As Applications Surge And Hires Drop, SMBs Stand Out By Closing The Humanization Gap

New data shows that although the number of job applicants per posting has nearly doubled since 2022, the actual number of completed hires is down more than 20 percent. While softening hiring plans and layoff activity have led organizations to hold budgets more tightly and stretch hiring timelines, the math still doesn’t quite add up. Some of that gap can be explained by companies posting roles they never intended to fill externally, but for many organizations, the hiring process itself is stuck in a loop of leadership indecision and poorly implemented technology.

Jillian O’Malior, Founder and Principal Strategist at Jillian Does Branding, has a clear view of what’s driving the wedge between applications and completed hires. O’Malior has spent 15 years untangling hiring bottlenecks and building employer brands for enterprise giants, giving her a front-row seat to how internal corporate behavior shapes the external talent market. She’s noticed a growing trend of leaders hesitant to own the risk of a bad hire.

“We’re hearing about hiring cycles that take three or four months with seven or eight rounds of interviews. That speaks to companies that are terrified to make a decision.” That reluctance, she says, often shows up in the form of extended vacancies and hiring stagnation.

• The cost of indecision: At a time when job insecurity is top of mind, O’Mailor sees leaders falling into the trap of viewing every new hire as a threat to their own performance. “Everyone wants to be labeled as a leader, but they don’t want the responsibility that comes with it. What if I hire someone and they don’t work out? That’s a reflection on me, so I’m just not going to make the decision.”

• Speed as a signal: In contrast, high-performing companies treat hiring as a project with clear milestones rather than a recursive, never-ending trial. “When an organization is moving efficiently, doing fewer interviews, and hiring quickly, it’s a reflection of a company that knows what it’s doing,” O’Mailor asserts. She says firms that do this operate with surgical focus, utilizing streamlined evaluation frameworks that prioritize role-specific competencies over indefinite screenings.

In the hopes that technology will shoulder more of the decision-making, hiring leaders are increasingly handing the keys to artificial intelligence. Many teams are layering AI into their ATS, using knockout filters and scoring features to narrow down candidates. Without addressing the underlying gaps in recruiting design and process, however, O’Mailor says organizations can inadvertently train their systems to deprioritize large portions of their applicant pools. “Because these are LLMs, they learn from the way you utilize them. If they notice that, for instance, you tend to favor applications that have a particular title, it’s going to prioritize those titles,” she explains. Numerous studies have demonstrated AI’s struggle with bias, especially when it comes to race and gender. What’s more, a heavy reliance on automated rejections can create a transactional culture that erodes candidate loyalty and leaves even the most qualified prospects feeling like disposable data points.

• Ending the candidate void: O’Mailor says the combination of extended hiring cycles and heavily filtered pipelines often results in what candidates experience as a black hole. Navigating these systems can feel like sending materials into a void and hearing nothing back for months or, in some cases, years. “Unless you’re a big rock star going from one Fortune 500 to another, you’re not going to feel very valued in the selection process. It’s gotten really dehumanizing.”

• The small-size advantage: In her view, the black hole presents a unique opportunity for small- to medium-sized businesses to stand out at a time when large employers are attracting a growing share of job applications. While bigger companies may have more name recognition, they also tend to have heavy bureaucracy and opaque automation. SMBs, she says, can gain a meaningful edge with a clearer, more responsive candidate experience. “Smaller organizations can stand out simply by creating something that is more human for the candidate.”

Making the process feel more human means rethinking how and where AI is used. Rather than relying on rigid filters at the very top of the funnel, O’Mailor recommends shifting AI into mid-funnel screening, where it can add context instead of silently removing candidates. Tools that use adaptive video screening, for example, can invite candidates to answer role-specific questions once they’ve passed basic location or eligibility checks. “These kinds of tools give candidates an ability to provide much more context than a single sheet of paper is ever going to be able to give.” In a market defined by ghosting and long silences, an interaction with a well-designed screening tool can feel better to job seekers than submitting a resume and never hearing back, which is a win for both the candidate and the company. “Humanizing the candidate experience improves your employer brand, improves your overall reputation, and attracts more talent,” she says.

Over time, O’Mailor believes the organizations that benefit most from AI are the ones that start with clear goals and workflows, then configure technology to support those goals rather than expecting software to fix structural issues on its own. From her perspective, making progress in the current hiring slowdown depends on getting organized internally while staying empathetic to the person who sits on the other side of every requisition. “Yes, our job as leaders is hard and the challenges can seem ever-mounting, but the candidate’s job will always be harder.”