Tech Hiring Trends in 2025: AI, Automation, and Candidate Experience Rule

Editor’s note: The article below is an excerpt from GoodTime’s 2025 Hiring Insights Report. The entire report is available to view online for free here.

The tech hiring landscape in 2024 was anything but straightforward. With demand for top talent in fields like AI, data science, and engineering still at an all-time high, companies faced intense competition to stand out. At the same time, economic uncertainty led to cautious hiring strategies, making the search for skilled professionals even more complex. For many tech TA leaders, extended time-to-hire and overloaded recruiters added pressure to an already challenging hiring environment. The result? A race to find innovative ways to attract and retain top-tier candidates in a sector where every hire matters.

This chapter dives into the key trends and challenges tech hiring teams navigated in 2024 and looks at how they’re preparing for 2025. From leveraging AI to tackle process bottlenecks to creating standout candidate experiences, we’ll explore how tech employers are stepping up to meet the moment. As competition for talent continues to heat up, the focus on efficiency, technology, and personalization will be critical to staying ahead. Let’s look at how tech hiring leaders are gearing up for what’s next.

Executive summary: Key tech hiring stats for 2025

• 50% of hiring goals were achieved.
• Top hiring challenge: Lack of qualified candidates.
• 69% of leaders reported an increase in time-to-hire.
• 45% said the tech hiring landscape became more competitive.
• Top priority for 2025: Upgrading hiring technology.

Looking back at 2024: Technology hiring faces a competitive landscape

In 2024, technology companies achieved just 50% of their hiring goals, down from 58% in 2023. This decline reflects the sector’s intense competition for talent, coupled with challenges like a lack of qualified candidates (29%) and hybrid work dynamics (28%).

The ongoing shift toward remote and flexible work models continued to strain hiring processes, particularly for roles requiring specialized skills or in-demand expertise.

Key obstacles also included limitations of current tech recruiting software (27%), multiple offers among candidates (26%), and an overwhelming number of applicants (25%). These challenges illustrated the need for more streamlined hiring workflows and innovative approaches to engaging top talent.

Time-to-hire rises dramatically in tech

In 2024, 69% of technology companies reported an increase in time-to-hire, reflecting persistent inefficiencies in their recruitment processes.

Bottlenecks such as untrained or underprepared interviewers (42%) and poor communication with candidates (42%) were among the leading factors contributing to these delays. Additionally, a lack of qualified candidates and hiring manager decision-making delays (both at 37%) further slowed hiring timelines, making it harder for organizations to secure top talent efficiently.

These challenges surface a critical need for improved training, better alignment across hiring teams, and more streamlined communication strategies, especially as the hiring landscape in tech continued to evolve in 2024, bringing both challenges and opportunities.

Nearly half (47%) of tech leaders reported that growing candidate demands added more touchpoints to the hiring process, while 45% said the race for talent became even more competitive.

Interestingly, 43% felt that the hiring landscape became less competitive for some roles, thanks to an increase in available talent—highlighting the varying dynamics across job specializations.

At the same time, building stronger candidate relationships (42%) and responding to candidates faster (36%) became critical priorities as companies worked to stand out in a crowded market. However, issues like recruitment team turnover (34%) and higher candidate dropout rates (30%) added complexity to an already challenging environment. To keep up, tech hiring teams will need to stay agile and adapt to these shifting dynamics while focusing on creating a standout candidate experience.

How the tech sector approached hiring challenges in 2024

In 2024, the tech sector placed a strong emphasis on streamlining hiring operations and leveraging technology to stay competitive.

A key focus emerged around increasing offer acceptance rates and reducing time-to-schedule, signaling the industry’s need to secure top talent faster in a highly competitive market. This urgency reflects not just speed but the importance of creating a positive, efficient candidate experience that prevents drop-off.

The focus on automation also stands out, with many organizations investing in tools to reduce manual tasks, from scheduling to reporting. At the same time, building stronger relationships with candidates remained a priority, emphasizing that while tech-driven efficiency matters, the human element in hiring is still critical for attracting top talent.

Overall, the tech industry’s recruitment strategies reveal a dual focus: leveraging automation for speed while maintaining personalization to deliver a more seamless and engaging candidate journey.

Tech companies leaned heavily on AI to address persistent hiring challenges, with nearly half (48%) adopting AI-powered analytics and reporting tools. This focus on data likely reflects the need for deeper insights into hiring trends, candidate behavior, and process inefficiencies as teams strive to make more informed decisions and optimize performance.

