Job Applicants Are Frustrated. Your Tech May Be Part of the Problem

Discussions on the business networking app Fishbowl tend to look a lot like this these days:

Fishbowl post going into detail of how a candidate who has been searching for work for over 6 months has been ghosted numerous times by employers

Workers use Fishbowl for anonymous professional networking — and increasingly, to complain about employers’ inability to connect with job applicants.

According to a 2023 survey conducted by Indeed, four in 10 job candidates report having been ghosted by a potential employer after a second- or third-round interview. That is up from 30% just one year prior.

Perhaps worse: more than one in three (35%) U.S. job seekers surveyed in 2023 claim an employer did not acknowledge their application.

As a result, the talent sector is going through a much needed reality check to see what — and what isn't — working.

Ghosting Isn’t New — But Is It Avoidable?

Ghosting from an employer isn't new, but it is happening at a greater frequency.

“Ghosting and lack of feedback in the hiring process continue to be a point of contention for candidates,” said Lisa Frank, CEO of LBF Strategies, a Carmel, Ind.-based search consultant. “As the job market has leveled from the chaos of the Great Resignation, there is a lot of candidate saturation. The volume of open roles has decreased, yet competition has increased significantly. With that, employers have slowed down their processes, requiring some candidates to go through 7-10 interviews for a role that they often don’t even secure.”

Frank said even in her line of work as career coach and recruiter, where the mission is to help as many people who are searching for jobs find work that fits their skills and interests, it can be difficult to keep up with the talent supply because of the influx of resumes coming her way. “I know I won’t be able to help everyone, and all of the conversations won’t lead to a placement.”

This reality is causing ripples across the talent experience sector. According to a recent survey from Hunt Club, 53% of job applicants feel there is not enough transparency, communication and follow-up from search consultants throughout the hiring process, and 44% believe there is a lack of personal attention or support from the hiring manager or recruiter as part of a job search.

Related Article: We Need Great Recruiters Now More Than Ever

Is an ATS Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) were developed to facilitate the hiring process by, in theory, automating recruiters’ administrative work and delivering valuable insights about a candidate pool.

But Jay Haines, founder of executive search firm Grace Blue Partnership, said while ATS implementations were meant, in part, to free up a recruiter and provide a meaningful candidate experience, that never actually happened.

“In some cases, the implementation of an ATS meant to simplify the process has added layers that take up even more of their time,” he said. “These days, those three letters have become practically synonymous with a less-than-stellar start to the candidate experience.”

Haines noted that the problem with ATS is the expectation employers have for the technology.

“As these systems became more powerful, we began to see possibilities for where else in the recruiting process they could streamline and add value. And because they’re typically a large expense, we felt a very natural pressure to maximize that investment. Over time, we began to think about the ATS as a meaningful part of the candidate experience,” he said. “No candidate in human history ever joined a company and later fondly remembered their experience with a company’s ATS, even if the experience was smooth.”

Most importantly, a poor talent experience can cost companies lots of money.

The Dollars and Sense Case for Talent Experience

According to Glassdoor, the average cost-per-hire in the United States is around $4,000 — and that’s just the cost to the company. Ineffective recruiting processes and a candidate’s poor experience can often drive this cost higher because of the amount of money needed to promote a role and the manual resources spent on manual screening and sourcing.

But what about the money and time costing employees already working at a company?

Research by Bersin by Deloitte found that HR professionals spend an average of 14 hours per week manually screening resumes. This means more than a third (35%) of a 40-hour work week is being spent on tasks that technology is supposed to address.

And here we are wondering why the talent experience is in decline. The people and the technology are not working together.

“Companies spend billions of dollars every year trying to understand and make actual emotional connections with customers, yet the same consideration is not currently given to job seekers — even among many companies leading the way in terms of customer experience,” Haines noted.

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