All Recooty Articles, HR Tutorials and TipsHow to Adjust Your Recruitment Process to Handle a 10x Increase in Applications
All Recooty Articles, HR Tutorials and Tips 
The recruitment process has gone through a lot of changes in the past decade and a few years now. Recruiters mainly struggled with finding the right candidates for their positions. But starting in 2022 and continuing into 2024, big layoffs in the tech industry have completely changed the job market.
Many companies, especially those in tech and other fast-paced industries, are now facing a new issue:
“We’re getting 10x more job applications than we used to, and it’s taking a lot more time to go through them all and still find the best candidates.”
If you’re in recruitment, you’re probably dealing with the same issue right now. A few years ago, employees had a lot of choice—they could pick the best places to work. But things have totally changed. Now, it’s the companies that get to choose from a large pool of job seekers.
The tricky part? Many companies are still using old hiring strategies even though the market has shifted.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- How the tech talent market has evolved the hiring process.
- Why your hiring strategy needs an update.
- How AI recruitment tools can help you streamline hiring.
Current Market Trends and How the Tech Talent Acquisition Landscape Has Evolved
If you’ve been following the tech world recently, you’re probably aware of the ongoing wave of layoffs. Between 2022 and 2024, 60,000 jobs have been cut across more than 250 companies, creating a flood of job seekers. At the same time, companies are focusing less on rapid growth and more on profitability, resulting in fewer job openings.
This has led to new challenges for recruiters:
- Too many job applications, making it overwhelming to filter through them all.
- Difficulty in finding the right qualified candidates within such a large pool.
- Time management issues, as recruiters handle more applicants but fewer roles, leading to slower hiring processes.
The recruitment process has been fundamentally transformed. While the task isn’t necessarily easier, it’s different, and now requires new strategies to handle the increase in applications while still securing top talent.
Why Your Recruitment Strategies Need an Update & How Technology Can Help Streamline Hiring
The traditional hiring strategy often involves:
- Creating a basic job profile with general requirements.
- Posting a generic job ad on job boards and waiting for applications.
- Receiving a high volume of applications, many of which are irrelevant.
- Spending time manually sifting through resumes.
This isn’t effective in today’s recruitment landscape. Many organizations are stuck in slow manual processes, and their hiring strategy has failed to modernize with the evolving tech talent market. Using AI recruitment tools and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can help in streamlining job application management.
Step 1: Clear and Targeted Job Descriptions
One of the most important aspects of the recruitment process is crafting clear, specific, and relevant job descriptions. Vague or overly broad postings tend to attract irrelevant applicants, increasing the burden on recruiters who must sift through low-quality resumes.
Here’s how you can fine-tune your hiring strategy:
- Outline specific qualifications such as skills, experience, and certifications required for the role.
- Follow specific role-based guidelines to maintain consistency and optimize your job descriptions for search engines. This improves visibility and sets clear expectations for applicants.
- Collaborate with your hiring team to ensure everyone is aligned with the desired qualifications. This improves the overall talent pool and simplifies job application management.
- Highlight your company’s values, mission, and culture to attract potential employees who align with your vision.
Incorporating AI recruitment tools such as Recooty’s AI-powered job description generator can help you create optimized job descriptions that attract more qualified candidates.
Step 2: Optimizing Your Candidate Pipeline
Once you’ve crafted a clear and specific job description, the next step is building your candidate pipeline. This involves deciding between inbound recruitment methods or outbound recruitment efforts, based on the role you’re hiring for.
- For high-traffic roles, where you expect many job applications, prioritize outbound recruitment, like direct headhunting via LinkedIn, to avoid an overload of unqualified applications.
- For niche roles, focus on inbound recruitment strategies such as posting on job boards and utilizing social media to attract high-quality talent more naturally.
The message in your job posts is key:
- Answer the candidate’s question: “What’s in it for me?” Instead of generic statements about company culture, present unique reasons why this job stands out.
- Highlight financial stability and growth prospects because, in uncertain markets, job seekers are looking for stability.
Step 3: Managing High Volumes of Applications
Recruiters usually get excited by a high volume of job applications, but quantity doesn’t always translate to quality. Sorting through irrelevant resumes takes time and energy, which is why prioritizing quality candidates over quantity is crucial.
Wouldn’t it be better to have 50 qualified candidates where 60% meet your criteria, rather than 300 resumes where only 10% are relevant?
This is where using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) alongside technology becomes an essential part of the hiring process. An ATS helps to efficiently track and categorize applications, giving insights such as:
- How many candidates meet the role’s specific criteria.
- Which recruitment sources are producing the most qualified candidates.
In addition, you can use knockout questions through an ATS to filter out unfit candidates early in the process. Use questions like:
- “Do you hold the required certification for this role?”
- “Are you available to start immediately?”
AI recruitment tools can further optimize the job application process, enabling you to focus only on the best applicants.
Step 4: Optimize Your Careers Page
An optimized careers page is essential if you want to streamline your online recruitment process. By providing clear information about your company, job roles, and the application process, candidates can self-filter before even applying. This results in fewer irrelevant resumes, making hiring velocity faster.
If you don’t have a careers page, you can easily build one that supports your hiring efforts. Shortening the recruitment window also ensures that you attract more serious job seekers. A focused time frame encourages urgency and reduces the volume of irrelevant job applications.
Step 5: Utilize Social Sharing for Wider Reach
Platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook provide unique ways to extend your recruitment outreach. Sharing job openings across these platforms not only reaches more active job seekers, but also networks with passive candidates who might not be checking job boards frequently.
Encouraging your team to share postings within their networks broadens your candidate pipeline significantly. Ensure your posts reflect your company culture, and always include a link to the careers page for easy application.
Conclusion
The recruitment world is always evolving, and your hiring strategy needs to evolve with it. There is no singular solution, so continuous adaptation and refinement of your recruitment process is essential to match today’s fast-changing market.
Relying solely on manual processes can slow you down. Using AI tools and Applicant Tracking Systems can help, but remember—strategy is key. Technology is only as good as the recruitment strategy supporting it.
Success is a combination of modern tools and a well-planned, flexible approach, tailored to your specific recruitment needs.
Frequently asked questions
Use tools like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and AI recruitment solutions to automate tasks such as resume screening and filtering, allowing you to focus on the most qualified candidates.
Clear job descriptions attract relevant candidates, reduce irrelevant applications, and make it easier to find talent that matches the role’s specific requirements.
A Careers Page centralizes job openings, highlights company culture, and filters candidates before they apply, reducing unqualified applications and speeding up the hiring process.
Sharing job openings on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter broadens your reach, engaging both active and passive candidates and increasing the chances of finding top talent.
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