r/ModernHiring

I've been sitting with this idea for a while and I'm not sure how to say it diplomatically, so I won't try.

If you've run a skills assessment, and then a phone screen, and then a first-round interview, and you still don't know whether someone can do the job, the issue probably isn't the candidate. It's that you weren't clear on what you were actually hiring for when you wrote the job description.

I've noticed this in our own process. We'd add a round because someone on the panel "wasn't sure yet." But when I'd ask what they needed to see that they hadn't already seen, nobody had a real answer. The extra round was anxiety management dressed up as due diligence.

We've tried TestGorilla for skills screening and structured scorecards in Greenhouse, and both have helped. But the thing that helped most was forcing ourselves to define the exact decision criteria before the first interview, not after the second or third.

We're not perfect at this. But our process is shorter now, and we're losing fewer candidates to drop-off late in the funnel.

Curious if others have been here. What actually helped you tighten the process without it feeling like you're cutting corners?

And honestly, the weird part is that a lot of candidates doing this are probably qualified. But after looking at hundreds of applications, you start noticing patterns like generic summaries, resumes that vaguely match everything, and no indication they even read the role beyond the title.

The candidates who slow down and tailor things slightly stand out way more than people realize, not because they’re necessarily smarter, but because they feel intentional. I think the job market has pushed candidates into a volume game, while recruiters are still subconsciously rewarding specificity.

So both sides end up optimizing for completely different systems.

Not talking about perfect resumes or rehearsed interview answers.

I mean those moments where, somewhere during the process, you suddenly think:
“Yeah, this person would actually be great to work with.”

What usually creates that feeling for you? Could be attitude, communication, problem-solving, curiosity, confidence, experience, anything.

Candidates are tailoring resumes to algorithms, recruiters are filtering for certainty, and companies are asking for experience that barely exists. Feels like everyone’s optimizing for signals while quietly losing track of actual capability.

For like 2-3 months I was in full grind mode. Wake up, job boards, apply to everything remotely close, repeat. Probably sending 25+ applications a day. It felt productive but looking back it was just… noise

I wasn’t really thinking about whether I actually fit the job. Just close enough, send it

At some point I got tired and slowed down. Not intentionally, I just burned out and couldn’t keep that pace.

So I started doing like… 5 applications a day max. But I’d actually read the posting, tweak my resume a bit, sometimes rewrite the top section so it didn’t feel completely generic.

Weirdly, that’s when I started getting replies.

Nothing crazy, but suddenly recruiters were actually referencing stuff from my resume instead of sending generic rejection emails.

I also stopped rewriting everything from scratch because that was too much. I’d paste the job description + my resume into chatgpt or sometimes aiapply (someone mentioned it here before I think) just to get a rough version, then fix it so it didn’t sound robotic.

I think before that I was just another easy apply blob in a pile of 500 people.

Now it at least looks like I read the job.

Anyway yeah. Doing less but actually matching the role worked better than spamming everything.

Didn’t really think much about ATS choice until hiring started to pick up for us and things stopped feeling as straightforward

When we were small, everything felt pretty easy to manage. Candidates were easy to track, feedback came in quickly, and the ATS mostly just helped keep things organized

But as hiring got more consistent and more people started getting involved in decisions, things started to shift a bit.

Curious what other in house recruiters are using once they get to that point where it’s less about tracking candidates and more about keeping the whole process moving. What’s been working for you at that stage?

Did you end up switching tools, changing process, or just adapting around it?s

It's not a cheap decision, so I wanna know if sticking to spreadsheets make more sense.

Are you mostly tracking things like time-to-fill and hires made, or do you use more structured KPIs/OKRs tied to quality of hire, retention, hiring manager satisfaction, candidate experience, etc.?

USA

After the 5th time ive been rejected at the final round, I am seriously starting to reconsider corporate work. At least for the time being. Though I do not know how to find this especially with a network that is corporate oriented.

Its just so competitive and Ive been at this search for a year now. I need to find something. Very read to start. Im back with family now, so expenses are low, but I need to unpause my life, and get back on living again.

Been in recruiting for awhile and asked a few others who have been in recruiting for awhile…

I always see people online complaining about getting “auto rejected” but as far as I understand, that’s not a thing, even with all the fancy AI add ons you can buy (not referring to knock out questions- I am referring to system that’s kicks out candidates).

Has anyone actually USED this kind of feature? Because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist. I’m familiar with hirescore on workday, which grades candidates, but it still requires a person to go in and reject them.

Something like hirescore is super expensive and even my 50B company was in no way going to approve the price for it ($150k/year, 175k implementation cost) but I’m sure a Fortune100 wouldn’t bat an eye.

