There are now spreadsheets or wikis with academic job listings for most fields now. These can be a helpful resource for finding jobs, but the anonymous comments often reflect some confusion about how academic searches work. The most common are about updates and rejections.

I've been on five search committees and chaired one, in addition to the various jobs I've applied for. Cultures vary by field, institution, and country. My comments reflect my experience with US faculty searches you'd see on the EcoEvo jobs wiki.

Processes vary, but in my experience: after applications are reviewed and ranked by members of the committee, the rankings are pooled and discussed, and there's usually a long list (acceptable), and a short list (Skype or phone interviews).

There's usually a cutoff of "unacceptable" (often for things like poor fit for the position -- i.e., a soil microbial biologist applying to a vertebrate paleontology job). Those are people you can reject right away, though this doesn't always happen.

After Skypes, some are moved into "unacceptable" and can be rejected (though this doesn't always happen) while the rest are kept "active." The top 3-4 top candidates (often not who you'd predict from initial scores!) are identified by a new round of rankings and discussion.

So, the "active" pool may now include "people who were invited to campus interviews," "people who were Skyped, not invited, but are still in the running," and "people who were not Skyped but are still in the running."

Based on comments on the faculty job wikis, people seem confused that they may still be active after campus interviews are made. This is for a few reasons: 1) It's not uncommon for none of the campus interviews work out.

A top candidate often fields multiple offers, so you lose people to other jobs. Candidates also may be found unacceptable after campus interviews. Some jobs may need to bring a second round of 3-4 to campus, usually people from the Skype pool. Sometimes, more Skypes happen, too!

Things can change even after an offer is made, and nothing is certain until a signed official offer is in hand. Negotiations may take months, and still fall through. So chairs and HR are loathe to reject applicants unless a) they're unacceptable, or b) the job is filled.

So basically, there are multiple tiers of applicants being managed for any given job, and jobs may have hundreds of applicants. All of these are managed by obnoxious software like HireTouch that chairs may not have full access to, which makes it hard to give candidates updates.

So you may not get rejected because you're still in the running and chairs/HR don't want to reject unless they absolutely have to (a signed offer), or because faculty are busy and overcommitted and the software is clunky, or (less often) because people can be jerks.

(When I chaired a search, I committed to giving applicants updates at every stage, but I couldn't do it automatically with HireTouch, so I had to manually email everyone at every stage. It was a nightmare. I'm glad I did it, but I definitely get why it's not the norm).

But it's important to remember that you may not get rejected from a job for six months because it may just take six months for the department to get an offer signed and returned. You were, in effect, under consideration until that moment.

Now, having said that: search chairs should absolutely reduce applicants' stress by being as communicative as they can, given their constraints. Ghosting applicants sucks, even if it's somewhat common. It makes a brutal process just that much worse.

And that's part of the appeal of these job wikis, right? They crowd-source anonymous inside info about various stages in the hiring process ("Got a phone interview request, Jan 5"). In the absence of good communication, people turn to these tools.

Just remember that your knowledge about the search process is still limited. You may know campus interviews have been scheduled, but that doesn't mean you necessarily know that you're out of the running. It's not at all strange for you not to have been rejected at that stage.

Hopefully that clears up some misconceptions about the search process, by shedding some light on things from the other side, with all the caveats that YMMV. I'm happy to answer questions. I'm sorry this process sucks. Those of us who can should make it suck less. Hang in there.