Great ! You finely made your way through the pile of interesting profiles. You’ll now be able to make a short list consisting of four candidates or maybe just that one perfect match.
Well, the best thing to do then is to meet, have an in-depth screening and get a more wholesome view of who they are, their personality, their skills and most of all if they are compatible.
Just like in recruitment, we don’t always decide if someone really fits by ourselves, we need second and maybe third opinions. We let the candidates meet with people who are important to us, this can be your closest friends or the companies Sales Manager. You just want them to give you an honest opinion and most of all, also like him/her. It’s okay to take your time for this process, even if you need five more meetings.
Unfortunately, you may also come across some road bumps during this phase. Since we are still dealing with people, there may be a few unpleasant surprises along the way to finding Ms/Mr Right.
In part one I briefly spoke about the phenomenon called catfishing. People sometimes make strange choices when they want to be a part of something or want to be liked. However, lying on your profile will most likely get you nowhere. There might a few more people interested in meeting you but afterwards, when they find out you lied, you’ll just look silly. Better to be your honest self, get less response, but finding your perfect match then to scare him/her off because you lied.
The second and probably most well-known issue, ghosting: “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication”.
We live in a day and age controlled by the online world. Day-in day-out we receive multiple notifications on at least three different social media channels. It’s not that weird that we sometimes may forget to respond. However, somewhere along the line we discovered how easy it was to just stop answering and disappear when we are no longer interested.
This is such a bummer. It’s hard to hear that someone in whom we show interest doesn’t feel the same way. It’s also difficult to tell someone who really wants to make things work, that we don’t feel the same way. However, it’s better to give/get an honest answer than to keep (someone) guessing.
So, from now on challenge yourself and even though it may sometimes feel uncomfortable, make sure to not ghost someone. Give them the explanation and respect that you would want yourself.
For all you know this person could introduce you to the perfect match ;)!