How Technology Broke the Job Market
By Aki Ito, Business Insider
In an increasingly digital world, applying for a white-collar job feels like tossing your resume into an impenetrable black hole. Magdalena Robinson, a former vice president of talent acquisition at a media agency, experienced this firsthand. After being laid off in July 2024, she took time off to recharge and spent almost a year returning to the job market only to apply for approximately 300 jobs without receiving a single offer.
Robinson’s experience isn’t unique. Despite boasting a solid track record with reputable employers and years of recruiting expertise, she found herself puzzled and frustrated, wondering if she had somehow become “unemployable.” This struggle reflects a broader, systemic issue in the job market that is far more complex than just a hiring slowdown.
The Saturation Problem: Job Market Congestion
The root of the problem lies in what economists call “congestion,” a phenomenon where an oversupply of applicants overwhelms the system designed to sort and select candidates. According to hiring software provider Greenhouse, the average job opening now receives 242 applications—nearly three times the number from 2017 when unemployment was similar. This translates into a mere 0.4% chance that any one applicant will secure the position.
Employers might seem to benefit from this influx of choices, but recruiters are struggling. They face mountains of resumes, many of which are poorly matched to the applications. Because recruiting teams have shrunk while applications have multiplied, recruiters are often forced to skim hundreds of resumes in a matter of seconds or resort to prioritizing candidates with referrals, inadvertently passing over qualified candidates.
“The forces that make it cheap to send more applications are working faster than the forces that allow you to quickly process many applications,” explains Alvin Roth, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from Stanford University who specializes in market design.
From Convenience to Overload
The current crisis can be traced back to the convenience enabled by the internet and technology. While applying for jobs once required laborious efforts—printing resumes, mailing them, and waiting weeks—online platforms such as Monster, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn made job applications instantaneous and easy. Each subsequent innovation, including LinkedIn’s “Easy Apply” button and automated email alerts, made submitting multiple applications effortless.
But this ease encouraged applicants to approach the job search as a numbers game rather than a curated process, and recruiters became overwhelmed by hundreds or thousands of applications per job: Greenhouse data shows the ratio of applications to recruiters ballooning to 500 to 1, four times higher than it was just four years ago.
The widespread adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT further intensified the problem. Candidates now use AI to tailor resumes and cover letters rapidly and even automate mass applications. A survey conducted by Greenhouse revealed that 74% of job seekers employ AI in their job searches. This surge has only increased the volume of applications, pushing applicants to seek jobs they might not be well qualified for, deepening market congestion.
The Result: A Paralyzed Job Market
The congestion has left the job market gridlocked. Although companies receive an abundance of applications, many report struggling to find qualified candidates. Recruiters are exhausted and have adopted emergency tactics such as limiting the number of resumes they consider or only pursuing candidates with direct referrals, leading to missed opportunities both for employers and applicants.
Daniel Chait, Greenhouse’s CEO, warned as early as 2022 that the job market was hitting a critical point. In 2023, he realized the crisis was underway and mobilized his team to develop solutions to address the issue.
Innovative Solutions: Prioritizing Serious Candidates
One approach Greenhouse introduced is a feature called “Dream Job,” which allows candidates to designate one application per month as a priority. This mimics features used in online dating apps such as the “rose” on Hinge or the “super like” on Tinder—tools designed to signal genuine interest amid a sea of generic messages.
Initial results are promising: employers have been five times more likely to hire Dream Job applicants compared to standard candidates. Similarly, LinkedIn has rolled out a comparable feature named “Top Choice” for premium users, which boosts candidates’ visibility and allows users to see how well they match particular roles. LinkedIn is even testing daily limits on quick “Easy Apply” submissions to curb excessive mass applications.
Challenges Ahead: The Need for Smarter Hiring Tools
While these measures offer relief, they are akin to applying band-aids on a fundamentally broken system. In an era dominated by AI-driven mass applications, companies need sophisticated and scalable tools capable of evaluating candidates efficiently without sacrificing quality.
Human intuition remains vital in assessing not only qualifications but genuine interest and fit. Roth notes, “Human beings are still good at a lot of things machines aren’t. We’re wired to figure out who we like and who we should like.”
Nonetheless, the current job market’s woes highlight a pressing dilemma: technology has made applying for jobs easier than ever but has simultaneously overwhelmed the mechanisms designed to facilitate effective hiring. Until the tech ecosystem evolves to better manage this flood of applications, job seekers like Magdalena Robinson may find themselves lost in the black hole of the modern job market.
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