Breaking the Silence: “No News Is Good News” Is Seldom True

The truth about silence

When I was 10 years old, my cat ate my Halloween costume.

Sort of.

He ate the string that made up my costume. My mom, as she often did, made me a homemade cheerleader costume. My cat, Snowy, decided to eat the purple yarn my mom had used to make the costume.

This was the most expensive costume my mother ever made me because Snowy became very ill a few days later. He was lethargic and wouldn’t eat.

My mom got him to the vet just in time. The vet said if she had waited any longer, he wouldn’t have had a chance.

Poor Snowy had string lodged in his colon, and the vet needed to perform emergency surgery.

It was touch and go for several days, while we waited to see if Snowy would recover. Our whole family was devastated, because out of our three pets at the time, Snowy was by far the favorite.

He was the type of cat who loved everyone, and you could do anything to him and he never complained.

Over the next few days while we waited to hear my cat’s fate, my mom repeatedly reminded me:

“No news is good news.”

This is the same mantra I remembered from the year before when the only grandpa I ever knew was dying.

I repeated this mantra for years to come.

Snowy survived the surgery and lived to the ripe old age of 19.

But I would soon learn that no news can often mean bad news in adulthood.

“We’ll be in touch,” is the common phrase you hear when you leave a job interview.

So you’re left wondering, will you receive a job offer? Or will you receive a standard rejection in 2–4 weeks? When you’re used to receiving rejections, you assume the latter.

It’s hard to know what to expect when weeks have passed since your initial interview. In my experience, if the company wants to hire you, they usually reach out within a day or two. No news after that is usually bad news.

Although, there are exceptions.

My husband, for example, was hired for his current position a month after his original interview. He thought the ship had long sailed when he received the offer.

I’ve heard stories of people receiving job offers eight months later. In these situations, the company may have hired the wrong person, so they’re reaching out to their second choice.

For example, I had a company reach out to me a couple of months after an initial interview for a second interview. During the interview, they admitted they hired the wrong person.

I still wasn’t offered the job. Some things they were looking for would have been uncomfortable for me, and I couldn’t lie my way through the truth. It’s probably for the best. I never would have discovered my true passion if I’d taken that job.

Freelancing is a rollercoaster, but the same principles apply. When clients are excited to start a project with you, they reach out within a week. Any longer, and you’re likely working with a client who’s either not interested or they are, but they are slow, and that’s likely what working with them will be like.

Your initial interactions with businesses are a preview of the future.

My husband’s position supports this theory because he soon learned that the team that hired him (the one that took a month to hire him) is a chaotic mess. A slow response to hiring may signal structural issues that lead to communication or decision-making delays.

According to a LinkedIn article by the account Get Hired by Linkedin News, the hiring process varies from company to company and even position to position.

On average, the hiring process lasts three to six weeks.

— Get Hired by LinkedIn News

Of course, a lot of reasons can draw out the hiring process, such as holidays, employee vacations, and miscellaneous events happening within the company. And if you’re applying for a government job, it’s not uncommon for the process to take two months or longer.

Government jobs are always a structural nightmare, and you can often expect every decision to take months if you choose to work at one. (At least you’ll have good benefits.)

When it comes to your career, no news is rarely good news. If you reach out and still don’t receive a response, that’s even worse news.

There are exceptions, but they’re few and far between.

Jobs aren’t the only time ‘No News is Bad News’

When I was in college, I would freak out if my friends did not respond to me immediately. I thought they were ignoring me.

Now I realize they had more to their lives than responding to me. And if they were ignoring me, I wouldn’t blame them. I would have ignored me too.

However, as I entered the dating scene in my early twenties, I caught onto the fact that if the guy is interested in you, he’s eager to respond. This was true with my husband. Although he wasn’t as fast of a texter as me (and I’ve learned that most guys aren’t), he responded faster than other guys I’d met.

If a guy takes 2–3 days to respond, sorry ladies, he’s probably texting 10 other girls (or he’s just not into you).

The same is true on the flip side. Women tend to text more than men, so if she doesn’t reply within an 8-hour time frame (unless she lost or broke her phone), she’s not into you.

The only thing worse than rejection is silence. Silence is deafening.

At least when you’re rejected, you know you’re not selected for the job or the guy isn’t interested.

When you hear nothing, you’re always holding onto hope that they’ll call. I mean, there comes a time where you get the message (and maybe still hold onto hope that they’ll call 8 months later after they realized they made the wrong choice, but you also hope you’re not job searching 8 months later.)

When your friends ignore you, it’s human nature to wonder if they’re mad at you (when in reality, their toddler could have opened the message, so they never saw it — it happens all the time to my best mom friend and me.

The bottom line is — silence sucks, leaving us to assume: “No news is bad news.”

Maybe no news is good news when your cat just had surgery or your grandpa is gravely ill, but more often than not: no news is bad news.

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