most companies did — the focus was on hiring and compliance.
In the 1960s, just as our love entrepreneurs experimented with compatibility computations, companies began using mainframe computers to automate payroll calculations, manage employee compensation, and explore the electronic delivery of training programs. Applicant tracking systems soon followed to streamline the application process.
By the 1970s, HR became more strategic. The 1980s welcomed HR information systems to automate processes and improve efficiency — a push that would remain. Then came the surge in the 2010s, just as people were joining Tinder, of HR technology adoption, with AI, the cloud, and predictive analytics for talent management and decision-making.
HR tech has brought the same level of automation and gaming to recruiting as dating platforms did to love. Algorithmic matching, central to dating platforms, is common in recruiting. A recent book claims that 99% of Fortune 500 companies use Gen AI for candidate sourcing and screening; some also interview via GenAI chatbots.
A 2022 survey of HR leaders found that most were using AI for functions such as employee records management (78%), payroll processing and benefits administration (77%), recruitment and hiring (73%), performance management (72%), and onboarding new employees (69%). AI tools also determine who gets laid off based on performance and sentiment analysis on internal and external email and chat.
While technology evolved, so did the humans in the HR equation — both recruiters and candidates. Getting a job is a process of mutual seduction, so intuiting what the other is looking for is fundamental. However, misrepresenting ourselves is a form of professional catfishing.
Plenty of fish, but none on the line.
Companies engage in their own dance of deception.
Job descriptions (JDs) are neither accurate nor fully explanatory. They may also call for excellent writing skills or teaming capability for jobs that might not really require them. More modest individuals might self-select out. Others will apply no matter what, assuming the JD is inaccurate. Some don't include any compensation information, like this one from UCLA.
Companies misrepresent perks. Jobs marked “Remote” to get you to click are actually hybrid when you read the fine print. The candidate might still apply — but is already skeptical about the company’s intent and trustworthiness. If they are interviewed, one-third of them feel that hiring managers and others have lied to them.
Recruiters and hiring managers fall into bias traps. Recruiters, many trained on dating sites and social media to make snap judgments (a modern-day version of “judging the book by its cover”), scan a candidate’s online representations, perhaps making the same snap judgments about looks made by online daters. Zoom interviews are more common than before the pandemic. They are more convenient and faster but can’t focus on the total person.
Companies ghost candidates instead of giving them closure. In 2023, more than a third (35%) of US job seekers never heard back from an employer on their application. And 40% report being ghosted after a second- or third-round interview, compared to 30% in 2022. The latest data is even worse. And, of course, the benching of candidates is an age-old practice in hiring.
Others wind up applying to jobs that don't exist — like bot profiles on dating sites. Employers post ghost jobs — designed to make a company look good, given all its postings and 500+ applicants. Thousands of applicants “swipe right” with no hope of a match — at all.
We also see versions of benching and bread-crumbing at work — people not being included when they should be or being strung along for training and promotion and other growth opportunities people yearn for. Interviewers often misrepresent growth and advancement in recruiting interviews, and managers tend to continue that charade.
As a result, employees display low levels of attachment and high levels of flirtation.
Candidates also play a role. It takes two — or 2,000 — to tango.
Our online professional profiles enable us to present ourselves digitally very differently, evolve our brand, and maintain our digital reputation. Changing our presentations like chameleons to get noticed means that we will rarely be selected for who we truly are. You can keep your authentic self for when you get hired — and then continue to suppress that authentic self if it is not the version of you the employer actually wants.
Technology has made it easier to apply. Because of a shift in the balance of power between employees and employers, candidates send more and more applications (40% more in June 2023 than the prior year). The candidate evaluation platforms take a while to sort through them all, creating a vicious cycle of waiting and spamming. Candidates who send out 400 applications at once also end up playing Tetris with potential jobs.
Candidates who play the game get the “Likes.” To break through the GenAI tools, more astute candidates are rewriting their cover letters with cut-and-pasted text from the job description. Slightly unusual candidates get passed over, as do individuals with parental leaves or gaps in their resumes.
Candidates don’t show up. In the pandemic, 76% of employers reported having been ghosted (too) in the past year, and 57% said ghosting is more common than ever before. Optimizing at the moment for what is convenient and comfortable might drive this trend for candidates — or being anxious about being rejected or getting another date for an interview after having been on the bench for a while.
Many of those employed have different versions of professional affairs. In this constellation, LinkedIn is a corporate Tinder. In mid-2020, LinkedIn added the open-to-work and open-to-hire mark for profile photos. When frustrated by a hard day or poorly behaved colleague, they might consult LinkedIn job posts and imagine themselves in other jobs. They might flirt, or even rage or joy apply, but then stay with the bird in hand. All of this is easier to do from home — far from potential noisy eyeballs or listening ears. Employees show up, but their hearts and minds are elsewhere.
