For those of you not familiar with CareerXroads, I’ll give you a brief introduction.  This is a think tank that is all things recruiting.  I’ve known founder Gerry Crispin and President Chris Hoyt for many years and have appreciated them bringing recruiting practitioners together for thought provoking conversations as well as conducting surveys and organizing data to improve recruiting departments across the globe.

CXR recently completed a survey with it’s community members to benchmark the state of recruiting across a broad range of industries and company sizes.  While the details of the survey are reserved for community members (if interested in learning more, click this link ), Chris did provide some themes in a recent LinkedIn post which I found interesting.  You can find the full LinkedIn article HERE.  I won’t go into all the themes presented.  But, as I talk to LOTS of people every year to understand the state of recruiting, I wanted to provide my insights to a few of the points (note: Chris’ points, in blue below, are paraphrased for brevity).

Recruiting Efficiency Remains a Strength

Recruiting teams are managing requisition loads with efficiency.  While hourly roles are faster to fill, FTE roles are catching up thanks to smarter scheduling, cleaner handoffs, and tighter interview cycles.

This is a positive and may be attributed to technology.  Are improvements in scheduling (candidate self-schedule tools), cleaner handoffs (improved ATS functionality), and tighter interview cycles (the rise of video interviewing and other remote interview tools) going to continue to reduce the time it takes to fill a role?  It’s interesting to point out that the three tools I mention above are not AI tools.  Companies that dedicate resources to improve recruiting efficiency see big jumps, even when implementing tools that have been around for years.

Quality of Hire: A Maturity Gap

Only a handful of companies report being “highly mature” in measuring quality of hire. Most are still in the early or moderate stages of formalizing these efforts. The message: we’re past the point where “we’ll get to it” is enough.

Quality of hire is an interesting metric because reporting on it can provide enormous value in implementing recruiting department enhancements but it seems impossible to measure for most companies. I’ve worked with companies to provide “directional” metrics when having lack of confidence in their data. These metrics tend to give enough information for themes to emerge.

Automation Use is Still Building

Despite the explosion of AI and automation tools on the market, only a subset of companies report being highly automated across hiring processes. Many are experimenting or selectively implementing tools like automated scheduling or screening—but full automation is far from mainstream.

While I believe AI tools will move quickly to the mainstream (especially if cheap or free to implement), it’s surprising to me how many companies are entrenched in manual/inefficient processes. I hear job seekers often talk about “the system kicked me out” and my initial thought is, “Probably not”.

The recruiting landscape is changing quickly.  It’s interesting to get this snapshot of how a group of companies are growing along with it and certainly fascinating to see where we are next year.  Do you agree with the information above?  Is your company tracking with the CXR community?  Share your thought by commenting on this post.

ES Talent Solutions works with recruiting departments to improve their effectiveness and automate processes, allowing recruiters to focus on non-administrative tasks. Contact Eddie Stewart (estewart@estalentsolutons.com) to learn more the latest technology tools and how they can help your recruiting efforts.

Want to understand how these improvements can be implemented in your company? Contact Eddie Stewart . I always enjoy talking with fellow recruiting leaders about what’s working and what challenges you’re facing.