Insights from Pinpoint's Trends Report
What Can Recruiting Data Tells Us: Insights from Pinpoint's Trends Report
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the flood of applications lately? Or wondering why it seems harder to hit your hiring targets? You're not alone, and there's actual data to explain what's happening.
Pinpoint's recruiting trends report, which analyses over 10 million applications and 160,000 hires, confirmed what many of us have been feeling, but also revealed some trends that can help us work smarter. I have pulled together the most important findings and what they mean.
Let's dive into the numbers and discover how we can use them to improve our recruiting efforts.
The Three Big Trends in Recruiting Right Now
1. Recruiters Now Review More Applications For Each Position
For each person hired in late 2023, recruiters had to sort through an average of 72 applications. That's according to Pinpoint's analysis of over 10 million applications from October to December 2023.
Two years earlier, recruiters only needed to review about 49 applications to make a single hire. That means the workload per position has increased by 46% in just two years and based on what we keep hearing, the rise of AI is making this even worse now.
When we look at where these applications come from, the data shows that job boards, direct applications, and social media bring in the most applications per hire. Which can seem good, but they also bring a lot of noise for recruiters and increase workload when there are many unqualified candidates coming through
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However, employee referrals, sourcing (both in-house and external recruiters), and organic search result in fewer applications to review but end up converting to hires more often. According to Pinpoint's data, referred candidates are 7 times more likely to be hired than candidates who apply through job boards.
This confirms what many recruiters have observed firsthand - more targeted channels require less screening work and get better hiring conversion rates.
2. Faster Time to Hire
Despite dealing with more applications, the average time to hire has actually reduced by 18% between 2022 and 2023. This is based on data from more than 160,000 hires made by Pinpoint customers across various industries and company sizes.
Note: The report defines time to hire as "the time it takes the one successful candidate to move through the recruitment process, from application to offer acceptance."
Considering more applications, this seems counterintuitive given there are more applications. We will have to see how the trends evolve with this year's reporting insights when they are released.
3. Fewer Hires Per Recruiter
Despite moving faster with each hire, the average number of hires per recruiter has fallen to 3.9 for jobs opened between October and December 2023. That's a significant 54% drop from just one year earlier.
Putting all three trends together tells an interesting story: recruiters are handling more applications per hire and moving candidates through the process faster, but are making fewer hires overall. This suggests recruiters are working harder on each individual hire.
Understanding the Six Key Benchmarks
Pinpoint also goes a step further with their open source data and offers six benchmarking metrics that can help you understand how your recruiting efforts compare to others:
- Applicants Per Hire by Channel: Measures how many applicants you need to review from each source (job boards, referrals, etc.) to make one hire.
- Applicants Per Hire by Industry: Shows the average number of applicants reviewed per hire in different industries.
- Average Time to Fill by Seniority: Tracks how long it takes to fill positions based on seniority level (entry-level, management, executive, etc.).
- Average Time to Fill by Industry: Measures the average time it takes to fill open positions in different industries.
- Average Time to Hire by Industry: Tracks how long candidates spend in the hiring process (from application to offer acceptance) across different industries.
- Average Number of Hires per Recruiter: Measures recruiter productivity in terms of how many positions each recruiter fills in a given time period.
CEO’s and CFO’s love benchmarks. They also give you a good indication of how you are tracking so jump over and take a look in more detail.
Making Sense of the Increasing Application Numbers
With applications per hire up 46%in 2023, and then 2024 coming in hot with more and more recruiters indicating they are feeling overwhelmed. Here's what the report suggests we can do about it:
Focus on Channels That Work
The data shows that not all application sources are equal. When Pinpoint analyzed where hires actually come from, employee referrals stood out as 7 times more effective than job boards.
Rather than just tracking the number of applications from each channel, we should track which channels actually result in hires. This might mean shifting resources from high-volume, low-conversion channels for better results.
Write More Honest Job Descriptions
Glenn Elliott, co-author of Build It: The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement, couldn’t have said it any better: "The right job advert will repel 90% of candidates. But to the right candidate, it will sound like their dream job."
Being clearer about what the job actually involves, the company culture, and the specific requirements can help the wrong candidates select themselves out before applying. This reduces the number of applications you need to review.
