Ashby's Talent Trends Reports enable the TA community with industry benchmarks and trends from anonymized proprietary Ashby data. 
While there's no substitute for internal data, these reports aim to dive beyond superficial headlines to analyze the 'why' behind those trends and arm you with helpful industry benchmarks you see every day. 
We're turning raw data into actionable insights for Recruiters and TA leaders trying to make sense of the ever evolving TA landscape.


We want to share the insights you need to unlock hiring excellence.  If you have a specific request or recommendation for how we can make these reports incrementally more valuable, we'd love to hear from you. 


Kevin Connolly

An analysis of 2.8M candidates for over 5.1M interview events.

Recruiting Coordination | Talent Trends Report

Bryce Codell

Every step in the hiring process leads to one desired outcome: a candidate accepting your offer. Though when it comes to benchmarking offer acceptance (and other important recruitment metrics), we found few resources. Our recurring Talent Trends Reports seek to provide talent acquisition teams and hiring managers alike with context for internal goal setting.

<Hint>This report analyzes 230K applications that reached the offer stage from January 2021 through March 2024 to benchmark Offer Acceptance Rate (OAR) by function, industry, and more. [Click here to download a PDF copy instead](https://try.ashbyhq.com/oar/). </Hint>

### **How We Looked at OAR**

We calculate the Offer Acceptance Rate based on candidates entering the offer stage and evaluating their final outcome. Our analysis takes this approach to control for bias related to when teams are more likely to create or to not create official offers in their applicant tracking system (ATS). For example, some teams tend to create offers only after verbal acceptance. We additionally control for organization-based rejection reasons to identify what we believe is the most accurate measure of a candidate's decision to accept or reject an offer.

### Report Highlights

We found a number of interesting trends in this report. A peek at a few high level trends includes:

* **2023 exhibited the highest average Offer Acceptance Rate** for the years we’ve analyzed to date at 81%. 
* **Time in Offer Stage dipped 16% in Q3 2023**, from an average of \~3 days to an average of \~2.5 days. This likely reflects the eagerness of candidates to find a new role in recent months.
* **We observe a peak in more rejections coming from the organization** versus the candidate from Q4 2022 to Q3 2023. This time period again aligns with the general withdrawal of headcount and rescinding of roles we’ve heard shared qualitatively across LinkedIn.

Let’s explore all the data in further detail. 

## Offer Acceptance Rate Benchmarks

Any talent acquisition leader who has gone through a few recruiting cycles expects Offer Acceptance Rates to fluctuate, especially when there are critical market events. Looking quarter by quarter, this intuition seems to match the fluctuations in OAR observed.

We can see in the chart below how [offers accepted](https://www.ashbyhq.com/podcast) dipped slightly in an environment of increased job offer volume. This is seen most clearly in the time period between Q4 2021 and Q2 2022 when offer volume was high before the mass tech layoffs began to impact role availability.

**Across the three year period, we observe an average Offer Acceptance Rate of 78%**. [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/H9ebd)]

Looking at this same data by calendar year, we see a:

* 77% Offer Acceptance Rate in 2021
* 76% Offer Acceptance Rate in 2022
* 81% Offer Acceptance Rate in 2023

![Quarterly Offer Acceptance Rates 2021, 2022, 2023](/images/quarterly-offer-acceptance-rate.png)

As the total number of roles began dwindling, we saw a high Offer Acceptance Rate take form — particularly in the last two quarters of 2023. **The 2023 job Offer Acceptance Rate of 81% is the highest in years we’ve analyzed to date**. [[Click to Tweet](https://ctt.ac/337R4)]

Anecdotally on social media, many job seekers shared difficulty finding roles during this time, which could influence willingness to accept a job offer. 

In speaking with customers, we’ve also heard that a number of quality candidates already in a role were more hesitant to interview and switch to another company during periods of widespread layoffs. This shifted more pressure onto hiring teams to help top talent understand the stability and growth of your organization in order to fill open roles.

### Offer Acceptance Rate by Function

In filtering the data by technical and business functions, we found that the latter have 11 percentage points higher Offer Acceptance Rates — even during layoff seasons. Across the three years, we observe a:

* 73% average Offer Acceptance Rate for technical roles
* 84% average Offer Acceptance Rate for business roles

The gap between these two functions was most prominent from Q2 2021 to Q2 2022 – when the number of offers overall was also increasing (as seen in the previous chart). It is less clear why this gap widened, especially when considering [both functions were impacted heavily by mass layoffs](https://365datascience.com/trending/who-was-affected-by-the-2022-2023-tech-layoffs/#3).

