I’ve told this story a hundred times in the past year, yet it never gets old. In one of last year’s candidate experience workshops, a recruiter approached me and asked me to read a recent email on her phone. I did; it was a standard disposition (aka rejection) email notification. She told me she had just received that email for a job she had applied to a year and a half earlier. That organization’s talent acquisition obviously involved clearing out the candidate cache, but seriously, this looks bad on their part.
We advise all CandE clients to stop using the standard annual disposition email blasts. However, once the candidate has been deemed unqualified for the role, we recommend getting on the 1-2 week disposition notification bandwagon. Consistently and timely disposition emails over time reduces some of the negative candidate experience that piles up like dirty snow in the shade.
Take a look at the table below. It’s this year’s global CandE Benchmark Research. Did you notice that many hourly and professional (salaried) candidates wait 2+ months to hear the next steps after applying? Some may never get the standard disposition, while others may never see it due to spam filters.
Here’s something else to consider about the data: Most hourly candidates are a much smaller group in North America than hourly candidates in EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. But it’s important to point out that professional (salaried) hiring dominates the rest of the world in our data.
There are a lot of candidates in the professional category who are still waiting on next steps after 2+ months. No wonder candidate frustration and resentment are the highest we’ve ever seen!
Still Waiting on Next Steps 2+ Months After Applying in 2024
If you read the job numbers for September, the U.S. economy added 254,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Also, August totals were revised up this time to 159,000. The unemployment rate also ticked down to 4.1% from 4.2% the month before.
The Fed may cut rates again in November, so we’ll see what impact that continues to have in the near term. But, with political polarization off the charts and a U.S. election coming, plus global conflicts and multiple catastrophic weather events, it’s still going to be a bumpy ride.
Considering the abovementioned, our latest September CandE Pulse research shows that overall hiring has been up since August, which aligns with the BLS jobs report. Freezing hiring and layoffs are down, too (see figure below).
Our latest August CandE Puse research is based on over 100 responses from companies with 501-100K+ employees (67% of respondents) in industries such as Education, Food and beverages, Healthcare, Non-Profit, Manufacturing, Consumer Goods, Finance and insurance, and Government (public sector).
CandE Pulse Hiring Status
Candidate frustration globally was higher than ever in our current 2024 benchmark research, and resentment as we measure it – the percentage of candidates who said they had a poor candidate experience and are no longer willing to engage with those businesses and brands they had applied to – is higher as well.
The sheer volume of applications for currently open jobs continues to increase, and it doesn’t help when our recruiting team size indicator continues to decrease overall in our CandE Pulse survey (it tick up 1%, though – see figure below).
Recruiting Team Size
When we look at the trend line with the overall recruiting budget, the trajectory since January is fewer dollars overall (see figure below). With the exceptions of technology purchases already in budget cycles, and the resilient industries like healthcare that keep driving job growth, everyone else seems to be sitting tight. Even in the face of positive economic data. The first half of 2025 will be very interesting to see what happens after the U.S. presidential election.
Recruiting Budget
What were September’s recruiting priorities? We’ve asked our CandE Community and beyond this in our CandE Pulse surveys since January 2023. With candidate resentment as high as it is, it’s good to see that candidate experience is still a strong priority at #2 (see table below).
We’ve heard from many in our CandE Community that they’ve been, or will be, implementing new ATSs and other recruiting technologies this year, which may be why the Application Process was #1 last month. Screening and interviewing are still a high priority and had been the #1 CandE Pulse recruiting priority through May, and now they’re #4 in September. Recruiting events came in at #3, and Employer Referrals came in at #5, which is always an important gauge of hiring.
Top 5 Recruiting and Hiring Priorities
As always, this is only the partial list of what we ask, and it’s clear that priorities can change. Granted, it’s a different mix of employers responding to these surveys each month, but still a sample set of what the priorities currently are.
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 was usually “Improving Processes”, and it’s again at #1. Current staffing and new technologies came in at the #2 and #3 spots, which makes sense based on the anecdotal evidence working with our CandE employers that are optimizing their teams and implementing new technologies (a lot of Workday going on).
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 their 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 in September with our CandE Pulse and this year’s CandE Benchmark (see figure below). Competing and Improving are always the two biggest segments in this indicator.
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 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, AI continues to stand out, which is both good and not so good. We changed one of the questions we ask each month in the CandE pulse 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.)?
- 35% said yes (down from 40% in August)
- 25% said no (about the same in August)
- 17% said not sure (up from 6% in August)
- 17% said said they’re currently not utilizing any AI recruiting technologies (down from 23% in August)
- 6% said they plan to purchase AI recruiting technologies in the future (about the same in August)
AI’s impact on recruiting and hiring has become more valuable but is still in its infancy. It can be and is a potential competitive differentiator, especially with candidate communications. Imagine more timely responses to all those candidates above waiting to hear back after they’ve applied.
To learn what the future has in store for us, we’re collecting data for the October CandE Pulse results, and you can help contribute with this survey here. For now, I’ll keep telling that story about the recruiter who received the rejection email a year and a half after she applied. It doesn’t have to be this way because a better basic candidate experience is all about how and when we position the disposition.