Use Filtering Tools Effectively
The data suggests that successful recruiters are using tools like:
- Knockout questions to quickly identify unqualified candidates
- Automated (but personalised) rejection emails to maintain good candidate experience
- ATS tagging features to organise candidate profiles for easier searching
- Options for candidates to indicate interest in alternative roles
Improving Your Most Efficient Channels
Employee Referral Programs
The report highlighted that referrals are 7 times more likely to be hired than job board applicants. This makes referral programs one of the most valuable recruitment tools.
Companies using Pinpoint that offer referral bonuses typically pay between $1,000-$1,500 for successful hires. While this might seem expensive, the data suggests it's actually more cost-effective when you consider the reduced time and effort spent reviewing less suitable candidates. Do you have a referral program? If not, maybe you should consider it as part of your strategy.
Organic Search Strategies
According to the report, organic search typically brings in two types of candidates:
- People who already know about your company and want to work there
- People searching for relevant terms who discover your company during their job search
Both groups typically produce higher-quality applications than broad job board postings. Building your employer brand and ensuring your careers site is well-optimised for search can help you attract more of these candidates.
Strategies to Reduce Time to Hire
Despite the increase in applications, recruiters have managed to reduce time to hire by 18%. Here's what the data suggests is working:
Identifying Process Bottlenecks
The report identifies three common bottlenecks:
- Application review
- Interview scheduling
- Offer creation and signing
Tracking the time candidates spend in each stage of your process can help identify where your specific bottlenecks are.
Speeding Up Application Review
According to the data, interface design in your ATS can make a big difference. Pinpoint's customers found they could review candidates up to 75% faster using features like a candidate queue or split screen mode.
Automation tools like automatic rejection of candidates who don't meet hard requirements or automatic tagging of candidates with certain qualifications can also significantly speed up this stage.
More Efficient Interviewing
The data shows that automated interview scheduling has helped some recruiters cut the time candidates spend in the interview stage by up to 50%.
Additionally, providing comprehensive interview kits to hiring managers (including all the information they need in the calendar invite) has been shown to speed up the interview process in real-world examples.
Streamlining Background Checks and Offers
When background checks integrate directly with your ATS, the hiring team can review results and make decisions much more quickly.
E-signatures and automated offer management have dramatically sped up the final stage of hiring, with one manufacturing company reducing their contract signing time to about 1 hour.
Understanding the Decline in Hires per Recruiter
The 54% drop in hires per recruiter over one year is significant. The Pinpoint report suggests several possible explanations:
- More Selective Hiring: Companies may be being more cautious about who they hire, requiring recruiters to review more candidates for each position.
- More Complex Roles: The mix of roles being hired for may be shifting toward more specialized or senior positions that take longer to fill.
- Quality vs. Quantity: Recruiters might be focusing on making better hires rather than more hires, spending more time with each candidate.
- Economic Factors: Changes in the broader economy and job market are likely playing a role as well.
Why This Data Matters
Understanding these trends helps us in several ways:
- Setting Realistic Expectations: Knowing the benchmarks for your industry helps you set reasonable timelines and workload expectations.
- Process Improvement: Identifying where your metrics differ from the benchmarks can highlight areas for improvement.
- Resource Allocation: The data shows which channels and activities give the best return on investment.
- Measuring Success: Having clear benchmarks gives you a way to measure the impact of changes you make to your recruiting process.
How Technology Can Support Data-Driven Recruiting
The right technology can help address all three major trends:
- For Managing More Applications: Tools that help filter, tag, and organise candidates can make high volumes manageable.
- For Reducing Time to Hire: Automation of administrative tasks, streamlined interfaces, and integrated systems can remove bottlenecks.
- For Improving Recruiter Productivity: Analytics that identify what's working and what isn't can help recruiters focus their efforts more effectively.
If you're looking to improve your recruiting tech stack, it's worth checking out different options on the Stakkd HR tech database, which includes Pinpoint and other recruiting platforms.
The Takeaway for Recruiters
The data from Pinpoint's trend report shows that recruiting is becoming more competitive, with more applications to sort through for each hire. But at the same time, recruiters are finding ways to move faster and be more selective, supported by their technology.
What's your experience with these trends? Are you seeing similar patterns in your recruiting work? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
