Messages that stopped after meeting a couple of times. Paying for premium tiers to get better matches. Settling for something good enough until something better comes along.
These aren’t descriptors of the modern dating scene, but the realities of searching for a job in 2026.
What connects the two worlds are frustrating parallels: Technology promised to help us sift through an enormous number of options until we find the perfect match. Instead, each endeavor has created environments where everyone feels simultaneously overwhelmed by choice and disposable to everyone they encounter.
Just as relentless swiping took the humanity out of dating, automated screening and mass applications have made it harder to get respected (or even noticed) as a serious candidate in this job market: Job seekers are feeling exhausted, both mentally and financially, by having to invest up front in services like LinkedIn Premium or Indeed Pro—especially when finding a job, much like a relationship, used to be ostensibly free.
Meanwhile, ghosting—a term that was coined from the dehumanizing way some people stop responding after a few dates—has crept into job seekers’ lives, too. Many experience an interview going well, only to hear nothing from the hiring manager afterward.
And it’s only getting more common.
A new paper titled “Post-Interview Ghosting Casts Dark Shadows on Applicant Reactions,” published in the Academy of Management Journal, argues that the practice leads to significant negative implications for both candidates (who feel anger and treated “like commodities”) and organizations (who suffer a damaged reputation).
Candidates are responding in kind: A 2023 Indeed survey of job seekers found that 62% of respondents planned to ghost a prospective employer in a future job search, compared with only 37% in 2019.
Jennifer Dulski, the CEO and founder of the AI leadership development platform Rising Team, tells Fast Company she has seen people apply the trending term “NATO dating” (which stands for “not attached to outcome”) to their job-seeking, too.
“I’m just going to spray and pray and apply to all these jobs and not really feel anything,” Dulski says. It creates a vicious cycle in which candidates who expect to be ignored apply to more jobs and invest less each time.
Landing a job is just the first hurdle
And then, sometimes, they actually get the job. But that doesn’t suddenly cure career ennui.
Leena Rinne, vice president of leadership, business, and coaching at management and skills training platform Skillsoft, tells Fast Company that many employees feel like they are in “situationships” with their workplaces. Their jobs are placeholders until they find the energy to move on to a better fit.
That detachment is showing up in the data. According to Gallup’s latest “State of the Global Workplace” report, global employee engagement declined for a second year in 2025 to its lowest level since 2020. The first half of 2026 hasn’t shown any improvement, with just 31% of employees in the U.S. feeling engaged at work, and 18% being actively disengaged. That is currently manifesting as checking out at work entirely in hopes of a layoff, or doomscrolling listlessly through job ads.
Rinne argues it’s hardly shocking that employees feel little loyalty to workplaces where they feel insecure and where climbing the ladder is losing its appeal. “We can’t create these systems in a corporate environment and then be surprised when employees also look at it like, ‘Well, this isn’t permanent. I’m going to put in a year or a year and a half until something better comes along,’” she says.
A workplace situationship doesn’t have to be a bad thing, Rinne adds. Someone can be worth a great deal to a company even if they only stay for 18 months before getting snapped up elsewhere.
But if neither side enters the relationship expecting it to last, that’s a problem for leaders to fix.
A human solution to a tech problem
If technology helped create the problem, the solution may be more old-fashioned. Neil Costa, CEO and founder of recruitment marketing agency HireClix, points to what is happening in dating.
Gen Zers and millennials who are tired of the apps are opting for in-person singles events. Costa believes hiring is experiencing something similar, with real-life recruiting events giving hiring managers and candidates opportunities to actually meet and treat each other like people. Instead of one résumé disappearing into a pile of thousands, employers and candidates can work out whether there is actually a connection.
Online hiring platforms are experimenting with ways to make expressions of interest mean something again. Daniel Chait, CEO of the job board Greenhouse, points to the company’s “Dream Job” feature, which gives each user one token a month to tell an employer that a particular role is the one they really want—a little like a “superlike” on a dating app.
“That scarcity forces you to really think, which one do I want to use it on?” Chait tells Fast Company. “It helps them stand out and gives companies a lot more clarity when they’re looking through their vast inbox on who to focus on.”
Rinne argues workplaces could also benefit from abandoning the search for the perfect match. No job, just like no person, will tick every box. Someone who is 80% or 90% of the way there can evolve if a company is willing to invest in them.
“If I don’t believe that this person’s gaps can ever be addressed—that they can never change or can’t be invested in—that’s a very different thing than seeing the potential for people to show up differently if you invest in them in the right way,” she says. “You don’t have to go out and hire new people if it’s a bad fit. You can invest in the people you have.”
Costa makes a similar argument. It is “unrealistic” to expect any job to be perfect, just as it is unrealistic to expect a relationship to be permanently exciting.
“Every job has its ups and downs, just like life has its ups and downs. And so part of having a happy career is learning how to navigate the ups and downs of any job and any organization,” he says. “You want a job and a partner that make you happy. It’s just that even the best ones are not happy all the time.”
Macaire Montini, VP of people and culture at HR platform HiBob, thinks navigating all of this ultimately requires something even less techy.
“Knowing yourself and emotional regulation are the two most important things in the workplace going forward,” she tells Fast Company. Funnily enough, that tends to be what relationship experts advise, too.