It’s no secret that today’s job market is a little…strange.
We asked 1,000 HR and talent pros how they’re feeling about hiring right now, from AI and screening all the way through to onboarding and retaining employees.
Plus, we connected directly with hiring managers at BPP, John Lewis, Mastercard, Numan and ThanksBen to get first-hand tips you can start using tomorrow.
The result: How to lose a candidate in 10 days.
Aside from the obvious HR implications of romantic work entanglements (please don’t write us up) today’s hiring process reminds us of some of our favourite rom-com moments: missed connections, ghosting from both sides, and, of course, what comes after the happily ever after.
We’ve broken down the candidate journey into ten key steps that you can’t afford to get wrong in today’s tight hiring market, complete with data and expert insights to back it up.
Want to get straight to work? Download the full report for ready-to-use hiring tips and tricks from leading companies like BPP, John Lewis, Mastercard, and more.
1. 55% of respondents use AI to write their job descriptions.
But 40% of them also said they’ve had candidates drop out of the hiring process because the job wasn’t as advertised.
Unlike in classic rom-coms, there are no “meet cutes” in hiring. In modern dating and in job hunting, connection often begins with a swipe — and everyone’s got a checklist that they’re looking for.
If you set the expectation for transparency and clear communication from the beginning, you’re more likely to end up with happy candidates who fit the job spec.
2. 62% of respondents already rely on AI for help screening candidates.
More candidates + fewer open roles = more CVs for each job. What’s more, our survey found that of all the CVs companies receive, only half reported that upwards of 50% were relevant for the job.
And even as talent teams race to find a way for AI to help save time, candidates are using AI to send in more applications, faster.
No talent team wants to be part of the next Workday-esque headline, so you’re stuck balancing two realities:
- AI-powered tools can sift through lots of data quickly, making conclusions and spotting patterns in an overwhelming flood of CVs
- AI reflects real-life biases and can make mistakes that can have costly consequences
Keeping humans in the process is a legal obligation, too, especially under laws like the EU’s AI act. To stay compliant, use AI to help make decisions but not finalise them.
3. 71% of HR and talent experts believe automation removes personalisation from the hiring process, but 73% of them said they used AI in the recruitment process because it’s a business priority.
What’s more important — hitting goals, or hitting them well?
Candidates don’t want to feel like they’re just being pulled through the process by a robot. They want efficiency, sure, but they’re also evaluating what it would be like for them, a human being, to work at your company, a place filled with other human beings.
Automation has its place, but when it steps into your process at the wrong moment it can turn hiring into a cold, transactional exchange.
4. Over half (58%) of respondents said they spent too much time updating candidates.
The good news? You can pretty much use AI and automation however you want.
The bad news? You can pretty much use AI and automation however you want.
The question is where to start. When we asked our pool of survey respondents:
- 59% of them said they’ve used chatGPT to write final stage interview questions or candidate tasks
- 47% use AI to progress candidates through the hiring funnel
- 37% use it to reject candidates, solving that pesky problem of “not enough time”
We get it: it can be tempting to stick to tried-and-true. And 15% of the people we surveyed said they didn’t use AI at all, proving that there’s room for choice.
Declan Packer, Head of Talent Acquisition at Numan, highlighted how automation can help re-engage high-quality candidates that weren’t quite right for past roles.
“In scale-ups, things move quickly, and great candidates often come in second place just because the timing or exact fit wasn’t right,” he said. “Having an automated way to flag, track, and re-surface these ‘near-miss’ candidates when similar roles open would be a game-changer.”
“Plus,” he added, “it’s a much better candidate experience. You’re showing people that you really saw their potential, even if they didn’t get the first role, and that can really strengthen your employer brand over time.”
Less work, stronger candidates? Sounds like a win to us.
Alicia Riley, Head of People at ThanksBen, said: “From hiring to onboarding, we automate the transition from our ATS to HRIS. The transfer pulls candidates into our onboarding workflow, which in turn triggers emails being sent and notifications for other onboarding tasks. The people function are notified as part of that, too, so we know when they’ve made a hire.”
5. Half of respondents (51%) said they put a higher salary on job ads to encourage more applications.
Salary transparency isn’t required by law in the UK, but almost 70% of UK job postings included salary information in 2025. Studies have shown that including pay information closes 18% of the gender pay gap and leads to more applications from qualified candidates (which, after all, is the goal).
Just like in the movies, candidates appreciate clear, open and honest communication. If you don’t offer the highest salary range around, that’s alright. But, our survey also found that 44% of recruiters do think that a comprehensive benefits package can offset a lower salary range.
One report even found that personalised benefits and total rewards frameworks are becoming more important to candidates, especially as they look beyond salary towards perks like flexible working, healthcare benefits, parental leave, and more.
If all else fails? Hire quickly. The more you can speed up your time to hire, the more you can compete in a crowded candidate market for the most qualified employees. Just make sure your candidate experience doesn’t suffer — which is easier said than done.
6. 10% of respondents have ghosted a candidate. We asked them why they did it.
The big reasons for ghosting? Lack of time, unsuitable candidates, and shifting priorities.
Sometimes, there are simply not enough hours in the day. When you can’t see the bottom of your to-do list, it’s easy to let something slip through the cracks. To be honest, we found this stat surprising — especially given the hefty number of applications TA teams have to get through.