![Offer Acceptance Rate by Business and Technical Roles](/images/oar-by-function-has-been-increasing.png)

What is clearer, however, is that a consistently lower Offer Acceptance Rate for technical job seekers means these candidates evaluate and approach roles differently. 

Our [Candidate Sourcing report](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/candidate-sourcing#outreach-rates-by-job-category) gives some insight into just one of the ways the technical candidates’ expectations differ: In that report, we found Engineering candidates are far less likely to open an outbound sourcing campaign in comparison to other role types. Still, Engineering roles continue to see some of the highest volumes of sourcing, often in attempts to get noticed by top talent.

![](/images/sourcing-investment-most-inbound-applications.png)

### Offer Acceptance Rate by Industry

When we bucketed this recruiting metric by industry, we found only small differences. This signaled to us that the role itself, [job description](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/career-pages-guide), application process, and other factors likely have more weight than the industry the open role is in. In other words, a software engineering candidate generally has industry-agnostic skills, so their evaluation is focussed on the engineering role versus specific roles in FinTech vs HealthTech.

If still helpful to your recruitment strategy, the benchmarks here are:

* Business Services: 82%
* Health Technology: 80%
* Saas and Cloud: 79%
* Financial Technology: 77%
* Online Marketplaces: 76%
* Consumer Apps: 73%
* Media & Entertainment: 72%

![Offer Acceptance Rate by Industry](/images/offer-acceptance-rate-by-industry-2x.png)

- - -

## Time In Offer Stage

In our analysis, Time in Offer Stage is based on the movement into and out of the Offer Stage. As is the nature of the hiring process, there are times when candidates are moved into and out of various stages (offer, hired, archived). This can result in [errors entering data](https://www.ashbyhq.com/customers/fullstory), rescinding offers, and so on. In such scenarios, we assessed from the last time a candidate is moved from an offer stage to a terminal stage — either hired or archived. 

We immediately see that overall, **Time in Offer was generally stable at 3 days until Q2 2023, at which point we observed a 16% drop to 2.5 days.** [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/eU349)]

It’s important to emphasize here that this is an average. If you are seeing performance outside of this — don’t be alarmed! For example, a candidate who is particularly enthusiastic about the company or role may accept faster. In other instances, there may be a candidate evaluating offers from multiple organizations who doesn’t respond to the offer for five days. All of this is accounted for in the average.

![Average Days in Offer Stage](/images/average-days-in-offer-stage-dipped-in-q3-2023.png)

The downtick in time in more recent months corresponds with an uptick in average Offer Acceptance Rate. This story aligns with the overall narrative of a difficult market for landing a new role driving urgency and willingness to accept a role.

From our perspective, this data becomes most interesting when slicing it by whether or not the candidate accepts the extended offer.

### Time in Offer Stage by Accepted vs Rejected

So, how does this change for candidates who accept the job offer versus candidates who decline? Over our studied time period, we found that:

* **For candidates who accept the job**, Time in Offer was roughly 2.8 days until Q2 2023, at which point it fell to two days. In other words, new hires accepted the offered role within two days of formally receiving it. 
* **For candidates who decline** (and so get archived), Time in Offer was closer to six days.
* Overall, we also see that OAR increases as Time in Offer decreases.

This collective data overall signals that if a candidate plans on accepting a role, it likely happens quickly. Here at Ashby, we intuitively believe that speed in the hiring process increases the odds of closing a candidate. This may be important for recruiting teams to consider if not part of your strategy today. For example, not sending a candidate an offer quickly enough could result in a decline.

![Median Days in Offer Stage by Outcome](/images/average-days-in-offer-stage-by-outcome-2-.png)

### Time in Offer Stage: Business vs Technical Roles

When looking at the initial Offer Acceptance data by job function, we find that the median Time in Offer Stage sees striking differences. Time in Offer for business roles has remained relatively unchanged, while **tech roles represent more variance and often take (at minimum) a day more for a candidate to respond**.[[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/TiP1C)]

* **Business Roles**: Time in Offer remains relatively unchanged at a consistent ~3 days.
* **Technical Roles**: Time in Offer follows the global directional trend, but consistently sits above the global trend at roughly 4 days instead of 3.

