This paper examines how employers use cheap talk to infer a candidate’s likelihood to accept an offer. Employers in the nonprofit sector often perceive thank-you notes as a willingness to accept a job offer if given, even though these job market signals are thought to be too cheap for employers to seriously incorporate into their selection decisions. Integrating 18-months of participant observation of hiring teams and semi-structured interviews with nonprofit professionals, finding demonstrate that when thank-you notes are absent, employers discontinue preferred candidates despite their prior success in the screening process. Among nonprofit employers, high-SES candidates have a lower chance of receiving job offers relative to a low-SES candidates when failing to send a thanks-you email as this inaction increases concerns about offer acceptance. These findings challenge the assumption that employers ignore cheap talk in hiring decisions and reveal its critical role in shaping employers’ selection decisions.
