As AI Floods the Applicant Pipeline, Internal Mobility Gives Employers An Edge

Applying for a job has never been easier, but actually getting hired is another story. Recent data shows that while job applicants have surged, the number of completed hires has dropped sharply. The paradox points to a massive mechanical bottleneck in the middle of the hiring funnel. Thanks to generative AI, candidates can spam out customized resumes at scale, making the application process virtually frictionless. The human work of reviewing those submissions, however, remains slow and manual, leaving recruiters drowning in the deluge.

Helping shed light on the breakdown is William Self, Head of Transformation and Workforce Innovation at Aon. Having previously served as Global Leader of Workforce Strategy and Analytics at Mercer, Self’s career spans academia at Harvard and UC Berkeley as well as executive AI and data roles at USAA and H&R Block. From his vantage point, the current paradox represents a genuine structural shift that isn’t likely to disappear with the next jobs report.

“AI tools have lowered the cost of applying to jobs. One candidate can now apply to far more positions than in the past, but the cost of reviewing applications and interviewing people hasn’t dropped the same way,” Self says. He argues that this imbalance creates a technical debt for HR departments, where the time saved by candidates is directly transferred as an administrative burden onto recruiters.

• The differentiation problem: Applicant volume alone would be manageable if the quality signal were clear, but Self explains that AI has introduced a second complication. When every candidate uses AI to polish their resume and customize their cover letter, the applications all start to look the same. “The ability to differentiate between candidates has become more difficult. It’s harder to figure out who is a really strong candidate and a good match for the role versus somebody who’s really good at using AI tools,” he says. 

• The job opening killer: The result is a funnel that moves more slowly at every stage, which further compounds the hiring problem. The longer a search stays open, the more likely it is that conditions change and the role never gets filled at all. “As positions are left open, a hiring manager might decide they don’t actually need to backfill because the team is getting along fine without someone in that role,” Self says. “Or, the organization’s financial health might shift, and a position that was an easy business case a month ago now gets closed for financial reasons. The longer the process takes, the lower the likelihood an offer ever gets made.”

A meaningful number of positions posted today are never likely to end in an external hire regardless of how many qualified candidates apply. Self points to what have been called ghost or zombie postings, positions that stay open as evergreen pipelines for high-volume roles or as a form of brand management in a soft market. “If your organization isn’t hiring as aggressively as it used to, you might not want the labor market to see that,” he says. “You might continue to post jobs even though there’s not the same level of commitment to actually making an offer. The downside is that it produces a tough candidate experience, because candidates assume organizations are posting in good faith.” These postings have always existed, but in a market where application volume has exploded and candidate patience is thin, their impact on the overall hiring picture is more pronounced.

• The internal advantage: There’s another reason external candidates apply and never hear back: the role gets filled from within. Self sees organizations making real progress on internal mobility after years of talking about it. Better skills data, internal talent marketplaces, and improved analytics are allowing companies to understand what capabilities they already have and redeploy people in ways that weren’t operationally feasible before. “As technology has gotten better and companies have invested in skills data, it’s gotten easier to think about filling positions internally.”

• Perception versus reality: Many organizations now use external postings as a benchmark or a secondary option, prioritizing internal redeployment to save on onboarding costs and cultural misalignment. From the outside candidate’s perspective, though, it seems as if the role has simply disappeared. “It might look like an offer was never made and the position was never hired for, but there’s a new person internally in that role,” Self explains. 

Taken together, these forces paint a picture of a labor market in stasis. Unemployment hasn’t spiked and layoffs haven’t surged, but hiring has slowed, and the reasons are structural rather than cyclical. As AI reshapes how work gets done, Self sees companies still grappling with what it means to be fully staffed. “A lot of organizations right now are actively questioning what talent they need and what it really looks like to have enough capacity to handle the work,” he says. “Especially while they’re actively trying to adopt or build AI tools, that’s an open question. Nobody has an exact number for what perfect staffing looks like in this new world.” The companies that stand out to Self are the ones resisting the impulse to cut costs today in anticipation of AI savings tomorrow. “The organizations that are inspiring me right now are keeping a growth mindset. They’re not thinking ‘How is AI going to allow us to do this work cheaper?’ but ‘How is AI going to allow us to expand our revenue base to get products to market faster and serve more customers?’ It’s about growth and achieving their mission at the next level.”