![](/images/technical-candidates-often-take-a-day-longer-to-respond.png)

### Time in Offer Stage’s Relationship with Offer Acceptance Rate

When looking at these two recruiting metrics together, we noticed an inverse relationship in more recent quarters: **As the number of days in the offer stage decreases, the overall Offer Acceptance Rate increases**. [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/ngb4c)]

![Time in Offer's Inverse Relationship with Offer Acceptance Rates](/images/time-in-offer’s-inverse-relationship-with-oar.png)

This becomes particularly interesting when observed alongside the changes in the hiring environment over the same time periods: More recently, the number of applicants available grew to a point where the hiring power has swung in favor of employers. This is a sharp contrast from 2021 when companies were opening roles much more frequently and, in some cases, applying [less scrutiny in their interview process](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-recruiter-productivity-trends-report#candidate-evaluation:-are-recruiters-spending-more-aggregate-time-on-interviews).

- - -

## Offer Declines by Reason

As the number of candidates for a role increases (we reported on a [2-3x increase in inbound applications from 2021 to 2024 here](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-trends-report-applications-per-job)), we were curious to explore trends in where offer rejections stem from. We can immediately see in the data that offer rejections primarily come from candidates.

That said, **there is a peak in more roles rescinded from the organization hiring from Q4 2022 through Q3 2023**. Rejection reasons here could include the role being closed, not being able to meet [salary requirements](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/product/pay-transparency-feature-announcment) or candidate expectations, and so on. It’s interesting to note that this time period again lines up with industry-wide layoffs, suggesting that general withdrawal of headcount for any reason could be a stronger factor than other quarters.

![Q2 2023 Shows Peak in Job Roles Rescinded from Organizations](/images/q2-2023-shows-peak-in-roles-rescinded-from-organizations.png)

A fascinating trend emerged when we studied rejections by an organization and split it by function. Here we found that:

* Offers rescinded by the organization represent 17% of declined offers for technical roles.
* Offers rescinded by the organization represent 27% of declined offers for business roles.

In other words, **companies are much less likely to rescind an offer for a technical role as they are a business role** [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/bkbns)].

For recruiting teams, this is valuable insight in understanding conversion rate, onboarding, follow ups required, and more for business versus technical roles. 

Let’s take relative cost as one example. If one in four roles reach the offer stage and the organization decides to rescind, that’s a lot of invested hours by the recruiting team and extended interview panel wasted. Understanding this context sooner than later helps positively influence [recruiter productivity](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-recruiter-productivity-trends-report).

- - -

##  Offers Accepted by Source

We often hear theories online about which sources lead to hiring the best candidates or which sources help a candidate make it to the interview stage. In reviewing the source of offers across our data, we found some helpful data-driven context behind supporting or refuting such assumptions.

When looking at the composition of source channels behind accepted job offers, we can quickly see:

* the fewest hires come from internal, agencies, and external job boards
* the most hires come from inbound applications, growing even faster since Q1 2023
* candidate sourcing efforts and referrals sit in the middle as solid contributors

![Accepted Offers by Source, Technical Roles](/images/accepted-offers-by-source-technical-roles.png)

![Accepted Offers by Source, Business Roles](/images/accepted-offers-by-source-business-roles.png)

In studying each of these sources, we found general stability across all but one. Over the three year period analyzed, inbound as a source of hires massively trends upwards. This is in line with data we revealed in February 2024 in our [Applications per Job report](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-trends-report-applications-per-job) ahead of our launch of [Quality of Hire surveys](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/product/quality-of-hire-surveys).

- - -

## Easily Track Offer Analytics

Of course the best way to track performance is your own historic data. These recruiting benchmarks hope to serve as overarching guides or reference points to your work. Natively in Ashby, there are a number of [Core Dashboards](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/product/core-dashboards) that represent a suite of specific insights to help TA teams track performance.

![Tracking Offer Acceptance Rates in Ashby](/images/offer-dashboard-in-ashby.png)

One of these is called “Offer Dashboard,” which automatically allows talent teams to track a number of recruiting metrics — some of which you may recognize from the report above!

* **In Offer**: The total number of candidates who are currently in the Offer stage group. When opening the report, it includes the candidate, the job, the job consideration’s recruiter, hiring manager, the number of days the consideration has been in that Offer stage group and the offer status.
* **Reached Offer**: The total number of job considerations, active and inactive, that have ever reached the offer stage group. By default, this report covers all time.
* **Intent to Offer Acceptance Rate**: The intent to offer acceptance rate is the total hires over the total number of job considerations that have ever reached the offer stage. By default, this report covers all time.
* **Offer Acceptance Rate Details**: A further breakdown of the offer outcomes that lead to the offer acceptance rate, listing the offers decided, the offers accepted and the offers rejected.
* **Offer Acceptance Rate Overall**: The offer acceptance rate across each month. By default this report shows the last 12 months.
* **Offer Decline Reasons**: A chart showing the reasons added to offers when they are declined by the candidate. 
* **Time to Offer by Department**: The average number of days it takes for a job consideration to reach the Offer stage from when it was first started. This report is grouped by department.
* **Time to Offer by Recruiter**: The average number of days it takes for a job consideration to reach the Offer stage from when it was first started. This report is grouped by the recruiter listed on the job consideration.

