The Job Seeking Process is Broken
December 16, 2025Posted by:
If you ask almost anyone looking for a job today, they’ll tell you the same thing: it feels harder, slower, and far more draining than it used to be.
The job-seeking process isn’t simply under strain. It’s broken.
Across the labour market, the gap between people searching for work and the systems designed to connect them to opportunities has widened to the point that most candidates are operating in a fog. They apply for dozens of roles, hear nothing back, and have no idea which applications were seen, screened out, or simply lost in the noise. Behind every statistic is a person trying to earn, progress, or support a family, yet the market has drifted into patterns that make those efforts unnecessarily difficult.
This article looks at the evidence — the real conditions people face today — and why the current job-seeking experience is failing them.
A market defined by low odds and high effort
To understand what jobseekers are up against, we have to start with the numbers which represent a structural shift.
In 2024, the inbound application-to-hire rate fell to 0.4%. That means for every 1,000 people who apply for a job, roughly four will be hired. Even if we adjust for industry variation, this is a stark indicator of a system struggling to cope with its own volume.
It is also now three times harder to get hired than it was in 2021, with a 120% increase in overall applicant volume. Employers aren’t necessarily hiring fewer people; they’re simply receiving far more applications than they can meaningfully review. Candidates send more applications because they fear silence. Employers receive more applications because the market encourages volume. Both sides end up trapped in a cycle of rising effort and falling returns.
Automation adds another layer. Around 75% of CVs are filtered out by applicant tracking systems before anyone has the chance to read them, and the average jobseeker submits 27 applications just to get one interview. Meanwhile, only 8% of LinkedIn outreach attempts receive a response. These are not the numbers of a functioning market; they’re the numbers of a failing one.
A process defined by silence
Behind every statistic is a person sending applications into a void. The most common experience jobseekers report is not rejection — it’s silence. No acknowledgement, no feedback, no indication of whether their CV was seen or filtered out automatically.
This creates a very human problem. When effort and outcome become disconnected, people don’t know how to improve. They can’t adjust their approach because they’re given nothing to adjust from. Instead, the prevailing advice is simply to apply for more roles. That “volume mindset” may increase the odds mathematically, but emotionally it wears people down.
Silence doesn’t just signal a lack of progress; it undermines confidence. Many begin to assume the issue is their skills, their CV, or even their worth — when in reality the system itself is struggling to cope.
The illusion of choice
One of the reasons job searching feels so exhausting today is that it appears to offer more choice than ever. There are job boards, social feeds, employer portals, agency listings, and professional networks. But more choice hasn’t created more clarity.
Instead, candidates move between multiple systems that rarely connect and often duplicate one another. A job posted on five platforms may lead to five different application routes, none of which give the applicant visibility into what happens next. Every new tool adds another path, another password, another process — but not necessarily a better outcome.
The result is a market that feels busy but not effective. People spend hours searching, filtering, rewriting and reformatting, yet the experience remains inconsistent. In other parts of daily life — travel, banking, entertainment — technology has increased simplicity. In job seeking, it has mostly increased noise.
When employers are overwhelmed, candidates feel it
It's easy to assume employers hold the advantage in a competitive market, but they are overwhelmed too. Hiring teams are facing unprecedented application volumes, shortages in specific skill areas, and rising pressure to move quickly while remaining compliant. When one vacancy attracts hundreds of applications, no team can offer personalised review.
So the system leans on filters — key words, automated screening, scoring mechanisms — all designed to reduce noise. But reducing noise is not the same as improving quality. Good candidates are often screened out before they have a chance to be considered. Employers then assume the talent isn’t there, and jobseekers assume the opportunities aren’t real.
Both sides are frustrated, but for different reasons. And the tension between them widens the gap.
A market where effort no longer connects to opportunity
The deepest issue in today’s job-seeking process is the feeling that effort doesn’t translate into results. The harder people try, the less control they feel they have. That loss of agency affects more than motivation; it shapes behaviour.
When confidence falls, jobseekers may:
- Withdraw from industries where they've had poor experiences
- Apply only for roles they see as “safe”
- Settle early for roles below their capability
- Stop applying altogether
For employers, this means missing out on talent not because people lack skills, but because they lack belief that the process will work for them. A labour market cannot function well if people lose confidence in participating in it.
The need for a different kind of solution
Fixing a broken job-seeking process isn’t simply a matter of adding more platforms or publishing more vacancies. The issue is not the volume of jobs; it’s the disconnect between people and the opportunities that genuinely fit them.
What’s needed is a shift toward matching, not searching — a system that understands real preferences, real behaviours and real constraints, then connects people to roles they are genuinely suited for. A system where the right opportunities come to the candidate, rather than requiring endless applications just to be noticed.
This isn’t about replacing human judgment; it’s about improving the path that leads to it. When people are shown the right roles, and employers see candidates aligned to what they truly need, the entire process becomes more human — not less.
The swipejobs platform built around talent-centric matching is working in the US and will launch in the UK in 2026 to demonstrate that a different model is possible. Real-time matching of jobs and people can reduce wasted effort, cut through noise, and restore a sense of control to jobseekers who have felt invisible for too long.
And that shift matters. Because the future of the labour market won’t be shaped by how many jobs are listed, but by how effectively people and employers are brought together.
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PeoplePlus is part of the swipejobs organisation
December 16, 2025Posted by:
