Even in a job market that ultimately favors applicants over firms, the hiring process remains a grueling ordeal. That’s according to fed-up respondents in hiring platform Greenhouse’s 2024 Candidate Experience Report, released Thursday.
Greenhouse surveyed 1,200 U.S. job seekers, the majority of whom maintained a surprising confidence in their career prospects. The past three years of sustained U.S. job growth has empowered candidates to flex their upper hand. Because of—or perhaps in spite of—that, almost half of respondents said they’d be actively looking for a new job within the next six months.
The problem is, firms aren’t quite meeting them where they’re at. Job seekers used terms like “frustrating,” “inequitable,” and “poor” to describe their hiring processes. More than half say they’ve been asked discriminatory questions, particularly regarding age and race, by interviewers—a 20% year-over-year jump.
“A candidate may talk about a disability that they have, or a hiring manager might say something like ‘that’s crazy,’ not realizing the implication,” Daniel Chait, Greenhouse cofounder and CEO, tells Fortune. “It’s very easy, in being conversational, to slip over the line. But just because you didn’t mean to do it, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to.”
A similar share of applicants say companies have “baited and switched” them; after taking a job, they found the actual duties were vastly different from what was advertised. And the majority have been ghosted during the application process.
“The fact that the candidate experience has been bad is not news—the persistence of these issues and the increase in ghosting is news,” Chait says. “It’s amazing that people have still not figured out that candidates’ number one complaint is that they never hear back; half of job seekers say that’s still happening.”
Over half of job seekers say interviewers showered excessive praise and flattery on them throughout the process, only to be lowballed during salary and title negotiations. In 2024 parlance, they said they’ve been “love bombed.” And everyone’s annoyed when their interview process drags on for months—and includes time-consuming, unpaid tests—whether or not they get an offer.
Put simply: “Big companies are making basic and costly mistakes,” Chait wrote in the report. The issues rankling candidates most are underwhelming salary offers, lack of human interaction, and a general shortage of job offers in their field—evergreen issues that have only become more pronounced.
“For applicants, the hiring process is the first glimpse into the company culture,” Carin Van Vuuren, Greenhouse’s chief marketing officer, wrote in the report. “How companies treat candidates is a crucial factor. Candidates pay attention to how companies treat them, interpreting it as a sign of the company’s culture.”
What we lose with AI outsourcing
Anyone whose job includes hiring knows that the process involves dealing with people who ultimately won’t get hired, Chait tells Fortune. “The difference between doing a good and a bad job comes down to those who aren’t going to get the job. What do they say about you afterwards? What do they tell their friends? If you’re turning off a potential talent pool—or potential customers—that’s a big disservice.”
The good news: Doing right by candidates is more intuitive than managers realize. “It’s possible to treat candidates really well,” he adds.
The rise in AI in hiring also contributes to faux pas, and has created “some problematic dynamics,” Chait says. He cautions against using AI to make people-related decisions, arguing that they’re too important.
“You should think of AI as your super productive, kind of junior, kind of nuts assistant,” he says. “You can’t just trust the output: It makes stuff up, gets it wrong, and states it with great confidence.”
Rather, speaking with potential employees, telling them accurately what the job involves, and answering their questions is the easy stuff, Chait says, and shouldn’t be quickly outsourced. “If you get the easy stuff wrong, no one’s going to trust you with the hard stuff.”
The exact shortcomings that so many candidates highlighted in the report—transparency, adequate notice, respectful questions—all fall under Chait’s definition of the “easy” stuff. “Those numbers should be great, and the fact that they’re not represents a real rot at the core of recruiting,” he says.