Curious to take a closer look for yourself? Customers can contact their CRM or if you’re new to Ashby — [request a demo here](https://www.ashbyhq.com/request-demo).

- - -

## Conclusions

Through analyzing 230K applications that reached the offer stage from January 2021 through March 2024, we ultimately found:

* Offer Acceptance Rate has fluctuated alongside changes in the macro hiring environment.
* Industries with the proportionally largest amount of technical role hiring correlate with the lowest offer acceptance. 
* There has been a clear trend in more job offers coming from inbound applications in recent months. 

We hope these insights help talent teams navigate, evolve, and inform their strategy around offer acceptance. For more recruiting insights and benchmarks, [subscribe to our Talent Trends newsletter](https://try.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-newsletter/).

We analyzed Offer Acceptance Rate (‘OAR’) patterns over a three year period to share valuable insights and benchmarks for talent teams. 

Offer Acceptance Rates | Talent Trends Report

An analysis from over 500K email sequences sent through Ashby between January 2022 and January 2024.

Talent Trends Report | Candidate Sourcing

Our analysis of 67.4K surveys requests sent and 11.9K survey responses received unveil valuable insights for recruiters designing Candidate Experience Surveys.

Talent Trends Report | Candidate Experience Surveys

<Hint>An analysis of 14M applications and 80K jobs provides an inside look at rapidly shifting recruiter priorities. You can [download the free PDF here](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-recruiter-productivity-trends-report) or subscribe to our [weekly newsletter](https://try.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-newsletter/).</Hint>

## Topline recruiter productivity metrics would indicate that productivity is down – but there is a lot more to it.

Reviewing topline recruiter productivity metrics alone may indicate that productivity is down, but there is a lot more to this story. While both hiring is down and rate of hires per recruiter is lower than it has been since we started reporting on it (2019), almost all other recruiting team activity metrics are going up. This includes:

* Number of job applications
* Number of applicants interviewed
* Number of interviews
* Total number of interview hours

Through anecdotal conversations with customers, there also appears to be **more focus on quality and finding the right fit than we have seen before**.

Despite all of these changes within companies, candidate interview plans do not appear to have shifted:

* The candidate’s interview process has about the same number of interviews and total time spent interviewing.
* The candidate average time in process remains the same.

When it comes to recruiter workload...

* Time to fill new roles appears to be speeding up, although the uptick is too recent to be able to declare a trend at this stage.
* Despite talent acquisition teams seeing dramatic cuts to the number of recruiters on their teams, this data shows that they are working harder than ever.

Let’s explore it all in further detail. 

## The metrics are changing – let's dive into why

Reviewing proprietary Ashby data from over 14 million applications and 80,000 jobs, we found **that the rate of hires per recruiter has been trending down over time**.

As a blended average across all role types, the quarterly rate of hire has gone down from a high of 7 hires per recruiter per quarter in Q2 2021 to an all-time low of around 4.5 hires in Q1 2023. In line with many other trends, **this is about a ~36% reduction from the peak in 2021**. [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/IuyY1)]

While this trend may indicate to some that recruiter productivity is trending down, this report shows a more complete story, **which is that the landscape for hiring and expectations from businesses has once again shifted**.

![decreasing rate of hires per recruiter](/images/1-the-rate-of-hires-per-recruiter-has-decreased-while-application-volume-has-increased.-2x.png)

As shown in the chart above, while the rate of hires per recruiter has decreased, we’ve seen a large increase in the average number of applications per hire. From the baseline average applications per hire in 2021, we’ve seen a high volume increase of ~120%.

When we break this metric out by job function, we see that there’s a higher average rate of business roles hired per month compared to technical roles, but that they both follow a similar downward trend starting in 2022.

![hires per recruiter](/images/2-the-average-rate-of-hires-per-recruiter-has-decreased-across-business-and-technical-roles.-2x.png)

Although the trend in average number of hires per recruiter is clearly trending down, this is a roll-up metric for an end-of-funnel outcome. As asserted above, overall recruiter productivity covers a lot more than hires. Next we’ll take a look at the [top of funnel](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/quality-of-hire), interview activity, and other metrics to form a more complete picture.

## Trends across the hiring cycle indicate that recruiters are having to do more for each incremental hire.

When reviewing Ashby customer data, we consistently saw large spikes in application volumes, interview hours, and, generally speaking, a higher bar for [quality of hire](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/quality-of-hire).

