Ghosting
When an employer stops responding at any stage of a hiring process without ever declining you.
Ghosting after an application is close to universal and means almost nothing about you — most employers only auto-respond to rejections they remember to send. Ghosting after a final round is a different thing, and it usually means the process changed rather than that you were quietly rejected: the role was frozen, an internal candidate appeared, the hiring manager left, or the offer went out to someone else and they're waiting for it to be signed before closing you out.
The practical response is the same in every case. Send one follow-up asking for a decision timeline, put a date on your calendar, and continue running your other processes at full speed. A pipeline you paused for a company that stopped replying is the actual cost of ghosting, and it's the only part of it you control.
Treat an unanswered process as closed after two weeks past the stated decision date, but don't close it emotionally as a rejection — companies do come back a month later with an offer, and the ones that do are noticeably easier to negotiate with.
Follow-up
A short, timed message that re-surfaces your application or interview to the person deciding, without asking them to do work.
Application tracker
A single record of every role you applied to, with its date, stage, contact, and next action — the job seeker's side of an ATS.
Pipeline
All the opportunities you have in progress at once, seen as a funnel from application through offer.