Hiring teams now have more tools than ever at their disposal, but it’s also true that in many ways, candidates are steadily being lost to slow hiring processes. New data from Indeed and Harris Poll shows that 72% of hiring managers fear missing out on top talent as a result of the high volumes of applications they receive. About 93% feel they have already lost talent to hiring procedures that took too long. Correcting these flaws in the recruitment process may be less about using all the tools available and more about finding the right ones that can help you get it right.
Organizations risk losing out on top talent due to a slow hiring process, but emerging AI technology may help address the problem. (Image: Freepik)
Is a Slow Hiring Process Holding Your Organization Back? Losing Candidates to Systematic Holdups is Never Enjoyable
It’s a tale as old as time. A position opens up at an organization, and the employer decides that it’s one that cannot go unfilled. A recruiter uploads a job posting, hoping they’ll be able to find the right candidate within a week or two and then spend the rest of the month wrapping up the hiring process. Instead, recruiters find themselves flooded with applications from hopeful applicants, some perfect for the role, and others just hoping the hiring team will give them a chance.
What was supposed to be a quick process turns into weeks of trying to get in touch with candidates, arranging interviews, and negotiating a deal with those who come closest to meeting the needs of the organization. By the time an offer is made, the candidate has already moved on.
Its an undeniable fact: the recruiting process is now too slow to keep up with the sheer volume of applications that organizations receive today. Matters grow doubly complex when there are multiple roles to hire for, or the process is run by a small team.
Candidates Are Just as Frustrated With the Slow Hiring Process as Recruiters Are
It’s hard to blame the candidates for sending in an application wherever they can. Most are forced to apply for multiple roles before they even see the faint traces of a response waiting in their inbox. Some applications are so lengthy that candidates give up before completing the process, while other applications take so long to generate an interview that the candidate has already forgotten what role they applied for.
The lack of steady responses has many applying for roles that don’t align with their skills and interests, all in the hopes of an opportunity to continue with their careers. The chaos continues in a circle of complications, spiraling out of control for everyone.
Experts From Indeed Take Us Through the Problem and their Solution to a Slow Hiring Process
Technological solutions perhaps have the best chances of simplifying hiring today, addressing recruiting processes that are too slow by closing some of the gaps in the current distance between employers and employees. AI tools are fast becoming increasingly vital to the hiring process, and the lauch of Indeed’s Sourcing Assistant is one example of where some of the existing friction is being combatted with tools that can smooth out some of the problems in the process.
The Sourcing Assistant, integrated within Indeed’s Smart Sourcing product, is designed to identify talent for recruiters and invite qualified talent to an open role, giving both job seekers and providers the ability to find each other with greater ease. The AI-powered recruiting feature now helps employers and recruiters access real-time signals from millions of sourceable profiles on Indeed, including candidates with transferable, adjacent skills who may otherwise be overlooked.
“Instead of waiting for candidates to apply, the Sourcing Assistant uses natural-language search to find people proactively, surfacing candidates that strict keyword tools miss. It looks at the skills someone has to do the job, not just whether they’ve held the title before,” Kyle M.K., best-selling author and Senior Talent Strategy Advisor at Indeed, explained to us recently.
Kyle M.K has built a career turning workforce trends and human behavior into strategies that can help shape the future of work. Sharing some of the insights that have not just helped Indeed but continue to shape our understanding of the state of hiring today, he spoke to us about the existing shortcomings of the recruitment process and how Indeed’s new recruitment tool can help fill that gap.
The HR Digest: Despite elaborate hiring processes, organizations aren’t finding the right candidates, particularly with the AI skill sets they are looking for. Why do you think that is?
Kyle M.K: A lot of this comes down to expectations versus reality. Employers want AI-native talent, and there’s a real gap between what they’re looking for and how workers see themselves. A recent Indeed survey found that 45% of employers are actively seeking AI-native talent, while only 14% of job seekers and employees consider themselves AI-native.
The tools are still new and changing fast, so people tend to apply for the roles that match what they’ve already done. That instinct is understandable, but it can quietly narrow their own opportunities, especially now that employers are looking for transferable skills that flex as the business changes. At the same time, hiring managers are buried in applications. Nearly three-quarters of them, 72%, worry they’re missing great candidates in the pile. So the qualified people are out there. They’re just hard to see.
The HR Digest: Indeed’s data shows that 93% of recruiters have lost a top candidate to slow hiring processes. What are some of the ways in which hiring systems are currently operating at a disadvantage?
Kyle M.K: Most hiring systems were built for a slower world, and they haven’t caught up. Recruiters are facing a flood of applications, higher expectations from leadership, and fewer resources to work with. So time is one of the scarcest resources for recruiters. Reaching out to candidates directly, which tends to produce more qualified hires and better retention, is also the most time-consuming way to find people. The approach that works best is the one there’s rarely time for. Meanwhile, the candidate you wanted has already accepted an offer somewhere else.
Sourcing Assistant is built to fix that. It surfaces highly qualified candidates almost instantly, so proactive outreach stops being the thing recruiters only get to when they happen to have a free afternoon.
The HR Digest: Indeed’s new Sourcing Assistant appears to be an innovative way to help candidates and recruiters find each other. Can you tell us a little more about the tool and how it addresses the gaps that are currently evident in the hiring process today?