### Candidate attraction: How has the top of the funnel changed?

Starting at the top of the recruiting process, we’ve seen the **number of total applications per hire increase by 178% from a low of 99 in Q3 2021 to a high of 278 in Q2 2023**. [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/erU7b)] 

While this statistic includes all application channels, the largest driver of the increase has been inbound applications which tripled between 2021 and 2023. We have broken this out in more detail in our [applications per job analysis](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-trends-report-applications-per-job) report.  

The implication of the increase in application volume is that recruiter focus has shifted from [sourcing](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/candidate-sourcing) to application review. This likely relates to growth in active job seekers in the current labor market. 

![increasing volume of apps per hire](/images/3-the-volume-of-applications-per-hire.png)

![app volume per hire increased across roles](/images/4-application-volume-per-applicant-hired-has-increased-across-both-business-and-technical-roles.-2x.png)

### Candidate evaluation: Are recruiters spending more aggregate time on interviews?

When considering the implications of the top of funnel two related questions come to mind: 

1. Of all applicants, how many distinct candidates make at least one 
   interview per hire? 
2. What is the total interviewer time spent per-hire-made?

![deeper dive into technical vs business roles](/images/5-average-applications-interviewed-per-hire-has-increased-across-business-and-technical-roles-average-interviewer-hours-per-hire-have-increased-across-business-and-technical-roles-2x.png)

We can answer these questions side-by-side in the charts above. This comparison shows a lot of similarity, but there are a few noteworthy points to comment on:  

1. Throughout 2021 there were relatively stable trends in terms of both the volume and hours spent interviewing, and at the beginning of 2022 we began to see an increase that has continued.
2. The increase in both metrics has gone up significantly (~40% - 60% increases). In practical terms, teams are now spending between 5 and 10 more hours interviewing per hire.
3. There’s a significant investment gap between functions. Open positions for tech roles interview more candidates per hire, and spend substantially more total interviewer hours per hire compared to business roles.

Looking at the below charts also paints an interesting picture. Even with more activity in application volume and hours interviewed, the percentage of candidates that get an interview has actually decreased over time. Furthermore, the percentage of candidates that reach the offer stage has also gone down.

![percent of candidates getting an interview is down](/images/6-the-percentage-of-candidates-that-get-an-interview-has-decreased-the-rate-of-interviews-to-offer-rate-has-decreased.-2x.png)

The above application-to-interview-rate by function chart also surfaces that the percentage of qualified candidates has decreased. While there are many reasons this may have occurred, we believe it is likely due to capacity constraints caused by the increase in application volume, which is compounded by shrinking TA Teams. Additionally, the above interview to offer by job function chart reveals that making it to job offer is trending down. We’re now at **all-time lows with \~7% for tech (down from a \~12% peak), and \~9% for business (down from \~15% peak)**.

*(We have defined a ‘qualified candidate’ for the purposes of this analysis to be a candidate that applies and gets at least one scheduled interview. It is important to note, however, that this is imperfect as due to volume there are many candidates that meet the qualifications but are not receiving interviews.)*

## In addition to increased application volume, total number of hours interviewed per role has increased.

Recruiters and talent teams are hiring less but more intensely focused on candidate selection than ever.

From the top of the funnel to the bottom, there are a lot of shifting trends, so let’s try to summarize what we think is happening: We know the total hiring volume is trending down — see our [applications per job analysis](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/operationalizing-2023-application-per-job-report) -— and, per this post, we found that the rate of hires per recruiter is also trending down. However, we found that applications, the number of candidates interviewed, and the total number of interviewer hours for open requisitions have gone up dramatically.  

How do we reconcile these trends? All signs suggest there’s an increase in selectivity for new employees: We’re, on average, in a slow headcount growth environment; teams have to do their best to find the right candidates. This effort can be seen more at the top of the funnel than elsewhere in the hiring process.  

Erika from WillowTree confirms this assumption as she reflects on the increased pressure being placed on the resumes at the top of her funnel.

![a quote](/images/quote.png)

![how easy it is to schedule in ashby](/images/schedulingimage.png)

### Streamlined Scheduling in Ashby

Scheduling volume has increased at the same time as recruiting team sizes have been decreasing. Ashby has advanced scheduling capabilities and automation that are built into our ATS, CRM & Sourcing, and Analytics. Having strong infrastructure to support high inbound volume, lean teams, and a tough hiring environment is critical. Our customers love it.

