Many people appear unimpressed with the growing list of so-called “new workplace trends” that critics say paint employees, particularly younger workers, in an unfairly negative light.
Among the terms gaining attention are “revenge quitting,” “quiet quitting,” and more recently, “career catfishing,” a phrase that started circulating widely last year.
Career catfishing refers to a situation where a job applicant accepts an offer but later stops responding to the employer and never shows up on the first day of work.
In short, they ghost the company after saying yes to the role.
Research by CV Genius looked into the behaviour and found that out of 1,000 Gen Z applicants surveyed, 34% admitted they had skipped their first day of work after accepting a job offer. According to the study, frustration with the hiring process is one of the reasons behind it.
For many job seekers, the process of landing a job today can feel like a marathon. Applications can take ages to complete, interviews can stretch across multiple rounds, and candidates are often left waiting weeks for a response. Some applicants say that disappearing after accepting an offer is their way of pushing back a little in a job market that often feels stacked against them.
It is not just Gen Z doing this either. Millennials, aged between 28 and 43, are also part of the trend, with 24% saying they have skipped the first day of a new job.
Older generations seem less likely to do it. Only 11% of Gen X workers, aged 44 to 59, admitted to doing the same, while just 7% of Baby Boomers aged 60 and above said they had done it.
Reactions to “career catfishing”
Online reactions show that many people are not buying into the negative spin around these workplace buzzwords.
When it comes to “revenge quitting,” some Reddit users say the term sounds far more dramatic than the reality. In many cases, they explained that it simply means someone left their job for a better opportunity after feeling that their company had been taking advantage of them. In other words, they are just moving on and looking out for themselves.
“Quiet quitting” has also been criticised for the way it is framed. Many workers say the phrase makes it sound like employees are slacking off, when in reality, they are simply doing the work they were hired to do. Nothing more, nothing less.
One user on the r/antiwork subreddit wrote, “I get triggered by the term quiet quitting. It literally means I’m doing my job without doing anything extra. How is that unfair to the employer, and how does that make me a slacker?”
The same pushback appeared in discussions about career catfishing. A number of commenters pointed out that job seekers have been getting ghosted by companies for years.
In fact, a report by Resume Genius found that almost 80% of hiring managers admitted they had stopped responding to candidates during the hiring process.
One wrote, “[This ‘career catfishing’] is pretty much what the employers are doing to us. Got 5 good applicants? Stop talking to the other 4? So why act shocked if I stop talking to a potential employer if I get a better offer? Two-way street and all that.”
Another commented, “It’s not career catfishing; it’s just getting a better offer from a competitor.”
A third asked, “These names. Who comes up with these? It’s playing the field to get the best offer and then reciprocating the bad behaviour to the bad companies.”
A fourth added, “If anyone is catfishing, it’s the companies who post job listings because there are legal requirements to have fair hiring practices, but they know they will never plan to actually hire anyone for that listing because they’ve already chosen an internal candidate. Instead they string candidates along until they satisfy the requirements so it looks like they tried.”
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