Hiring in tech is harder than ever. AI isn’t helping

It's the best of times and the worst of times for people looking for tech jobs or tech candidates.

The economy is growing, with plenty of new jobs to go around. However, the competition is brutal in the tech industry. Since January 2024, at least 933 tech company layoffs have impacted 222,026 people, so more people are looking for new jobs.

Job hunting is never fun. However, it’s disheartening to see that “100 people have applied for this job” on LinkedIn for a position that has been open for only an hour. The situation is just as frustrating for the hiring managers, who are inundated by applicants for each job requisition.

For example, one tech lead received more than 2,000 applications for a mid-level software engineer position. Even smaller companies can get 350 applications for a single staff engineer position. 

With the pandemic making remote work more acceptable, it’s easier for people to work from anywhere. But that also makes people more likely to apply for jobs from anywhere, which generates more applications for HR and hiring managers to sift through. 

There has been a pretty monumental shift in the difficulty of recruiting, said Ross, who leads a small climate tech startup in California. “We’re getting an absolute deluge of candidates due to some combination of AI and desperation,” he said.

(Editor's note: Some hiring professionals we spoke to for this story are quoted pseudonymously because they do not have their employer’s permission to speak on the company’s behalf.)

The application deluge is untenable

In 2020 and 2021, Ross got between 30 and 80 applications for job openings that he was tasked to fill as hiring manager, such as front-end engineer or data scientist. Over the last year, he received anywhere from 400 to 1,000 applications for each position. That’s despite posting openings for jobs with specific technical skills, such as data scientists who have experience in developing carbon and hydrology models. 

One reason HR inboxes are filling up is lifestyle changes due to “return to the office” policies. For instance, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently announced that all corporate employees, including AWS staffers, are expected to work in the office five days a week beginning in January, following years of pandemic-related flexibility. Employees who are unable or willing to comply are looking for alternatives.

But applying for a job can be a soul-crushing experience, like shouting into a void, and it’s time-consuming.

One study found that applications take an average of five minutes and 51 clicks. That doesn’t count HR departments that respond to the deluge by shifting more work onto applicants. Some applications demand time-consuming tasks like programming quizzes, essay questions, and unattended video interviews before you hit Submit.

That experience makes it easier to understand why people are motivated to use automated AI tools to apply for jobs or turn to ChatGPT to write resumes and cover letters, leading to a huge increase in overall applications. You’re already being judged on keyword matches; why not go all in?

After all, how else can one reasonably respond to an application question, “Why do you want to work at CompanyName?” Surely, “Because I like money” isn’t the correct answer.

“Yeah, I'm just going to keep using ChatGPT,” said one solutions architect who asked not to be named. AI tools have no qualms about rewording the company’s About Us page.

There is no sane way to read 300 or 400 resumes and truly give them care.

One reason to avoid the practice is that polished AI tools sound artificial. AI-generated text can make applications sound similar, said Edward Tian, CEO of GPTZero.

That’s especially true for AI-generated cover letters, added Ross, the hiring manager at the climate tech startup. “It's no longer a good indicator of someone being really interested in working with us.”

Yet, good hiring managers — the ones whom applicants long to work for — are overwhelmed. In addition to the 400 resumes he received on his last hiring run for a staff platform engineer, Jonathan Eunice, director of Platform and Security at 3Play Media, said people contacted him on Slack and LinkedIn.

“It was overwhelming,”  Eunice said. “There is no sane way to read 300 or 400 resumes and truly give them care.”

Separating the wheat from the chaff has become a much bigger task, if only in eliminating the truly unqualified. Ross spends one or two weeks hiring for each new position. “As in 40-80 hours. It sucks,” he said.

AI tools to the rescue! …maybe

The HR industry offers tools to automate the triage and suggest which candidates to reject. This practice is not new; such features have long been included in applicant tracking systems (ATSs). 

According to a 2021 Accenture survey, more than 90% of employers used a Recruiting Management System to filter or rank candidates’ skills. The intent is to minimize the number of applicants to consider based on college degrees, precisely described skills (years of SQL experience), or missing criteria (such as employment gaps). 

However, experienced job seekers recognized the buzzword bingo game long ago and responded accordingly. That reinforces a race to the bottom, supplemented by AI hiring tools for both applicants and hiring managers.

