I applied for a job, and was contacted by the recruiter 4 days later to schedule a phone screening. It was early in my job search so I was excited, and glad my resume was getting noticed.
I prepared and jumped on the call 10 min early just to be ghosted. I waited 15 min past start time and no one showed up. I emailed the recruiter afterwards but she only responded 48 hours later with an apology and asked to rescheduled.
At that time I had other interviews lined up and didn't want to move forward with this company. I still rescheduled but wasn't expecting much from it.
Fast forward I passed the initial screening and had another round of interview in person which went pretty well ( the hiring team is really nice) in my opinion, but after the second round I didn't hear anything from them in 3 weeks. At that time I had some solid options I thought would convert to offers but none did. Never did I think that the application I had the least hope in would contact me for a final interview and then offer me the job the following day with a higher pay than I had hoped.
I finally got and accepted an offer after about 40 applications, 16 phone screening, 5 video interviews and 1 in person interview within 35 days.
I'm not saying to entertain recruiters that ghost or anything, I'm just sharing my story on how things turned around unexpectedly.