BLOATED HIRING FUNNEL: HOW TO ATTRACT QUALIFIED CANDIDATES, NOT JUST CLICKS

Improve your hiring funnel by focusing on relevance over reach to find the right candidates efficiently.

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You post a job. A clear, well-structured JD. And then 800+ resumes pour in. But when you sit down to shortlist, only two or three even come close. It’s not an exaggeration - it’s the new norm.

A 2023 Harvard Business Review study found that 70% of online applicants don’t meet even the basic qualifications. That’s not a filtering problem. That’s a funnel problem. We’ve mistaken visibility for reach.

The job boards, “Easy Apply” buttons, and LinkedIn boosts were meant to help. And they did, in terms of visibility. But they killed one thing: relevance.

The result? Candidates apply in bulk, and it’s a shotgun approach. Most don’t even read the JD. They are applying to keywords, not roles. And while you’re buried in a mountain of resumes, the top 5% of real-fit talent often scroll right past your JD because it looks like every other one.Here is an example. We were hiring a mid-senior growth marketer for a B2B sales client. The JD was clear: Eight plus years into B to B sales in the service industry, proven results in terms of exceeding sales targets, team leadership experience.

In six days, we got 500 applications.

Only seven candidates matched. That’s 1.4%. Of those, 3 didn’t even respond to follow-up — possibly ghost-applying.