Applying for a job was supposed to become simpler, faster, and more candidate-friendly. Instead, recruiters say the race toward effortless applications has created a new problem: too many submissions, too little signal, and a hiring process that often frustrates both employers and job seekers.
The shift is especially visible in white-collar hiring, where AI-generated résumés, automated application tools, and easy-apply workflows have changed the volume and quality of candidate pools. The result is a hiring market where speed has not necessarily produced better matches.
The application flood changed recruiting
Andrew Stockwell, head of people for the software-buying company Vendr, described a much more manageable hiring routine three years ago. A job listing might bring in a few dozen applications after several days, or up to 100 in a strong case. Recruiters could add more candidates, review résumés, conduct interviews, and send the best people to hiring managers.
In the last year or so, Stockwell says that process changed sharply. Instead of reviewing around 100 applicants, he began seeing hundreds arrive within a day or two. Sometimes the total topped a thousand.
That scale created a different kind of work. Stockwell says some applications were “total bogus,” including fake candidates. Many others appeared to be shaped by artificial intelligence, making applicants harder to tell apart and stretching the truth in ways that complicated screening.
For recruiters, the problem is not only volume. It is that a larger pile of résumés does not automatically mean a better group of serious, qualified candidates. When many applications look polished in similar ways, the early screening stage becomes less useful.
Why frictionless hiring became the norm
The push to remove barriers had a clear logic. If applying is easy, more qualified candidates may enter the process. For years, recruiters used job boards, LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s “Easy Apply” feature, and promises of a “one-click” process to attract applicants with less hassle.
Post-pandemic, that effort accelerated as employers struggled to fill open roles. Jane Curran, the chief transformation officer at real estate giant JLL, said that at one point “everyone was job hopping, because you literally could have three offers in an afternoon.” Now, she says, “it is the polar opposite.”
The labor market backdrop changed too. Openings peaked at a record 12.3 million in March 2022, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, then declined for two years. Since mid-2024, openings have hovered at around 7 million, give or take 500,000.
At the same time, applying became even easier. AI entered the mainstream in late 2022 with the public release of ChatGPT, and applicants gained tools that could rewrite résumés and track new postings almost instantly. Companies such as JobAssist, Sonara, and Ladder’s Apply4Me promise to handle the busy work, including submitting “10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.”
AI has raised the volume on both sides
AI did not only help applicants move faster. It also pushed recruiters to look for more automation of their own. Companies have used automated applicant tracking systems to screen résumés for at least a decade, and now many are using agents to conduct first-round interviews.
Ophir Samson, the head of voice AI for Greenhouse, says recruiters increasingly want some resistance built into the process. He said recruiters once wanted applications to be as easy as possible, but the result could be 2,000 applicants in 24 hours for a job. His conclusion: “That is a shitty experience for everyone.”
Samson says recruiters now tell him, “actually, we kind of want friction.” In his view, an AI interview can help separate serious applicants from unserious ones by giving recruiters more context than a résumé alone.
LinkedIn has also responded to the surge. The platform tells WIRED that submissions per applicant are up 46 percent compared to February 2020. Since the launch of ChatGPT, applications are up 22 percent. LinkedIn has added limits intended to reduce automated and low-quality applications, and this month it is rolling out a feature that tells seemingly underqualified applicants they probably are not a good fit and suggests other jobs.
The new hiring friction
The emerging response is not simply to make applications painful. The goal, according to recruiters quoted in the source, is to make the early process more meaningful. Companies want signs that a candidate is real, serious, and plausibly matched to the role.
Several approaches are now part of that discussion:
- AI interviews that gather more information before a recruiter spends time on a candidate.
- Knock-out questions that use strict criteria to reduce the application pool.
- Skills testing earlier in the process, before candidates move further along.
- Referral and internal hiring, which have become more important as recruiters try to find trusted signals.
These changes may reduce noise, but they also raise a deeper question. If the first résumé screen has become too easy to game or automate, then adding more automated screening may not fully repair the hiring process.
A broken signal problem
Tessa White, a former HR executive who worked in HR for two decades before leaving corporate America in 2018, argues that the current situation is not working. During the pandemic, she began posting on TikTok and built a following of 800,000 by sharing advice and commentary on the job market.
White says employers complain that they cannot find good people while job seekers complain that they cannot find jobs. She sees the problem as tied to recruiters’ long pursuit of speed and ease. As she puts it, “Every time we seem to strive for efficiency, we seem to give up quality.”
She is also skeptical that AI and applicant tracking systems can solve the deeper issue. White says the current process is antiquated, even when it uses tools that sound advanced. In her view, AI does not have the capabilities to accurately judge someone’s potential.
That leaves hiring in an awkward place. Easy application systems helped remove barriers, but they also encouraged mass applying and made candidates harder to evaluate. Recruiters are now adding friction back into job applications because the old promise of effortless hiring has become too noisy to trust.
The future of job search may not be a return to long, exhausting forms. But it may require a more deliberate first step: one that gives serious candidates a better chance to stand out and gives recruiters something more useful than another polished résumé in an overflowing queue.