Average applications per hire report, Spring 2024

The average number of applicants per hire was 72 for jobs opened between October to December 2023. That’s 46% more applicants per hire than just 2 years prior in January 2022.

To discover these trends, we analyzed data from more than 10 million applications to jobs opened by Pinpoint customers across the last 2 years, across a wide range of company sizes and industries.

Unsurprisingly, the channels with the most applications per hire were job boards, direct (which often means unknown), and social media. The channels with the lowest applications per hire were employee referrals, sourcing from in-house and external recruiters, and organic search.

Stop attracting candidates you aren’t going to hire

Check if your job board and social promotions are actually contributing hires—or just noise. Use reporting in your ATS to track hires by channel, not just candidates by channel.

Write more honest job descriptions that let the wrong candidates self-select out of your roles. The right job advert will repel 90% of candidates, says Glenn Elliott, co-author of Build It: The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement. But to the right candidate, it will sound like their dream job.

Spend more time with the right candidates

Use knock-out questions and automated (but personalized) rejection emails to reject unqualified candidates without sacrificing candidate experience.

You can also work on building up your talent pool by using your ATS to automatically tag candidate profiles, stay in touch with runners-up, and allowing candidates to indicate alternate job preferences on their application forms.

Expand your referral program

Referred candidates are 7x more likely to be hired than candidates applying via job boards, according to a separate analysis of hires made by Pinpoint customers.

Among a busy recruiter’s long to-do list, referrals can seem like an afterthought; a neglected talent pipeline that always trickles in candidates in the background. But there are small things you can do to yield exponential results.

For example, consider offering a referral bonus to current employees. Across companies on Pinpoint that use referrals, bonuses for accepted candidates range from $1,000-$1,500 on average.

Build your employer brand

Organic search typically draws in two types of prospective applicants:

• People who are already fans of your company and are interested in learning more
• People searching relevant terms online who may become interested when they come across your site

Attracting more of the first group means building your employer brand. This can include making more candidates aware of your brand, as well as making sure candidates understand your employee value proposition.

As for the second group of applicants, recruiters usually won’t be in a position to improve how your careers site shows up for relevant search terms without support. You can use our guide here to collaborate effectively with whoever manages your careers website, whether that’s your development team, marketing team, or ATS provider.