![G2 quote](/images/laurag2.png)

## Hiring trends by source and the role of inbound applications

Previously, we analyzed the [overall offer acceptance rate trends and hiring trends](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/2023-trends-report-offer-acceptance-rates) by source type. In that analysis, we found that more and more hires were being made from direct applicants. The interpretation at the time was that with mass layoffs and vacancies throughout the tech sector, more candidates were on the job market, thus increasing the size of the talent pool. At the same time, more costly hiring methods (e.g. agency efforts) may have met some budget constraints, resulting in an overall increase in direct applicants being hired. We decided to revisit that question to see what fraction of hires were coming from direct applicants, job boards, and agency sources (all other sources not shown here).

![job boards are flat](/images/7-as-the-rate-of-hires-from-inbound-applications-to-offer-increases-–-agency-and-job-boards-remain-primarily-flat.-2x.png)

## Through all of this, what is the candidate experience?

While overall interview hours have increased, the [candidate experience](https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/candidate-experience-surveys) has remained consistent.

The increase in interviewer hours per hire cannot be attributed to changes in the interview experience, which has remained consistent over time. We examined this by looking at how many cumulative hours a hired candidate undergoes and their total time in process. This latter metric is commonly known as time to hire: the time from application start to being marked hired. 

To break this down, in Q1 2022, the average number of interview hours per technical candidate was 3.5, and in Q1 2023, it was still 3.5. A similar consistency applies to business roles.

![candidate experience charts](/images/8-the-number-of-interview-hours-per-candidate-has-remained-stable-2-others-2x.png)

We did observe a slight decrease in candidate interview hours over 2021, but unlike other metrics covered in this report, there was an unexpected stability throughout 2022 and into 2023. Notably, qualified candidates hired in technical roles tend to undergo about an hour of additional interviews on average.

Time to hire has also remained remarkably stable. However, this metric does deserve more commentary: The time to hire is notoriously skewed for various reasons. You can pause an effort, re-start it, create a new job description to make a hire, and so on. All of this conspires to create some applications that are marked as being hired far faster than they actually took, as well as dragging some processes out for months when in fact there was an intermediate pause in the process. Similarly, the total time interviewing can vary per role and per candidate for a number of reasons (exceptions are made, role level, etc), resulting in a wide distribution of values.

![candidate experience one](/images/9a-hired-candidates-generally-experience-1-to-6.5-hours-of-interview-time-2x.png)

![candidate experience two](/images/9b-the-average-time-to-hire-is-30-40-days-2x.png)

Taking a look at the candidate experience, we can conclude that the recruiting practice itself, as viewed through the lens of what an individual candidate experiences, has not changed radically.  

**Candidates experience between 4 and 5 scheduled interviews and an average of 2.5 and 3.5 hours of interviews for business and technical roles, respectively. The average process from start to finish takes about a month and a half.** [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/gak8Z)]

As these particular metrics have a long tail, it’s recommended to look at the median and middle 50% range for a representative benchmark, which is provided below.

![time to hire as a table](/images/10a-table-1-2x.png)

![candidate hours interviewing table](/images/10b-table-2-2x.png)

## What does this mean for businesses filling roles?

Time to fill roles remained largely stable until Q2 2023 where a decrease appears to be forming, but it’s still too soon to call it a trend.

**Our analysis found that the Time to Fill (TTF) has decreased from an average of 104 days in tech roles and 82 days in business roles to 76 and 65 days, respectively**. [[Tweet This](https://ctt.ac/hY8MP)]

While TTF is a notoriously difficult metric to measure, as an initial estimate, we decided to look at the time to first fill, meaning the time from when a job was opened to when the first hire was made. This isn’t a completely comprehensive metric, but it nevertheless can give a signal on what it may mean to open a new role for the first time and begin hiring efforts.

![time to fill](/images/11-time-to-first-fill-job-function-2x.png)

*(The middle 50% range, i.e. the 25th to 75th percentile, is called the “interquartile range” and represents a middle sampling of a distribution, providing a range from the lower and upper ranks without going to the extremes.
Time To Fill (TTF) is notoriously difficult to measure well due to uncertainty around job opening dates, posting publication dates, evergreen roles and other underlying process factors.)*

The data suggests there is a potential trend towards a faster TTF in recent quarters, especially for business roles. That said, a salient feature relative to how other metrics have been changing is that of relative stability. Business reqs tend to get filled about ~20 days faster than technical reqs, but this gap may be closing in 2023. The overall long-term trend suggests we should wait and see how the next quarter or two proceed.

## **Analysis broken out by role type, Q2 2023 benchmarks**

In each of our reports, we like to also break the data out by role to help teams identify role anomalies. The charts below identifies some interesting trends.

