The Impact on Indeed for Employers: Quantity vs Quality

It can take up to 20 hours to go through 1,000 applicants. Imagine how much time you waste when 98% of candidates don’t make it to the interview stage.

How Indeed is Shaping Hiring Standards

The rise of online job boards, particularly Indeed, has fundamentally changed the talent acquisition landscape. Indeed’s dominance in the job search market has made it easier than ever for job seekers to explore and apply for dozens of roles. While this offers undeniable benefits for job seekers, expanding their reach and potentially increasing interview opportunities, it has also created a significant challenge for recruiters: the overwhelming influx of applications.

This surge in application volume has inadvertently created a “quantity over quality” trap. The sheer number of applications can distract recruiters from the crucial task of identifying genuinely qualified candidates. The pressure to fill roles quickly, often driven by business needs, can lead to rushed hiring decisions, prioritizing speed over careful evaluation.

The hidden costs associated with high application volume may be eating away at your daily budget.

This is why Leoforce uses a performance pricing model where you only pay for pre-screened applicants. Applicants on Demand is an outcome-based recruiting solution that combines the speed of AI with the expertise of human insight to improve the time, cost, and quality of hires.

How Indeed for Employers has Impacted the Quality vs Quanity Debate

The total cost of prioritizing quantity over quality in candidate sourcing is multifaceted. Primarily, a high volume of low-quality applicants leads to a significant waste of time and resources. Recruiters spend countless hours reviewing resumes that are not a good fit, time that could be better spent on strategic sourcing, candidate engagement, and building relationships with hiring managers. This wasted time translates directly into lost productivity and increased costs for the organization.

If a recruiter starts to share resumes of low-quality applicants, it can decrease hiring manager satisfaction, impacting hiring decisions directly. Hiring managers become frustrated with the constant stream of unqualified candidates presented to them, influencing their confidence in a collaborative process and potentially damaging the relationship between recruiters and hiring managers. Presenting a curated selection of highly qualified talent with additional candidate context is essential for building trust and ensuring a smooth hiring process.

A focus on quantity can also negatively impact the candidate’s experience. When recruiters are overwhelmed with applications from their Indeed accounts, they often struggle to manage communication and fast follow-up. Generic rejection emails, delayed responses, or even worse, no response can leave a lasting negative impression on job seekers.

In today’s competitive talent market, where an employer’s brand and reputation are paramount, a poor candidate experience can deter new candidates from considering future opportunities with the company.

The most significant cost of prioritizing quantity is missed opportunities. In the rush to process a high volume of applications, recruiters may overlook hidden talent. In the flood of applications, individuals with non-traditional backgrounds, those who have taken career breaks, or individuals with transferable skills that don’t perfectly match job specific keywords might be missed. Focusing solely on keyword candidate match and easily digestible resumes can lead to overlooking talent with high potential and unique value to offer.

Ways Talent Acqusition Teams Can Improve Candidate Quality

So, how can recruiters shift their focus from quantity to quality and improve recruiting efforts to hire talent quickly? The answer is to adopt a comprehensive solution with a more targeted approach to sourcing and strategic recruiting efforts.

This begins in-depth insights, going beyond the job post skills and experience data to encompass cultural fit, values, and specific competencies to empower the employer with the most likely to succeed talent. Once the target profile is defined to facilitate collaborative decision-making, recruiters can efficiently build targeted sourcing methods.

It is important how your team sorts through application data and sends rejection letters. Building a strong employer brand is essential for attracting high-quality candidates. Showcasing the company’s culture, values, and employee benefits can resonate with top talent and make them more likely to consider opportunities.

If you have a career site, you should have a user-friendly interface with the job requirements clearly listed in the job post to ensure the application process is simple and attracts the right people to your jobs. Having a career site chatbot programmed with screener question responses and the ability to complete interview schedule requests is another way to improve recruiting process efficiency and applicant quality.

Building genuine relationships is important, and individuals in this job market appreciate tailored, fast follow-up, whether it’s because you send personalized application invites or promptly communicate rejection letters.

Personalized communication and building genuine relationships with candidates are also critical. Providing a positive and engaging candidate experience throughout the process can significantly improve the chances of attracting and securing top talent.

Start Reducing Your Dependency on Indeed for Employers

The rise of easy-to-apply job posts has undoubtedly increased the volume of applications, which is bittersweet for hiring efforts. It now creates a significant challenge for HR professionals striving to find a great candidate. By shifting the focus from quantity to quality and adopting a more strategic approach to sourcing, recruiters can navigate the complexities of the modern talent market and build a more effective talent acquisition strategy.

It’s time to empower employers by removing their dependency on Indeed and prioritizing quality over quantity to ensure that roles are filled with the best people for the job, learn more about Leoforce’s Outcome-Based Solutions here.