Some push the theoretical dalliance further. Nearly half of all American workers have side gigs. Gigs provide not only needed revenue but also the reassurance of our worth and attractiveness.
Finally, interest in entrepreneurship — where people think they can write their own rules and not deal with others that much — remains very popular. Employed founders nurtured many startups.
In the parlance of modern dating, polyamory is trumping monogamy.
What should be more efficient seems to be slowing both sides down. Sound familiar?
How can we lower friction and improve outcomes?
Platforms seem to be good at matching us on traits or attributes. They are less good at matching us emotional needs and behaviors.
Understanding how drivers of human behavior affect matching
Our needs are often driven by four main feelings of inferiority: vulnerability (or insecurity), reduction (or powerlessness), enlargement (or perfectibility), and adoption (or affiliation), etc. These feelings might be triggered by events that we will want to avoid in the future.
Here are a couple of examples that illustrate this Adlerian contention in out matching scenarios. All humans are primarily motivated by social connectedness (dating) and strive for superiority or success (working and dating)— both propelled by feelings of inferiority. These can be entirely or partly subconscious.
If my main insecurity feature is envy, and I face an obstacle in getting what I want or what others have, it affects my self-esteem and can fuel rage. My life goal in turn might become superiority (isolating me from others, giving up on love and a good job).
If my main dimension of insecurity is affiliation, which leads to a need for adoption, I will become more self-giving and have trouble with setting boundaries, and my life goal becomes communion (making me vulnerable to the actions of others, exposing me to scammers or abusive workplaces).
=> Illustration: By putting women in charge of outreach, Bumble reduced the rejection factor for men and yielded better gender balance on its site — men were chosen instead of being rejected most of the time. Their odds are the same; the feeling is not.
Being clear about what we really want and what we can provide
The central duty of managers and organizations is matching the right people to the tasks that need to be done. Our central hope in love is to match with the right person. It requires being clear about what we need and also can realistically find.
In dating this might be a supermodel who plays the violin, votes your party, and loves kids and has a great job vs a nice reliable person willing to work through differences.
In recruiting this may be requiring excellent interpersonal and teamwork skills from writers who are individual contributors.
In 1995, when Match.com launched, the book of the moment was The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. A book in fashion at the end of the dating app innovation heydays was Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Enough (interestingly making TikTok rounds at the moment).
[Hopefully, another book is in the works, making a case for good enough pairs and treating each other as such, too.]
That is hard to do in itself, and many stop there. Proactive managers and partners think of the person they attract and match not as a robot, tool, or object but as an individual who will have emotional demands and need emotional resources — probably different resources at different times.
It can help here to bring in the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory developed almost 20 years ago: every job should as a set of job demands and available job resources. Job demands are physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects (e.g., long hours and responsibility) that require sustained physical or psychological effort and are associated with certain costs. Job resources are physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of a job that can help to achieve work goals, reduce job demands, and/or promote personal growth and development (e.g., supportive colleagues and autonomy).
The focus is not just on match formation but on match duration.
Aiming for the best of both worlds.
Employers can think about open talent differently. Going forward, companies and employers (especially in the services industry) can evolve into a ‘Marketplace for Projects’ where the employees can apply for and work on side projects for extra income, thereby both — turning the trend of ‘employee side work’ on its head and to their own advantage, and encouraging their employees to evolve into micro-entrepreneurs. Such a model could create the best of both worlds — enough security and attachment combined with the freedom to experiment.
Should we take a less romantic view of work, not try to combat or regret turnover and low attachment, and embrace the notion of another modern dating term, situationship: more than friendship, less than relationship?
Daters can develop new talents and enjoy more protection. They can use AI Matchmaking companions and other tools to learn how to communicate with others again. A former Tinder CEO’s Meeno guides post-COVID tongue-tied, lovelorn GenZers. Dating apps are using AI to weed out fraudulent profiles. Some research suggests that Chatbots might also provide some social lubricant to the grinding wheels of dating.
Platforms must innovate to improve matching… or mimic the US medical residency program — short application window, set criteria, and guaranteed matching — which describes itself as “Fair, Equitable, Efficient, Transparent, and Reliable.”
… and encourage users to not just shop for attributes (looks, education, salary, title) but also behaviors — namely their own. Platforms could also provide users feedback on their behaviors and biases. Friction software exists to prevent us from impulse purchases — in the dating world, this could be, “Do you really want to pass on or match this person?” But also, “Similar profiles (jobs) didn’t seem to work for you or respond to you. Would you still like to swipe right and apply?
Actually, there is just one question…
As a humans seeking connections, candidates and recruiters, technology developers and users, how can we ensure that we don’t treat people as objects in personal and professional spheres, and consider the impact of mistreating someone online or not showing up to a job interview?
In this table, we summarize the main complaints around dating and workplace matching we discussed and suggest ways to think differently about tech and matching in personal and professional ventures.