The following charts are the representative metrics per function split out by job role, taken over Q3 of 2023 to provide a most-recent benchmark reference.

![Recruiter productivity by role](/images/12-newaverage-applications-interviewed-per-hire-by-job-role-2023-q2-3-others-2x.png)

## Conclusions

In analyzing over **14M applications and 80K jobs**, we ultimately found three insights to be interesting:

1. Hires per recruiter have declined.
2. Inbound application volume and hours of interview time to successful hire have spiked dramatically.
3. While many other metrics have shifted, candidate interview experience has remained largely stable.

We hope these insights provide valuable guidance for Talent Teams to adapt to evolving trends and thrive in a competitive talent landscape. By leveraging these findings and utilizing tools like Ashby, recruiters can streamline their workflows and achieve greater efficiency in the hiring process.

[Subscribe to read upcoming benchmark reports and thought leadership from Ashby](https://try.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-newsletter/).

An analysis of 14M applications and 80K jobs provides an inside look at rapidly shifting recruiter priorities.

2023 Trends Report | Trends in Recruiter Productivity

<Hint>**February 2024 Update**: After spotting a noticeable rise in application volume from January 2021 to January 2024, we dug in to share the impact across job types.</Hint>

With the first month of the year wrapped, we looked at ~14M job applications hosted on Ashby and noticed a massive rise in weekly applications per job opening across both business and technical roles. From the average in January 2021 to the average in January 2024, the data reveals:

* 3x growth in job applications per business role at 207%
* 2.6x growth in job applications per technical role at 161% 

![](/images/applications-per-job-by-job-type-updated-jan-24-v2-2x.png)

[[Click to Share](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//hubs.li/Q02jmXPD0)]

This growth is seen even with the drop in applications over the end of year holiday period. The peak in volume across all functions is seen the last week of August 2023. 

The remainder of this report comes from our analysis in May 2023. Scroll on if you're curious about this historic data, or [subscribe to be alerted](https://try.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-newsletter/) when we share new reports and refresh this one. 

- - -

<Hint>Analyzing 13 million applications from January 2021 - April 2023 to surface key patterns around applications per job per week. [You can download the free PDF here.](https://try.ashbyhq.com/trends-apps-per-job-1/)</Hint>

## Benchmarking applications per job

This report presents an analysis of the Applications per Job per Week (‘Applications per Job’) trend from  January 2021 - April 2023, focusing on the inbound application rates. The primary goal of the analysis is to answer the question, "How many inbound applications should I expect to receive when I open a job?" The report also identifies suggestions for how to increase high quality inbound applications.

The data pulled in this report analyzed over 13 million applications of predominantly US-based tech companies with between 1 and 1,500 employees. When conducting the initial analysis, we broke the data down by company size but, surprisingly, did not find significant differences, thus the results presented here should represent a good starting point for your team. However, we did find that there were significant differences in sub-job-categories, so have broken this out at the conclusion of the report.

Please note that while these are valuable benchmarks they are no substitute for establishing your own internal baseline and tracking success and progress against that.

## Key takeaways

We saw in our [Offer Acceptance Rate report](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/2023-trends-report-offer-acceptance-rates) that more hires were being made from direct applicants over recent quarters, which motivated a closer look at inbound applications. While unsurprising given the macroeconomic environment, our findings confirmed consistent trends in inbound applications overall. Key takeaways included:

* Application rates per week have increased by 3X from  January 2021 - April 2023, across business and tech roles.
* The strongest peak occurs in the first week of job postings followed by a steady state of heightened application rates.
* The average number of applications in the first four weeks can serve as a proxy for answering the question of how many inbound applications you will receive in following weeks/months.
* These benchmarks raise important considerations for TA teams as they build strategies for managing increased inbound applications. This report summarizes some of the most common approaches including automated application thresholds/blocking functionality, auto-reject capabilities, advanced filtering capabilities, and strategies for managing large application review realities.

*When defining Application per Job we consider all direct applications made through the company website and job boards – this data does not consider referrals, sourced candidates, and other categories of application sources.*

## Application rates per job / per week have increased by ~3x

![applications per job over time](/images/inbound-applications-and-open-jobs.png)

A cleaner look at the average weekly inbound applications per job shows business roles experienced an earlier uptick in applications in 2022 than tech roles.

![growth of inbound applications](/images/inbound-app-rate.png)

Another way to visualize this data is as a bar chart which highlights the dramatic YoY shift in inbound applications per job. Though the job market is a complex system, we believe the increased volume is a result of two factors: 1) the reduction in total roles currently available, and 2) the 150,000 people in the US in tech impacted by layoffs in 2022.

