Greenhouse, the leading hiring platform, has published its 2024 State of Job Hunting report.
The report exposes a challenging job market where candidates are battling discrimination, sloppy hiring, fierce competition, and a new AI arms race – as applicants deploy their own tech tools to outsmart companies’ systems.
Among 2,500 workers surveyed across the UK, US, and Germany, nearly half of UK workers (45%) are actively job-hunting, yet 72% admit heightened anxiety in an increasingly selective and broken hiring market.
Ghosting and “ghost jobs”— positions advertised with no intent to hire— continue to plague the market. Ghosting is getting worse: 61% of job seekers have been ghosted after a job interview, a 19 percentage point increase since April 2024. Highlighting persistent disparities in the recruitment process, 71% of historically underrepresented job seekers now experience post-interview ghosting, compared to 58% for white candidates.
Job seekers are increasingly wary of ghost jobs: over half (56%) say they’ve suspected they’ve encountered a ghost job and one-quarter (27%) of them applied anyway. The phenomenon isn’t in candidates’ heads— Greenhouse internal data shows that in any given quarter, 18-22% of the jobs posted on the platform are classified as ghost jobs. Candidates are also battling scam and spam listings, with close to three-quarters (69%) encountering them.
“The data highlights a troubling reality— the job market has become more soul-crushing than ever. Candidates are trapped in a cycle of despair and have no idea what’s going on. Hiring feels like a black box. It’s become a battlefield that job seekers have to cross – employers ghosting candidates, fake, spam, and scam jobs— and AI is only exacerbating it all,” says Jon Stross, President and Co-founder of Greenhouse. “Companies are struggling to manage the overload of applications fuelled by AI, but they need to realize that the market runs in cycles and they won’t always have the upper hand. Every unanswered email and every vanishing hiring manager isn’t just a minor inconvenience to candidates; it’s costly and can damage a company’s reputation, making it harder to attract top talent in the long term.”
As diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts and programs face public backlash, job seekers still view it as a green flag. Nearly one in every two (49%) candidates consider it very important for companies to openly promote DE&I in job postings, while only 7% deem it unimportant. Between April and November 2024, the number of historically underrepresented job seekers who view a company’s DE&I commitments as essential when applying to a role grew by 36 percentage points.
Yet, discrimination and bias remain prevalent, with 63% of UK candidates reporting they’ve faced discriminatory or biased interview questions, a 22-point increase since April 2024. The most frequently encountered discriminatory questions related to age (58%), gender (41%), and race (37%). Another concerning trend reveals that 60% of candidates have had hiring managers mispronounce their names—a basic oversight that affects historically underrepresented job seekers at higher rates (74%) compared to white candidates (56%).
“The hiring landscape is riddled with systemic inefficiencies and a lack of consideration for the candidate experience. Discriminatory practices, communication breakdowns, and short-sighted strategies have become all too common,” said, Danielle McConville, VP EMEA at Greenhouse.
“Market conditions can change quickly, so companies must understand how the candidate experience can significantly influence whether talent choose to work there. A business’ ability to attract and retain top talent can be a determining factor of long-term organisational success.”
