It looks better than it feels. Or is it the other way around?
The October U.S. jobs report only reported 12,000 jobs added, but that’s because of an ongoing strike at Boeing and the impact of Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
However, unemployment stayed steady at 4.1% in the U.S., and unemployment worldwide in major industrialized countries/regions remains relatively low as well.
With inflation continuing to cool in the U.S., the Fed is poised for another quarter-point cut. But consumers are still paying a lot more for stuff than a year ago.
The forever contentious U.S. Presidential election is also upon us, causing extreme angst at home and worldwide. Plus, global conflicts continue around the world in the Middle East and Ukraine.
I’ll stop now.
Or not. For many of the employers participating in our candidate experience benchmark research program this year, many are experiencing application volume increases without much positive return. This means more unqualified candidates to screen out than in.
Because more candidates are then being dispositioned at the point of application without as much as a general rejection email, candidate frustration and resentment continue to run higher than ever. Also, it’s taking longer for too many candidates to find jobs across job types compared to last year, even with low unemployment (see below).
And now, according to our latest October CandE Pulse research, hiring has been down again overall since September and actually has been at its lowest level since January. Unfortunately, freezing hiring and layoffs are up (see figure below). At a time when many companies across industries usually ramp up for the holiday season, this could be the collective holding of breath until after the U.S. election.
Our latest October CandE Puse research is based on over 100 responses, with 50% of the companies having 2,500-100K+ employees and operating in industries such as Healthcare, Finance and insurance, Government (public sector), Education, Nonprofit, Technology, and many others.
CandE Pulse Hiring Status
The recruiting team size continues to slowly dwindle in our monthly CandE Pulse surveys, too, although it’s remained mostly flat for the past few months (see figure below).
Recruiting Team Size
When we look at the trend line with the overall recruiting budget, the trajectories show fewer increases and more decreases since January, meaning fewer budget dollars overall (see figure below). Again, many employers are sitting tight for now. It will be very interesting to see what happens after the U.S. Presidential election.
Recruiting Budget
What were October’s recruiting priorities? Since January 2023, we’ve asked our CandE Community and beyond in our CandE Pulse surveys. Screening and interviewing—always a pivotal stage in recruiting and candidate experience—are back at #1. This is most likely due to an increase in unqualified candidates applying, putting even more pressure on recruiters to vet candidates for the hiring managers to interview.
Employee referrals come in at #2 in October, followed by analytics and data management at #3 (you can’t change what you can’t measure). The application process comes in at #4 in October, probably because companies are trying to figure out how to better screen their increased application flow. In another piece of research we’re working on that will come out before the end of the year, only 28% of recruiting teams said they are using their ATS’s ranking and filtering features.
And there’s little old candidate experience coming in at #5 this time. At least it’s still in the top 5. Barely.
Top 5 Recruiting and Hiring Priorities
As always, this is only a partial list of what we ask, and it’s clear that priorities can and do change. Granted, the mix of employers responding to these surveys each month is different, but it’s still a sample set of current priorities.
In addition to asking what employers’ priorities are month after month, we also ask them how they are going to get all their work priorities done. Out of the top five each month, the most regularly recurring one is “Improving Processes,” now at #3. Current staffing is at #1 this time, flexible work schedules – remote/hybrid is #2, and current technologies and more staffing (okay) come in at #4 and #5. Considering how under-optimized many recruiting tech stacks are, we need more recruiting tech team members to help.
As we do each year in our benchmark research and now monthly in our CandE Pulse surveys, we again highlight how employers self-rate their own recruiting and candidate experience and whether or not they are leading, competing, improving, or lagging. Will those who said they were competing or improving, the usually biggest segment of responses, continue to decrease?
The trend lines continue to be clear—since January, “competing” has decreased, although it jumped up again in September with our CandE Pulse and this year’s CandE Benchmark, only to crash and burn in October. Overall, “improving” remained stable (see figure below). Competing and Improving are always the two biggest segments in this indicator. Both “lagging” and “leading” increased as well.
Each month these are self-reported ratings and are subjective, and they are also a different mix of employers each month, but we definitely prefer employer confidence in competing, improving, and leading to remain stable or increase. Of course, there’s constant volatility and business impacts, and the proof is always in the candidate experience ratings themselves.
Self-Rating Recruiting and Candidate Experience
Lastly, with all these market changes, artificial intelligence continues to be the buzz in recruiting and hiring. Back in August, we changed one of the questions we ask each month to: Are recruiting technologies with artificial intelligence (AI) helping you to optimize and improve your recruiting and hiring efforts (for example, sourcing, screening, candidate communications, interview scheduling, etc.)?
- 28% said yes in October (down 20% from September)
- 26% said no (about the same from September)
- 23% said not sure (up 35% from September – could be more new implementations in the mix)
- 15% said they’re currently not utilizing any AI recruiting technologies (similar to September)
- 8% said they plan to purchase AI recruiting technologies in the future (slightly above September)
So, overall, does it look better than it feels? Feel better than it looks? Mercy, we’ve seen so many constant multi-dimensional quantum-level changes for the past four years that we sometimes don’t know if we’re coming or going. I know anecdotally that most employers we work with are neutral to conservatively positive about what’s coming. We hope that means at least a little bit of a recruiting industry resurgence in 2025. Remember, it’s not all purgatory; many companies thrive and deliver quality candidate experiences.
We started collecting responses for our November CandE Pulse survey, so let us know what’s happening with your recruiting and hiring this month by answering our latest survey here.