Top trends in talent acquisition

In a market characterized by job hugging, talent professionals need to rethink their approach, Jim D’Amico, vice president of talent acquisition at Caliber Collision, an auto repair provider, told attendees during a SHRM Talent session. 

“Where I think leaders are still really missing the boat is that most TA organizations are set up for attraction,” D’Amico said. “We're in a post-attraction world. We have to focus on seduction.” 

Workers are staying put to gain security amid market uncertainty, and recruiters have to do more than offer a job, he said.

“We have to have a reason to seduce them away from that job,” D’Amico said. 

Part of that involves upskilling TA teams, said Nicky Gibson, global director of talent, strategy, operations and employee experience at Epsilon, a marketing services company. 

“I think recruiters have gotten a little bit lazy,” Gibson said. “We want to upskill them and help them to use the tools that will help make them more successful and more strategic in nature.”

At the forefront of those tools is artificial intelligence, she said. 

“Where I see the gap is not understanding how important it is for your future as a recruiter,” Gibson said. “I'm not of the mindset that AI is going to replace people … It's going to replace people who don't know how to use AI.”

But that doesn’t mean just teaching basic AI to everyone, said Craig Fisher, founder and lead consultant at TalentNet Media, a recruitment strategy firm. 

“Look at the tools that you actually can use,” Fisher said. “If you can use specific tools, be specific about what you're helping your recruiting teams to learn, because that's what's going to help them right now.”

It also means having AI do certain work to free up recruiters for other tasks, D’Amico explained. 

“If any of you are recruiters, or have recruiters that do screens, stop it. Stop it right now. The machine can screen,” D’Amico said. 

Instead, recruiters should be focused on assessment interviews and what he called “a diagnostic interview of the candidate.” They need to figure out how to cure whatever pain a candidate is coming up against that is making them consider a new role, he said. 

“You have to be able to seduce them. Can you take them through the process where they're going to accept your role? Have you helped remove all the other options from them and convinced them that you are the place that they have to be and not to take the counter?” D’Amico said. 

Since 2021, applications per hire have tripled and open roles now receive an average of more than 300 applications, which has intensified workloads for HR and recruiting teams, according to research from recruiting platform Ashby.

Despite an increased workload, there’s been a rebound in recruiter productivity. Following a decline between 2022 and 2023, “hires per recruiter have recovered to roughly seven hires per quarter,” per the report, which added that the improvement suggests hiring teams are adapting to the additional volume.

Hiring timelines have also leveled out, with time to first fill now at about 8 weeks for business roles and about 10 weeks for technical roles. This suggests “a return to more predictable hiring cycles,” per the report, although scheduling coordination is still “one of the largest sources of delay.”

The research analyzed more than 100 million applications and 200,000 jobs over the past five years, and concluded that the overall hiring process has become significantly more complex for recruiting teams. 

“Most hiring metrics, like time to fill or time to hire, are outputs of a much larger system,” Kevin Connolly, head of data at Ashby, said in a statement. “What we’re seeing is that high-performing teams aren’t winning in any single dimension. They are building processes that hold up under volume, complexity, and scrutiny across every stage.”

Meanwhile, the “surge” in applications has made it significantly more difficult for candidates to get interviews, per the report. Candidates are approximately 50% less likely to make it to the interview stage now than they were five years ago, but “offer conversion rates have surpassed 2021 levels.” That means the funnel is more selective, and hiring teams are spending less time interviewing “low-signal candidates.”

"We often think about hiring performance in terms of speed," Max Butler, recruiting operations consultant at Ashby, said in a statement. "But consistency and process discipline are just as important. They're what allow teams to operate effectively at this level of volume."

The Ashby report comes amid corporate pressure to meet hiring goals. Recruiting software company GoodTime said in January that 90% of U.S. companies reported missing their hiring goals, and 1 in 3 reporting missed those goals by a wide margin.

Research indicates hiring teams may be losing applicants to artificial intelligence processes originally designed to streamline their systems. A recent report from hiring platform Greenhouse found that 38% of U.S. candidates said they have already withdrawn from a hiring process because it included an AI interview, while 57% said AI policy disclosures should be legally mandated.

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By Built In

The candidate journey used to be easier for employers to manage. A job seeker might see a role, visit a company’s careers page, scan reviews and ask a peer for context. Each step gave employers a chance to shape perception.

But today, that journey is being rewritten in real time. Candidates are asking AI tools where they should work, which companies are growing or stable, what employees say about leadership and which opportunity is the better career move. Discovery, research and decision-making are collapsing into an AI-generated conversation.