Of the respondents who told us they had ghosted candidates, a quarter of them said that the candidate simply wasn’t qualified. Nearly a quarter said they just didn’t have the time, while 9% cited internal changes, and 5% said it was because of bad candidate behaviour.
Here’s what they had to say:
- “Because it’s part of the process.”
- “They’re completely unqualified for the job, eg. unable to work in the UK.”
- “I’m busy, they’re unsuitable. It’s bad manners, but I lose interest in them if I don’t see the next step.”
- “Most times it’s because we’ve decided to go with another candidate, or the role has been put on hold.”
- “Ocassionaly but not intentionally! Too many candidates in the process.”
- “There were better candidates who were more qualified.”
- “They were weird.”
- “It wasn’t intentional, but rather a result of limited time and resources.”
- “A role was cancelled at the last minute and I didn’t have time to update all the candidates properly.”
- “Too many candidates to tell the terrible ones no.”
7. 70% of respondents said they’d been ghosted by a candidate
It’s a lot more likely that you’ve received radio silence from a candidate you were excited about, even in a tight hiring market. Which is a bummer, but there’s not much you can do about it.
Or is there?
84% of the people we surveyed said it took them longer than a month to make a senior hire, and 15% said it took over two months. And the bigger the company, the longer the hiring process.
When candidates did tell them why they were dropping out, it was mostly because they’d found a better offer elsewhere. But a full quarter of respondents reported that their candidates said the hiring process was too slow.
Whether it’s cutting down unnecessary steps or being super clear on requirements at the start of the process, hiring speed is one of the fastest ways you can level up your candidate experience.
Every little bit counts. Charlotte Egan, Talent Acquisition Optimisation & Data Manager at John Lewis, gave us some great advice:
“Really cross-examine and continue to revisit those parts of the process that have the highest amount of repeated tasks. Each click you save by continuing to chip away at process improvement over time all adds up to a quicker time to hire. It’s not always about the big projects – there are lots of hidden time-saving gems.”
8. 75% of respondents said they’d had to delay a hire because of slow background checks.
Look — we couldn’t leave out the background checks. After all, it’s one of our favourite things in the world, second only to that scene in 10 Things I Hate About You where Heath Ledger is serenading Julia Stiles during her sports practice.
You know what a bad background check looks like. You’ve probably even been on the wrong side of one once or twice. And if you’re in a field where there’s fierce competition for qualified candidates, you’ve probably had a candidate drop out because their checks were taking too long.
We’re not going to say we were excited to see this stat, but we weren’t surprised, either. Traditional background checking is slow, clunky, and manual, for you and your candidates.
Most old-school providers run checks thanks to a small army of support workers, who might even be based overseas. At Zinc, we’ve built our platform on the belief that automated is best — if it’s not automated, we don’t build it.
Learn more about how Zinc can boost your candidate experience with seamless background checks.
9. 82% of respondents were happy with the state of their onboarding process, but 40% have had a candidate leave in the first six months because a job wasn’t as advertised.
In Two Weeks Notice, everything is going (sort of) well at Sandra Bullock’s new job with Hugh Grant — until, of course, values collide and burnout surfaces. She takes the job to preserve a local community centre, but he hires her for her no-nonsense opinion on everything from his stationery to legal issues. Their personalities clash, sparks fly, and she quits.
That story, of course, has a happy ending. But if a new employee discovers that the job they’ve just joined isn’t the one that they were sold during the interview process, it can have consequences: a team that’s still spread too thin, wasted time, and a damaged employer brand. Especially if Hugh Grant isn’t there to charm them into staying.
Onboarding is essential. And more than 800 of our respondents know it! But the trouble comes when the interview process isn’t aligned with onboarding, employee expectations, or hiring manager requirements.
The onboarding period either reinforces what a candidate sees in the hiring process, or knocks it apart. If you’ve spent the entire hiring process telling candidates that you’re a collaborative, inclusive organisation, don’t stick them at a desk by themselves to figure things out.
Good onboarding makes the new employee feel confident that they’ll excel in their job — it doesn’t give them second thoughts.
10. 70% of respondents said they felt like they couldn’t make a bad hire.
In uncertain economic times, hiring can feel make or break (especially when you’ve got hiring managers pinging you with constant requests for updates).
Instead of pulling The Holiday-style hijinks and running away from your problems like Kate Winslet fleeing to Los Angeles, it’s time to refocus on why you’re doing this in the first place.
At the end of the day, you got into HR or talent acquisition to work with people. You’ve probably been doing it for a while, and know all the ins and outs of what could go wrong and where you stand to improve. But at the end of the day, you need to do two things:
- Work with people
- Trust your process
Final thoughts: Actionable ways to improve your candidate journey
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a hiring team in possession of an open role is bound to run into a few hiccups. There’s always another role, employee turnover, and more admin to get to.
The good news is that you know a good candidate experience when you see it, and there are countless ways to get there that align with your organisation’s processes, values, and people.
The big questions to ask yourself:
- If I was a candidate, how would I feel about our process?
- Is what we’re doing right now leading to the outcomes that we want?
- What’s one change I can make tomorrow to keep improving?
For more ways to improve your candidate experience, save time, and stop stressing about hiring, download our full “How to lose a candidate in 10 days” report here.
