I have known Gerry Crispin for more than 25 years, and he is a talent acquisition legend.
A founder of the CareerXRoads (CXR) talent acquisition community, Gerry has spent his career advocating for candidates and pushing the recruiting profession to hold itself to a higher standard.
He had a hand in developing several of the early SHRM human-resource standards, including work involving cost per hire and quality of hire. He was also instrumental in creating the CandE Benchmark Research and Award Program (which was briefly part of ERE Media before being acquired by Survale), which conducts candidate-experience benchmarking that recognizes employers who provide strong candidate experiences.
Gerry is leading a committee at the CXR Foundation that is the developing a proposed Baseline Standard for Applicant Closure, a document intended to establish the minimum that an organization owes every person who applies for a job.
The basic obligation is simple: Tell applicants when they are no longer being considered.
This type of closure would be required for 100% of applicants, regardless of application volume or recruiting stage.
“We’re trying to draw a line in the sand. Above this line there’s lots of opportunity for best practices,” Gerry told me. “Below, it’s unacceptable and you should be called out.”
The standard defines applicant closure as a clear, documented communication telling someone that they are no longer under consideration for a specific position, and it should be issued promptly after a disposition decision has been made.
Ghosting is prohibited, and the classic recruiting response “we will contact you if we are interested” is insufficient to meet the standard.
To document that every candidate receives closure, the standard calls for every employer’s system of record to be capable of recording timestamps for:
The CXR Foundation committee spent the first half of 2026 developing and revising the proposal through six iterations before they reached agreement.
They want the standard to influence three groups.
Recruiting technology vendors. Most applicant tracking systems already provide tools for sending individual or bulk rejection messages. Yet employers can configure those systems in ways that allow applicants to remain unresolved indefinitely.
The recruiting profession. The standard’s authors see a need for recruiters and TA leaders to hold peers accountable. They want new recruiters entering the field to be taught that ghosting is not an acceptable byproduct of high-volume hiring.
Government. The standard aims to define a practical baseline before governments do so. Ontario, Canada already requires certain employers to notify interviewed candidates of hiring decisions within 45 days; if there is a widely supported professional standard, it could serve as a model for future legislation.
The drafters are now seeking broader support from within the talent acquisition profession, with a short-term goal of 100 signatures by the end of July and 1,000 by the end of the year.
The level of support from the recruiting profession will determine whether this remains a thoughtful proposal or becomes something more.