If your company is not showing up with the right story in that AI-generated conversation, candidates are making decisions based on an incomplete or inaccurate version of your employer brand. That means visibility and reputation are no longer soft brand metrics. They are the infrastructure that determines whether candidates find you, trust you and choose you.

This new hiring reality has created a gap between how candidates discover employers and how much control companies have over what they find. Built In’s 2026 State of Employer Reputation and Visibility Report makes that gap clear: 91 percent of talent acquisition, employer brand and HR leaders say AI tools influence how candidates discover and research employers yet only 33 percent are confident their employer brand is accurately represented in those tools. AI is shaping candidate perception at scale while many employers have limited understanding and control over what is being said about them.

This matters across the hiring funnel. At the top, AI can determine whether a company appears in a candidate’s consideration set at all. From there, AI shapes consideration by summarizing what candidates want to know about culture leadership and career growth. By the offer stage, it becomes a comparison engine, helping candidates weigh stability, employee sentiment and long-term opportunity across employers. Losing a finalist because the external narrative is weak or inaccurate compounds a brand problem into a critical business risk.

Many talent leaders already feel this pressure. Built In’s report found that 73 percent of respondents are concerned candidates are receiving outdated or inaccurate information from AI tools and only 35 percent feel prepared to optimize their content for AI search. At the same time, 72 percent expect hiring needs to increase over the next 12 months.

That combination of rising hiring pressure and declining control over candidate perception requires an approach that moves beyond owned channels like careers pages and social platforms to one that treats employer reputation and visibility as strategic hiring priorities.

First, employers need to understand how they are showing up today. What does AI say about their culture, leadership, growth opportunities, flexibility, compensation and stability? Do they appear in searches tied to the roles and markets they care about most? Built In’s platform gives talent teams the analytics and insights to establish a baseline, identify reputation gaps and prioritize where to strengthen their story.

Second, companies need to take control. In AI search, reputation drives visibility. Without credible, structured content about your company, AI has little to surface. Careers sites are just one signal while reviews and trusted third-party sources often shape perception. Platforms like Built In help employers reinforce their story with employee-led content that gives AI and candidates stronger signals to understand what it is really like to work there.

Third, that story needs distribution beyond owned channels. AI tends to value credible third-party sources, topic depth and employee-backed perspectives. Built In gives companies a trusted third-party destination where they can distribute employer brand content, highlight workplace differentiators and build visibility as candidates research where to work next.

The candidate journey has always been shaped by many influences but AI is making those influences harder to see, measure and manage. In an AI-first hiring environment, visibility and reputation are the infrastructure that turns employer brand into hiring outcomes. As one customer put it, “Built In is becoming a central pillar of our employer brand management and executive-level reporting.”

For talent teams ready to optimize their hiring funnel for this new reality, the Built In Employer Intelligence Platform helps employers analyze AI visibility and reputation, control the narratives candidates see and distribute content where candidates and AI tools are looking.

Talent acquisition professionals most often use artificial intelligence for screening, but inefficiencies persist, according to a report from ICIMS and Aptitude Research.

The next most frequent uses were for candidate communication, assessments and sourcing, reported 412 talent acquisition professionals surveyed earlier in the year.

Recruiters’ judgment still wins out, however, and that’s exactly how it should be, according to Tim Sackett, adjunct analyst, Aptitude Research: "The companies seeing the most success are using AI to remove friction from the hiring process while keeping human judgment at the center of decisions."

AI use among talent acquisition professionals is “widespread,” the research said, but inefficient implementation may be cutting into employers’ ROI.

Most HR professionals operate between 3 and 10 different talent platforms, according to recent research from consulting firm Korn Ferry, and only 5% said those platforms were fully connected.

As a result, it can take weeks to access connected insights, the research said.

ICIMS’ report offered similar findings: While most survey respondents said they’re using AI, few reported using it “broadly” across hiring processes. 

That can be at odds with employers’ reported top reason for adopting AI: efficiency. When tasks and related data are siloed, HR may become less efficient and its insights may be viewed by other departments as less credible, Korn Ferry indicated.

To see a return on their investment, employers will have to move past this isolated implementation, “connecting AI across sourcing, screening and candidate engagement so recruiters can spend less time on administrative work and more time building relationships with talent,” said Trent Cotton, head of talent insights, ICIMS, in a statement.

U.S. job seekers say the most exasperating part of looking for a job is not knowing if a human has looked at their resume, according to 60% of those surveyed for Monster’s Application Black Box Report.

That lack of visibility can cause many otherwise interested candidates to become frustrated, the report found.