![bar chart of inbound volume in first week](/images/inbound-volume-in-first-weeks-bar.png)

## How to manage increased job application volume

While there are many benefits to increased inbound volume it does present new challenges for TA teams that are often resource constrained. To help manage this we recommend the following:

**Start with the job posting**\
Create a strong initial job posting that highlights the unique benefits and opportunities of the position to attract quality candidates. Be specific on criteria and expectations for the role.  

**Set up a timeline**\
Establish a clear timeline for listing jobs as “open” to ensure there is recruiter capacity to review the applications. Do this by creating a priority ranking for roles and scheduling listing dates based on historical times to fill for similar roles.

**Establish thresholds**\
Use the average number of applications from the second - fourth weeks as a proxy for answering the question of how many inbound applications to expect going forward. *Keep in mind that the first week is consistently 2-2.5x higher than following weeks. Utilize automated application thresholds/blocking functionality and auto-reject capabilities to manage large application review realities.

**Rely on filters**\
Develop advanced filtering capabilities to quickly identify high-quality candidates and reduce time-to-hire.

**Create question checkpoints**\
Add relevant questions to applications to support filtering. It is important that this question will aid with filtering against the skills you will be evaluating.

**Social media can be a support**\
Leverage social media and other channels to increase visibility and attract a wider pool of potential candidates. Sharing the role with source locations that have yielded high quality of hire candidates in the past is also very helpful.

**Track results**\
Continuously track and analyze inbound application rates to establish your own internal baseline and track progress against that.  

\*Ashby’s All-in-One solution supports all of these actions.

When considering the implications of this data it’s critical that your initial job posting for a role is as strong as possible. We suggest reviewing the following resources to assist with this:

* [Career Pages | Building Your Employer Brand to Attract the Right Candidates](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/career-pages-guide)
* [Salary Transparency | Practical Tips for Compliance and Recruitment Marketing](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/salary-transparency-feature)
* [Recruiting Operations | Internal Mobility](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/recruiting-operations-internal-mobility)

## The first week of inbound applications is consistently 2.5-3x higher than all following weeks

Inbound application rates consistently show a strong peak in the first week of 2.5-3x, followed by a sharp decline and, finally, a steady state.

![line graph of inbound applications over time with first week peak](/images/inbound-apps-in-first-week-line.png)

*Business roles:  Customer Success, Customer Support, Finance, HR, Legal, Security, Marketing, Operations, Recruiting, Sales, Account Management
Tech roles:  Engineering, Design, Data, Product Management*

The same pattern holds across job categories by year.

![inbound application volume in business roles](/images/first-week-inbound-business-roles.png)

![inbound application volume in technical roles](/images/first-week-inbound-technical-roles.png)

When trying to understand why there is such a sharp spike in demand for a role in the first week we considered:

**Visibility**
Job postings typically receive the most visibility in their first week when they are at the top of job boards or search results. This increased visibility can drive more traffic to the company's job board.

**Limited application window**
Some job postings may have a limited application window, such as one week or two weeks. This can create a sense of urgency among job seekers and lead to a higher number of applications in the first week.

**Novelty**
When a job is first posted, it is a new and exciting opportunity for job seekers, and there may be a rush of applications in the first week as people are eager to apply. However, as time goes on, the job posting becomes less novel and job seekers may not be as motivated to apply.

**Early bird advantage**
Some job seekers may believe that, by applying early, they have a better chance of being considered for the job. This can lead to a rush of applications in the first week, as job seekers try to get their application in before the deadline.

## We did not see much variation in application per job rates by company size but saw a stark difference by role type

Looking at the inbound application rates by specific job categories also uncovered some dramatic changes over the last few years. Below we see the 2021 and 2023 average inbound application rates by job category. For example, we can see that Support, Success, and Recruiting roles stand out as having had significant increases in application volume.

![year over year changes of inbound application volume by role type](/images/inbound-apps-by-job-type.png)

## Wrap up

As we gather more data on hiring in 2023, we look forward to analyzing if these trends stay consistent, and what surprises become norms. Things we will be watching in 2023:

* Time to offer
* Time to hire, and the candidate experience
* Interviews per hire
* Passthrough rates by role category
* Qualified candidate trends
* DEI pass through rates by stage
* Recruiter productivity trends
  ... and other benchmarks you want us to analyze

If you would like to receive more of these reports please subscribe below.

Analyzing 13 million applications from  January 2021 - April 2023 to surface key patterns around applications per job per week.

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