Bending Spoons received 800,000 job applications last year, and only hired 286 of the candidates. And the $21 billion company—which owns digital businesses including Eventbrite, Vimeo, and AOL—says competition has only been ramping up in recent years.
Tens of thousands make it through the first round alone, and its CEO, Luca Ferrari, says the process ahead is unlike many other hiring playbooks.
“If people looked under the hood at how we do this, they would think we’re crazy,” Ferrari recently told the WSJ. “Hopefully in a good way.”
The 60,000 candidates who made it through the first round of screening sat through tests that analyzed their reasoning, judgement, and learning speed. This is followed by an interview—and then Bending Spoons used hiring algorithms to run an analysis on how the talent scored against both quantitative, and qualitative characteristics. And less than 9% of those who make it to the interview stage end up receiving an offer.
“A run-of-the-mill interview is almost entirely non-predictive, like tossing a coin,” Ferrari told the WSJ. “It’s basically completely useless.”
Once the interviews are wrapped, scores are delivered, references are verified, Bending Spoons finally chooses who to hire.
And it equates to an acceptance rate of just 0.04%—100 times more selective than Ivy League colleges, which typically let in around 4%. Bending Spoons CEO tells Fortune that the number of applications received doubled last year—as did the number of candidates it hired.
But the 99.9% who were rejected are in good company; the mid-sized Milan-based tech business, with less than 1,000 employees on payroll, received an applicant pool larger than the populations of cities like Seattle, Boston, and Las Vegas.
It’s becoming harder to land a job these days than get into Ivy League colleges
A chill has come over the U.S. hiring market as of late. Last year, job openings fell to 6.54 million—the lowest since September 2020, when the economy was grappling with COVID-driven turmoil. And in June this year, employers added just 57,000 jobs—less than half the month before. It all comes as AI becomes a headcount threat and many companies make targeted cuts, reeling back hiring in an uncertain economy.
One group of workers has particularly felt the sting: entry-level Gen Zers, fresh out of college. Junior tasks are quickly being automated by tech, and companies are pulling back on their pipelines for young talent. Meta, Microsoft, and Google have all slowed hiring of entry-level roles. And the employers still offering jobs for budding professionals are witnessing a record number of applicants.
Match Group was “overwhelmed with interest” when it revived a shuttered “Tindership” program this year. The company’s CEO, Spencer Rascoff, posted the opportunity on his LinkedIn and social media accounts and the floodgates opened. More than 30,000 young candidates applied for just 27 open spots, meaning less than 0.09% were accepted for the internship—more selective than any Ivy League college.
Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs also accepted less than 1% of applicants to its summer internship program this year. And despite the rock-bottom acceptance rate, the $337 billion bank still took on a sizable number of young talent, hiring 2,500 interns across more than 500 universities. It’s the third year in a row that Goldman Sachs has hired less than 1 in 100 of candidates for the program.
And it’s not only the big, household-name brands that are seeing a surge. Gecko Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based robotics business, received more than 40,000 applications for 32 internship roles in 2024. That means less than 0.08% made it to payroll—even more selective than some of the world’s biggest businesses.