The data showed that uncertainty even outweighed rejection. “Candidates can accept a ‘no,’” Vicki Salemi, a career advice expert, wrote for Monster. “What’s harder to accept is not knowing whether their application was ever meaningfully reviewed, leaving many to wonder, ‘Why do employers not respond to applications in the first place?’”

Monster’s survey of more than 1,000 U.S. workers found that silence, automation and repetitive steps have affected how long a potential employee was willing to stay engaged with the application process.

The problem is exacerbated by the effort applicants put into their search by customizing their resumes, adapting to new applicant tracking systems and investing time in each application. However, when the process “feels unclear or overly automated, many are reaching a breaking point,” Salemi wrote.

Fifty-four percent of employees said they were in favor of either “heavy regulation or banning applicant tracking systems entirely.”

Candidates say they feel compelled to optimize their resumes for automation, even if they’re not told how that automation works, with 40% saying that most of the time they modify their resume to include keywords from job descriptions. 

“Common job seeker frustrations are no longer just about competition or qualifications — they’re about navigating a process that often feels opaque and impersonal,” Salemi wrote. 

System failure is also a concern, with 61% of respondents indicating that they’ve experienced a resume upload error or other technical issue during the application process.

These hurdles are worsening what has become an already challenging job hunt for many. A recent report from hiring platform Greenhouse found that 70% of job seekers said they were never told ahead of time that AI would be evaluating them, and 38% of U.S. candidates said they have already withdrawn from a hiring process because it included an AI interview.

In addition, an April report from Monster found that 48% of job seekers frequently or regularly apply to many roles quickly in a process called “spray and pray,” because employers aren’t providing any application feedback.

Amid a deluge of applicants in standard hiring channels, some recruiters are turning to unorthodox methods to find candidates, according to survey results from Zety, a resume templates service.

Of the 1,001 employees responsible for hiring surveyed, 59% said they feel very comfortable finding candidates outside of work, and 52% said they already have done so — including at restaurants, grocery stores and airports. The most common of the unusual talent pools include social media that isn’t LinkedIn as well as social events, like parties, Zety said. 

In these casual settings, recruiters said they tend to notice candidates with strong communication and interpersonal skills. Notably, 84% of those surveyed said these off-the-clock encounters yielded solid candidates compared to formal channels, per the survey results.

Recruiters have had to up their legwork partly in response to a glut of applications triggered by the use of artificial intelligence tools, a Glassdoor report from earlier in the year indicated. While online applications still far and away lead in obtaining interviews and job offers, recruiter-sourced applicants have also risen in success rates, the report indicated.

Per Zety, some unusual places recruiters have found talent include at a bar, the grocery store, the gym, concerts and even dating apps.

The recruiters surveyed noted risks of recruiting informally, however, with 14% saying it was “very risky” regarding the potential crossing of professional boundaries and 41% saying it was “somewhat risky” with largely manageable pitfalls. Around 45% said the risk was only slight or not present.

Amid the proliferation of AI, recruiters have also had to work harder to evaluate candidates’ abilities, a senior director of research in the Gartner HR Practice wrote for HR Dive. But opaque hiring practices have also prompted job seekers to apply to many jobs all at once, even ones that may be far outside their actual capabilities, a Monster report from April said, flooding recruiters with even more applicants.

A lack of a salary band in a job post is a top deal breaker for prospective employees, according to a Monster report released Monday. Six in ten workers said they wouldn’t apply to a job that doesn’t feature a salary range in its posting.

Job listings that indicate unpaid assignments or “excessive take-home work” would deter 59% of applicants, while negative reviews or poor reputation would deter 56%. Unclear job descriptions would block 51% from applying, and 45% said long, complicated applications would also stop them.

“Together, these findings suggest that candidates are paying attention not just to compensation, but also to signals about fairness, clarity, and respect for their time,” Monster said in its report.

Pay transparency in job postings has become something of a new normal, various reports have shown, but employers can stumble and still drive applicants away if they are not careful with how they use salary ranges.

For example, wide pay ranges in a job posting could deter women from applying outright, a recently released study from Cornell University found, partly due to women’s belief they may not be able to negotiate a higher salary in that band.

Overall, workers want a short, accessible application process, an Employ, Inc., report from 2025 year found. But hiring has become more opaque due to artificial intelligence tools emerging to run both applications and application processing, prompting an ongoing AI arms race between employers and potential employees. 

In response, applicants opt to apply to as many jobs as possible — putting stress on hiring teams to sort through increasing numbers of potential hires that may not even have the skills requested, Monster said in a recent, separate report.

The majority of job seekers surveyed by Monster for that report said, however, that they would be more selective in their applications if organizations gave more feedback during the hiring process, speaking to an ongoing desire for clarity.