Why Your Hiring Process Is Screening Out Your Best Candidates
Applicants per job posting have nearly doubled since 2021, from about 46 to roughly 95. More candidates, more choice. Hiring should be easier than ever, no?
Instead, hiring has slowed. Completed hires are down over 20% in the same window and offer acceptance rates haven't changed. Candidates aren't the ones saying no. We are.
So, what's happening? When a recruiter has 95 resumes and two minutes each to decide (which, per recent survey data, is what 72% of them actually have), the fastest way to make it through the pile isn't to find the best candidate. It's to eliminate people. An employment gap, a title that doesn't quite match, or an industry mismatch — whether or not you could have done the job.
Lou Adler, who's spent decades studying this, states: hiring filters produce "false negatives (good people being excluded) and false positives (weak people being considered)." We built a system optimized for speed of elimination, not accuracy of selection, and then we act surprised when the "talent shortage" turns out to be a screening problem.
If your current process isn't producing the hires you need, more filters won't fix it. A different system might. Here's a basic primer on the one I'd point you to: Performance-based Hiring.
-
Write the job as outcomes, not tasks. Instead of "5+ years of X, bachelor's required," define what the person actually needs to accomplish in the first 6-12 months. This is a Performance-based Job Description (PBJD), and it changes who you even consider. Example: Ship a Working Prototype by Month Six: Convert the verified simulation into a minimum working implementation of the solution running on a physical prototype, in an environment where priorities and specs may shift as the chip design matures.
-
Screen for comparable accomplishments, not keyword matches. Has this person done something similar in scope and complexity before? That's a much better predictor than years of tenure or a specific tool on a resume.
-
Interview for evidence, not impressions. A structured, performance-based interview asks candidates to walk through real past accomplishments in detail, not hypotheticals. It's much harder to fake and much easier to compare across candidates.
-
Decide as a team, on evidence. Consensus based on documented evidence beats a single hiring team member's gut reaction.
Performance-based hiring doesn't require more applications. It requires a better filter.
If your hiring process is producing a lot of "no" and not a lot of confidence, that's worth a hard look before your next posting goes out.