Key Takeaways:
- Employers are facing significant challenges in online recruiting, including receiving too many unqualified applicants (63%) and too few applicants overall (39%), while also struggling with candidate responsiveness.
- Despite cost concerns, job boards remain a crucial hiring tool, with 68% of companies using them for most or all of their hiring and 67% of candidates applying through job boards in the past year.
- AI use in recruiting is growing rapidly, with 15% of employers now using AI for recruiting (up from 5% in 2023) and 17% of candidates using AI for resume and cover letter writing (up from 3% in 2023).
When recruiting through a job board or recruiting platform, employers are finding it challenging to get enough qualified, responsive applicants, making the high costs of job boards difficult to justify. These were the challenges cited in iHire’s 2024 State of Online Recruiting Report, which draws from the insights of more than 2,000 job seekers and employers in the U.S.
Receiving too many unqualified applicants (63%) and too few applicants (39%) were among the top online recruiting challenges employers identified. And more than six in 10 employers anticipate this lack of qualified candidates to affect next year’s hiring plans.
Staying connected with candidates was another significant challenge, with many employers saying they struggled most with getting candidates to respond (51%) and candidates dropping out of the hiring process altogether (28%). This lack of communication isn’t just one-sided though — 55% of candidates said their top job search challenge was getting ghosted by employers, and 45% expect this ghosting to impact their ability to find a job next year.
For 44% of companies, the cost of using job boards and recruiting platforms proved to be their greatest struggle. However, despite the high cost, job boards continue to be an important tool in the hiring process — 68% of companies use them for “all” or “most” of their hiring, and 34% plan to use them even more next year. And most candidates (67%) have applied for a job via a job board over the last year.
In addition, AI’s role in recruiting has been expanding rapidly — iHire reports that 15% of employers use AI for recruiting, which is up from 5% in 2023. AI use is gaining ground among candidates, too, who are using it to help with writing resumes and cover letters (17%, up from 3% in 2023).
See iHire’s full report to learn more about current trends and challenges in online recruitment.