Gartner’s 2025 HR technology trend predictions include AI-driven recruitment, personalized employee experiences, and advanced analytics. “AI-powered candidate assessments can infer a candidate’s cognitive traits, behaviors, emotions, or personality. AI also aids in sourcing and ranking candidates and job fit scoring,” its report said.

But the logical extension of that practice is humans using AI tools to fill in job applications that an AI evaluates. Nobody believes that’s the ideal path, except perhaps the tool vendors.

Practical suggestions that don’t require cheat codes

Some tech hiring managers have found ways to reduce the number of unqualified applications and to home in on people who genuinely are interested in the specific position.

The obvious answer is to rely more on word-of-mouth and referrals. “Back-channel recommendations, which have always been the way most people get jobs, have only become more important,” Ross said. However, that raises diversity issues (hiring more “mini me” staff rather than those with unique voices), and smart people with less experience lack extensive personal networks.

A more expensive option is to use recruiters, and let them do the heavy lifting of vetting candidates. “Put someone in place who is skilled and experienced at digging through resumes and finding good people,” Eunice said. “I will never be in a place where I can read 700 pages from 400 people and not have my eyes glaze over.”

“Recruiters give us their best to interview, and they know how to speak our technical language fluently,” said Dianea, an engineering technician at a Tulsa-area manufacturing plant. It may cost the organization half a year’s salary, she said, but when it works out, it’s worth it. 

More affordably, technical hiring managers can become selective about job boards. Posting on an IT-specific job board is much easier on HR than posting on general sites like Indeed, said Debra, an HR specialist.

Sites like Tech Jobs for Good or Elpha can help you reach people with unique backgrounds. Today, Ross posts to niche job boards based on industry (such as climate-related) or role requirements (an academia email list). “Even then, we get a deluge,” he said.

Ultimately, the response quality and quantity depend on the job listing and your hiring process. The more you tell people about the job, the better they can determine if it’s the right job for them.

Experts advise against introducing new criteria to reduce the number of applications; just tell people what you use as a checklist to classify those who get to the next round.

Doing so gives people more opportunities for self-selection, according to Loris Petro, digital marketing manager at Kratom Earth. She made the job listings at the botanical company more specific, with additional questions to filter out applicants who don’t meet baseline criteria.

Ross’s company changed the language in its posts to be more open and friendly. “If you put hard limits (i.e., five years of experience with X), we found that it deters more diverse candidates and women most specifically. We don't want to end up with all Chads and Brads, so that is important to us,” Ross said.

Hiring experts also recommend sharing the actual salary range, not obfuscating state pay transparency laws with ranges like “$85,000-$285,000.” A better match of financial expectations leads to higher-quality applications, suggests an Appcast whitepaper, 2023 Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report.

Longer job descriptions attract fewer applicants. According to Appcast research, job descriptions over 701 words result in application rates of less than 5%. That’s a negative if you want the maximum number of applicants but a plus if you want to avoid wasting everyone’s time.

On the other hand, you don’t want to chase away ideal candidates. Even an “Easy Apply” process takes time. Convoluted job applications, with “show us three related samples of work you’ve done” and other time-consuming tasks, add to the time burden.

How much work is fair to give someone up front? According to the research, 15-minute applications have an average apply rate of 3.6%. “When that application time is brought back to a more natural 1-5 minutes, that apply rate is nearly 3.5 times greater, at 12.5%,” according to the Appcast whitepaper. 

Bring in the M&Ms

Those suggestions may cull the herd somewhat – but anxious job seekers are still motivated to apply to as many advertised positions as possible. To ensure that applicants pay attention to the listing before clicking Apply Now, several hiring managers use a technique they call “Brown M&Ms.” 

It comes from the standard contract from Van Halen, the American hair rock band of the 1980s, which included this legendary clause: “There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”

While the contract requirement initially seems frivolous, it was actually a safety assessment. If the band saw brown M&Ms backstage, they knew the stagehands had not paid attention to the contract’s critical security and safety details.

It’s easy to apply that to job listings, said Kelly, a software developer in Vancouver, British Columbia. “I always clearly ask that they do something simple but particular in the application.” 

Ninety-five percent do not, which indicates they were mass submitting without significant interest in this job. Their applications can be ignored. “It could be as simple as. ‘You must email your resume with the term attentive to detail in the subject line,’” Kelly explained.