I have been thinking about how much has changed in the way we hire today.
Not that long ago the hardest part of hiring was getting anyone to apply. You wrote the advert, you put it out, and then you waited to see who applied. If the response was thin you went back and rewrote it, or you widened the brief, or you picked up the phone to someone like me.
It was once thought that writing job adverts was an art. As part of my own recruitment training, I attended numerous courses on how to write effective job adverts, and for a time that skill gave me an advantage in attracting the right candidates.
Even today, I set aside time each day to analyse job adverts. It helps to keep a pulse on what is happening. Over recent months, I have noticed a massive shift. It seems now that regardless of the role, you post an advert and applications start arriving immediately. I am seeing a tenfold increase in some cases.
Perhaps that is why, when speaking to a few of these companies, there was a sense of confidence in their own recruitment. ‘We don’t need you this month, Dave.’
More recently, that is starting to change. As a leader, you have your own priorities, and sifting through 300 applications is not one of them. What is worse is that you were never trained to qualify candidates at volume.
Applications per hire have tripled
I wanted to know whether this was just my corner of the market, so I went looking. Ashby analysed more than 100 million applications across 200,000 jobs and found the number of applications per hire has tripled since 2021. The average open role now attracts more than 300.
What is interesting is that whilst applications have tripled, the number of interview slots has stayed the same. The volume has created additional noise, and those hiring are spending more time filtering, validating and sense-checking rather than engaging with well-suited candidates. We are seeing qualified candidates screened out before someone has had a proper look, an issue cited by 26% of HR leaders, ahead of bias, compliance and transparency concerns.
Why this is a problem
None of this has made the hire itself any easier. ManpowerGroup asked more than 39,000 employers across 41 countries whether they were struggling to fill their roles. 72% said they were.
When those same employers were asked what they look for, the skills at the top of the list were communication, collaboration and teamwork at 39%, work ethic and professionalism at 36%, and adaptability at 34%. Those are the things an employer says decide whether someone works out. They are also the things a CV has never been able to show you.
The challenge we have here is that we are screening 300 candidates based on their CV, which is traditionally a poor predictor of job performance. Gem looked at this across their 2026 benchmarks and found that only 8% of applicants get past that first screen.
Schmidt, Oh and Shaffer went back over a hundred years of selection research to work out what predicts whether someone performs in a role. Years of experience came out at 0.07. Education was not far behind. Those are the two things a CV is built to show you.
We are using the weakest predictors we have to remove 92% of the people who applied.
Measuring more earlier
The companies who had previously thought they did not need help have started phoning back. Those that looked good on paper have not been working out, and the pressure and volume has placed on their recruitment process have prompted them to ask us to help them work out where they are going wrong.
To overcome the challenges faced with hundreds of applicants, we are having all applicants take assessments provided by The Predictive Index. The same research that puts experience at 0.07 found that the best predictors of job performance are when behavioural and cognitive assessments are used combined with interviews.
By measuring more earlier, we ensure that those who fit the role and the team go through to the interview stage, and we have the information at hand to ask questions related to fit and stretch.
We need to adapt
We all need to adapt to what is changing and how we hire is no different. Over recent months we have all seen the volume of applications climb to a level none of us have dealt with before. At first it looked like the answer to a problem we had spent years trying to solve. What it has actually done is put real pressure on a recruitment process that was never built to handle it, and relying on a CV to work through that volume is not enough. It is why so many great candidates are being screened out before anyone has had a proper look at them.
If you are working through hundreds of applications and wondering how to find the person who will do the job well, or you have made a hire that looked right on paper and has not worked out, reply to this email, and we can have a chat about it.
Best of luck with your next hire.
Dave Crumby
Founder at 360 Talent Solutions | Certified PI Practitioner