“Ghosting is a choice”: How one freelancer solved a global recruitment crisis in a single day

Discover how freelance strategist Matthew Knight proved that freelancer ghosting is a choice, not a technical limitation

Every day, millions of freelancers and contract job seekers face the same silent rejection. They spend hours tailoring a proposal, crushing a multi-round interview process, or mapping out an intricate project plan. And what do they get? Radio silence and the pesky loitering of uncertainty.

In recent years, the recruitment industry has hidden behind the same lines of defence: “We have too many applicants. We are simply too busy.”

However, Matthew Knight, a freelance creative strategist and freelancer advocate, just dismantled that excuse like the down-to-earth superhero he is.

Over the course of a single afternoon, using his own time and zero financial investment, Matthew built a system that can instantly notify every unsuccessful candidate at the click of a button.

Matthew may not don a superhero cape—arguably, he should, and I have unashamedly attempted to illustrate one for this piece—but his actions speak louder than words. His solution exposes an uncomfortable truth for hiring teams and recruitment agencies everywhere: ghosting isn’t a technical limitation or a time constraint. It is a choice.

The true cost of silence

While a hiring manager might view an unreturned email as a minor administrative oversight, the reality on the receiving end is destabilising. The job market is increasingly brutal, and for freelancers, the stakes are amplified because the search for work is continuous.

As Matthew points out:

It is impossible to be a freelancer right now without seeing a constant reminder of how frequent ghosting is… When you have a perm job, maybe you go through this cycle every couple of years. But when you’re a freelancer, this is every day, this is every week.

The consequences aren’t just psychological; they are financial. When a freelancer is left hanging in limbo after a promising conversation, they are forced to play a high-stakes waiting game. They end up turning down or delaying other paid opportunities because they are holding space for a project that might already be dead.

I would rather have an automated no than nothing at all,” says Matthew, echoing a sentiment felt by nearly every independent professional.

It isn’t just an emotional cost. There is a time cost. It’s a financial cost as well.

Ghosting was solved in a matter of hours

Through his community, Outside Perspective, Matthew decided to test the validity of the corporate “too busy” excuse. If massive recruitment firms with enterprise talent management systems couldn’t figure out how to close the loop with candidates, he wanted to see how difficult it actually was to build a system from scratch.

The result? It took him just a few hours of manual programming.

I wanted to see actually how long would it really take to create a simple system where emails come in, it builds a database of who’s applied, and then you press a button and it emails everybody. It took me hours… and the reality is, if I’d have sat down with [AI site] Claude to do the same thing, it probably would have done it in even less time.

Even armchair psychologists understand what uncertainty does to a person. But here is what the medical experts say about it: “uncertainty activates fear and anxiety, leading to rumination, black-and-white thinking, catastrophising, and feeling unmoored.”

If you have the power to take away someone’s uncertainty and the anxiety attached to it, even if it isn’t news they will want to hear, you should use that power for good. That is why Matthew’s system is straightforward and it works.

When an agency or client fills a role through their community, they hit one button, and a standard, polite notification goes out to everyone who applied. No one is left wondering. He tells me the feedback from his community members has been overwhelmingly positive, proving that even a basic automated rejection provides the closure required to move on to the next opportunity.

Dismantling the excuses

The most damning part of all of this is what it says about organisations already using sophisticated Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), including Team Tailor or corporate recruitment software, such as Deel. These systems already have built-in advanced automated screening, matching, and filtering. They arguably possess the technology; they are simply refusing to use the outbound function.

“It is not true that they have too many people to get back to,” Matthew states bluntly.

When it goes into a database, it’s one button you have to press to send to everybody, right? I’m not talking about a detailed response with feedback, pointers, advice and coaching. I’m talking about one email that can go to everybody who applied that says, ‘Sorry, this role is now closed.’ Even that’s not being done.

When recruiters are making 15% to 30% commissions on a placement, or direct employers are saving massive overhead by leveraging flexible talent, communication isn’t a courtesy—it’s the bare minimum of professional respect.

“Unable is not true,” Matthew stresses. “They are able. They are actively choosing not to go back to every person who has applied for a role.”

The pervasive lifecycle of ghosting

Unfortunately, ghosting doesn’t stop at the application layer. My chat with Matthew revealed a far wider breakdown in professional communication that follows freelancers throughout their entire working relationship with clients.

Any of these types of ghosting feel familiar?

• Proposal ghosting: Disappearing after a freelancer has invested hours of uncompensated time building an operational plan or response to a brief.
• Mid-project ghosting: Clients vanishing mid-way through a milestone, frequently keeping the work that has already been delivered.
• Invoice ghosting: The highly damaging practice of disappearing the moment an invoice is submitted, forcing solo business owners to chase late payments for months.

To combat this, Matthew heavily advocates for defence mechanisms. Through Flight Plan, a structured support programme he developed to guide new freelancers through their first two years, he teaches business must-dos and must-haves. These include qualifying leads early, scheduling hard calendar invites for follow-ups, enforcing ironclad contracts, and refusing free speculative work.

Matthew’s goal is to help freelancers see what can go right when systems are put in place. That is what led us to our next topic of discussion. Freelancing has its ups and downs, but something must give. And it’s not the solo self-employed who have to suffer for their “freedom”. It’s also not the responsibility of freelancers to solve systemic disrespectful and unprofessional behaviour, such as perpetual late payments and ghosting.

It’s not the freelancers’ behaviour to fix

The burden of dealing with these systemic failures shouldn’t fall squarely on the individual freelancer. Matthew argues, “Why should we take on the burden for other people’s bad behaviours?”

To solve this so it doesn’t perpetuate for future generations of freelancers, Matthew operates an interconnected ecosystem of independent support structures, all funded out of his own pocket through his personal freelance work:

Leapers: A research organisation dedicated to investigating the hidden mental health challenges faced by the self-employed workforce, using data to advocate for policy changes

Freelancing Support: A comprehensive, open-access resource hub that serves as a central registry to guide freelancers toward expert legal, tax, and contracting advice

Flight plan: A community-backed onboarding framework designed to help early-career freelancers navigate everything from payment thresholds to industry resilience

Why is Matthew doing all of this off his own bat? His ultimate commercial goal is to embed these community resource hubs directly into enterprise agency talent pools. By creating economies of scale, a single platform can manage the engagement, well-being, and legal protections for hundreds of freelance networks at once.

The next generation of independent talent

This cultural correction of the freelance economy couldn’t come at a better time. With AI-centric corporate hierarchies trending toward lean and flat teams supported by vast networks of external collaborators, freelancers are representing a massive percentage of the global workforce.

Plus, an unprecedented wave of university graduates and creator-economy youth are entering self-employment immediately upon leaving education. These young workers are often unprepared for the operational and emotional realities of being self-employed.

Ultimately, based on cancel culture and the emotive career goals of younger generations, the businesses that survive this demographic transition will be the ones that earn a reputation for being genuinely freelance-friendly. Word-of-mouth travels fast within freelance communities.

“Ninety-seven per cent of freelancers in our research will actively avoid clients that treated them badly,” Matthew warns. “You don’t go back to get kicked again.”

By demonstrating that a functional solution to ghosting can be built in a single day for zero cost, anyone sitting in the hiring seat can do it, too. No more excuses. Ghosting is a choice you don’t have to make.

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