Lost Opportunities: Investigating Applicant Drop-Off in the Hiring Process
In this intriguing case study, we closely examine the data behind what may be causing the frustrations in today’s labor market. Job seekers can apply to dozens of opportunities in one sitting thanks to “one-button-apply” but can’t seem to secure opportunities. However, hiring managers also complain about not being able to find quality applicants, even though they should have an influx of candidates to choose from.
How can both of these be true?
Key Findings
Here’s what we found after analyzing data from more than
549,330 applicants across 305 business locations.
82%
Applications Not Viewed by Managers out of the Total Received
8.8 Days
Average Time It Takes for Manager to Contact Applicants
97%
Applicants Who Are Never Converted into Actual Employees
What Does This Mean?
This data suggests that the recent influx of applications in the “click-to-apply” era might cause more challenges than solutions for hiring managers. Since they get so many applications from sponsored job board posts, they can’t possibly sift through them all effectively. Only 18% of the applications are ever even viewed, and then it takes over a week for the manager to reach out to candidates. By that time, they may have lost interest or found another opportunity since they likely applied to several other jobs. So, only 3% of the applicants these businesses receive actually become employees. The other 97% get ignored or ghost the employer, even though they often pay big job board bills to get these applicants.
Hire Smarter with Sprockets
21%
Saved on
Sourcing
37%
Time Saved
Hiring
43%
Improvement in Employee Retention