Edit: people seem to be confused, I am not referring to knock out questions or the feature on LinkedIn that doesn’t allow you to apply if you answer the knock out questions incorrectly. I am referring to resumes once they’re in the ATS, that the ATS removes them, not a recruiter.

I’ve been trying to get better at reviewing resumes for junior/entry-level candidates, and it made me realize how much hiring still seems based on instinct. Some recruiters care a lot about school prestige. Others care more about internships, projects, extracurriculars, sports, communication skills, certifications, the list never ends.

So I’m curious,

Is there any solid research on what actually correlates with successful hires, especially for early-career roles? Not looking for some magic scoring formula or AI ranking system, just genuine studies/data that show what tends to matter most over time.

For example:

• Does school reputation really matter long term?
• Do internships outperform GPA?
• Are leadership activities or team sports actually predictive of performance?
• How much weight should be given to degree level vs practical work?

Would appreciate any studies, books, or even patterns people have personally noticed over time.

I keep seeing “quality of hire” brought up as one of the most important recruiting metrics, but the more I think about it, the harder it feels to define properly.

Time-to-fill is easy. Cost-per-hire is easy, but quality of hire? That feels way more subjective.

Is it:

• performance after 6 months?
• retention?
• hiring manager satisfaction?
• culture fit?
• promotions?
• all of the above?

And even if you define it, how are teams actually measuring it in a useful way?

I’m curious how people here approach it internally. What does quality of hire mean at your company? Do you track it formally, or is it more of a vague hiring KPI everyone talks about but nobody measures consistently?

If a contractor or temp worker is earning, let’s say, around $50/hour, what’s the client company usually being charged on the other side?

I know agencies obviously add their margin, cover recruiting costs, admin, payroll, etc., but I’ve never really known what the typical markup looks like in practice.

Are we talking:

• small percentage increase?
• double the hourly rate?
• does it depend entirely on industry/seniority?

Would love insight from people who’ve worked agency-side or handled vendor budgets internally because I feel like this part of recruiting is weirdly opaque.

There’s a startup I’ve seen repost the same roles for almost a year now. The same titles, same descriptions, same talk about growth and expansion. Meanwhile people are doing assignments, multiple interviews, waiting weeks for updates, only for the job to quietly get reposted again like nobody just wasted their time on it.

After a while it stops feeling like hiring and starts feeling like performance.

A company with a constantly active careers page looks ambitious from the outside. Investors see momentum. Candidates see opportunity. But sometimes I honestly think the company is more committed to looking like it’s growing than actually building a team.

One thing I hear constantly in recruiting and hiring conversations is how expensive it is to hire someone.

Not just salary-wise, but the whole process:

• sourcing
• interviews
• recruiter time
• onboarding
• training
• lost productivity if the hire doesn’t work out

And companies always say they’d rather leave a role open longer than rush and hire the wrong person. But I’m curious what the real numbers actually look like behind the scenes.

For those involved in hiring, what does it typically cost your company to fill a role from start to finish? Does it vary massively depending on the position, or are there rough averages you’ve seen?

Been trying out pinpoint and it definitely looks more modern than a lot of ATSs we’ve used before. Great UI, candidate experience doesn't seem all bad, but it seems to be lacking in some certain areas.

It feels too process-heavy for the way our team actually hires. It feels like we’re spending more time managing workflows and stages than actually moving the candidates along, quickly.

Looking to try out other recruiting platforms before fully switching, any other option?

Some roles now have 4-6 rounds, sometimes more.

From both a hiring and candidate perspective, where do you think the limit is before it becomes counterproductive?

I recently joined a smaller company, and one of the things leadership wants visibility into is cost-per-hire.

The question apparently came up from the board, and now I’m trying to figure out what’s considered “normal” for a company our size.

Most of the benchmarks I’ve found online seem heavily skewed toward larger organizations, and the numbers are all over the place. The common range I keep seeing is somewhere around a few thousand per hire, but I’m guessing smaller companies probably look very different, especially when you’re only hiring maybe 10 - 20 people a year.

At lower hiring volumes, even basic recruiting costs start getting spread across a much smaller number of hires, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the number ends up looking higher than leadership expects.

For anyone working at a smaller org, what kind of cost-per-hire numbers are you seeing? And how are you calculating it internally?

I know platforms like Indeed technically run on a pay-per-click model, but I’m curious what the real numbers look like once a hire is actually made.

Like when you factor in clicks, applications, drop-offs, bad fits, reposting jobs, etc… what does your true cost-per-hire usually end up being?

I’m also wondering how much it changes depending on the role.

For example, are you seeing:

• much higher costs for senior/specialized hires?
• fairly predictable costs for entry-level roles?
• huge differences between industries?

Would love to hear real experiences for anyone who's tried them.