Kyle M.K: Proactive sourcing works because candidates respond well to hearing directly from an employer when there’s a real mutual fit. The problem has always been that manual sourcing takes time recruiters don’t have.
That’s the tradeoff Sourcing Assistant was built to remove. Recruiters describe what they’re looking for in natural language, and it surfaces candidates from Indeed’s network of more than 370 million sourceable profiles. And they stay in control throughout. They can switch from automatic to manual, or refine the instructions, at any point.
Shortening the sourcing process gives recruiters their time back for the more strategic, human parts of the job, like the candidate relationship. It also brings real speed. The vast majority of hiring managers say they’ve lost a top candidate to a slow process, so accelerating the hiring cycle by more than 30% matters. When you move faster, you actually get the person instead of losing them to the company that moved first.
The HR Digest: Recruiters might presume that more applications mean better chances of hiring the right candidate and leave matters unchanged. Is there something you’d say to address that perspective?
Kyle M.K: More applications used to mean better odds of finding the right person. That’s just not true anymore. Volume adds stress now, not confidence. Instead of feeling reassured by a deeper pool, recruiters worry that a great candidate is getting lost somewhere in it.
This is where the right technology earns its place. Sourcing Assistant works on one side of it: recruiters can identify qualified candidates from the 370 million sourceable profiles on Indeed and invite them to apply. Smart Screening works the other way: it analyzes candidates’ skills against the job description and gathers what the role requires early, like licenses and certifications, so the strongest people don’t slip through before anyone sees them.
The HR Digest: While we’re on the topic of technology, AI has vastly altered the workplace in more ways than one. What are some of the ways that you’ve noticed a change in hiring? It could be both in terms of the benefits and the concerns.
Kyle M.K: The honest picture is that hiring teams are stretched thin. Bigger workloads, tighter resources, less time. Used mindfully, AI can take some of that operational pressure off.
Sourcing Assistant is a good example. Once a recruiter calibrates it, it automates the parts of the process that feel most robotic, like search and discovery. That saves recruiters an average of seven hours a week and accelerates time-to-hire by 31% by surfacing qualified candidates who might have been overlooked or never applied. And those candidates are strong matches. They’re 2.9 times more likely to be hired than candidates sourced through other channels.
The other side of this is trust. As AI moves fast, people have to decide whether they trust it, which is fair. That’s why we prioritize transparency and human decision-making in the products we build. With Sourcing Assistant, recruiters set the criteria and choose whether to use it or switch to doing it manually at any point. The tool speeds up the work. The person still makes the call.
The HR Digest: Looking to the future of hiring, we’ve heard talk of recruiters moving away from traditional hiring metrics towards a focus on skill-based hiring. Is this a change you’ve observed? Do you think it’s the right direction for businesses?
Kyle M.K: Yes, we’re definitely seeing a greater focus on skills-based hiring, and I think it’s the right path forward. Hiring for past titles or jobs can limit your talent pool. But when you focus on core skills and the ability to learn, you open up a pipeline you might have missed. Candidates who show they can learn, evolve, and upskill are more in demand right now, because they can flex as the business changes.
A concrete example: Sales Account Executive and Manager is one of the most-sourced roles on Indeed Smart Sourcing at the moment. A lot of that is because strong salespeople carry skills that travel. They communicate well, they read people, and they build relationships. Those hold up across plenty of industries, which is exactly what skills-first hiring is meant to surface.
The HR Digest: Indeed predicts that the US labor force could shrink by roughly 1.2 million workers by 2040. How can organizations start preparing for such a change?
Kyle M.K: 2040 feels far off until you remember that the workforce you’ll have then is largely made up of people already working today. So now is the time to start rethinking hiring, retraining, and upskilling, so those processes are well established by the time the labor force actually shifts. The short version: focus on hiring for skills, not tasks.
Building that structure now is what sets you up for workforce agility later. It’s how you attract people whose skills transfer as future labor demands change. The organizations that handle this well won’t be the ones scrambling in 2040. They’ll be the ones who started building for it quietly, years ahead.
The HR Digest: Do you have any advice for recruiters who are specifically making space for technology and reworking their hiring process right now?
Kyle M.K: A handful of things, and none of them require overhauling your whole process to get going.
- Be transparent about how and why you’re using technology in hiring. That’s how you keep trust with job seekers.
- Structure job descriptions around the skills the role actually requires, and don’t forget the soft skills. Leadership and communication belong right alongside the technical ones.
- Look for incremental ways in. If you’re not ready to overhaul your hiring process, start with one new tool, like AI, on one part of it. You don’t have to rebuild everything at once to make real progress.
The HR Digest: Are there any words of encouragement you would offer to HR teams that may be feeling overwhelmed by all the changes occurring in the industry?
Kyle M.K: Don’t lose sight of the value you bring that technology can’t replace: your human judgment and your empathy. The best hiring experiences I’ve seen combine technology that improves speed and organization with human oversight and care.
That’s exactly what a tool like Sourcing Assistant is designed to do. It takes the manual, time-consuming work off your plate so you can spend more of your time on the human elements of hiring, the parts that actually need a person. To every HR team facing change on every front right now: the technology is here to give you back time for the work that made you love it in the first place.
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