Interestingly, while analytics leads adoption, tasks like interview scheduling (37%) and candidate communications remain less automated—despite their direct connection to many of the sector’s top challenges, such as time-to-schedule delays and recruiter capacity issues. Implementing more robust interview scheduling tools could help alleviate many of these bottlenecks by reducing manual coordination, minimizing cancellations, and improving overall hiring efficiency.

As teams continue to invest in AI and automation, there’s a clear opportunity to expand these tools beyond insights and into process optimization, balancing data-driven strategies with operational improvements.

Building a fast and simple recruiting process for candidates

Transparency in the interview process emerged as a top priority for tech organizations, ensuring candidates had a clear understanding of what to expect at every step. Tools enabling candidates to reschedule interviews automatically (48%) and improvements in overall scheduling efficiency (48%) also ranked highly, reflecting a strong focus on flexibility and respect for candidate’s time.

By emphasizing efficiency, convenience, and candidate-centric practices, tech companies demonstrated their commitment to delivering an elevated hiring experience—one that reduces friction and builds trust with potential hires.

How tech hiring teams measure success

In the tech sector, hiring teams evaluate their effectiveness through a blend of quality and efficiency recruitment metrics. The top metric, quality of hire (42%), reflects a sector-wide emphasis on securing high-caliber talent that aligns with organizational goals and technical needs.

Offer acceptance rate (39%) and application completion rate (39%) followed closely, underscoring the importance of maintaining candidate engagement throughout the hiring funnel.

Metrics like time-to-hire (37%) and employee turnover rate (35%) highlight the dual focus on process efficiency and long-term talent retention. Surprisingly, only 27% of tech companies currently measure candidate interview experience directly, despite its potential to provide valuable feedback for refining hiring practices.

Tech talent leaders brace
for 2025

Heading into 2025, tech hiring teams expect recruitment turnover (47%) to be the most significant challenge, emphasizing concerns around maintaining hiring capacity. Following closely, nearly half (46%) of leaders identified building stronger candidate relationships as critical, suggesting a heightened focus on personalized engagement to better connect with talent.

Many also expect an evolving hiring landscape marked by both increased competition for talent (36%) and a rise in the number of candidates needed in the funnel (38%). This dual pressure underscores the need for faster, more efficient processes while maintaining meaningful candidate interactions to secure top talent in a tightening labor market.

Tech hiring teams anticipate continued strain from retaining top talent (29%) and managing unmanageable workloads (27%). These challenges, paired with issues like candidate drop-off and hybrid work complexities, highlight the need for greater efficiency in hiring processes.

To overcome these pressures, many teams will need to increase their reliance on AI and automation tools. Streamlining manual tasks such as interview scheduling, candidate communication, and resume screening can help reduce recruiter burden while improving the candidate experience. Addressing limitations in current hiring technology (25%) and better leveraging automation will be essential for teams striving to balance speed, accuracy, and candidate engagement.

How tech’s hiring leaders are shifting strategies

As tech hiring leaders prepare for 2025, upgrading hiring technology (40%) has emerged as the top priority, signaling a direct response to the challenges seen over the past year. Persistent issues like unmanageable recruiter workloads, process inefficiencies, and candidate drop-off have reinforced the need for more advanced tools that streamline hiring operations and reduce manual strain on teams.

This renewed focus on technology speaks to a forward-looking approach, with teams aiming to better manage complexity in a competitive hiring landscape. Improving overall efficiency (36%) and leveraging AI to make hiring more efficient (34%) closely follow, indicating a continued emphasis on solving operational bottlenecks while keeping hiring processes adaptable for future demands.

“I think AI and TA will really help with all the mundane tasks that talent acquisition has to deal with. It’s been years of ‘schedule interviews, figure out what calendars look like, go back and forth with hiring teams.’ I foresee all of that being AI driven so that individual contributors can really focus on the day to day of how do I attract the best talent.”
-Megan Hennessy, Former Global Senior Talent Leader, Meta

With 97% of respondents planning to invest further in automation and efficiency tools, tech companies are actively positioning themselves to reduce time-to-hire, enhance personalization (32%), and improve the candidate experience (25%). These strategies reflect not just a need for faster hiring but a shift toward balancing process optimization with a more human-centered experience to remain competitive in the year ahead.

Final thoughts and key takeaways for tech recruitment leaders

This year, technology hiring teams faced both familiar and emerging challenges, from the constant competition for specialized talent to rising inefficiencies in hiring processes. While 2024 saw heightened demand for top-tier candidates, tech hiring leaders also navigated shifting candidate expectations, skills mismatches, and increasing pressure to streamline workflows. Many leaned into automation, AI-driven tools, and enhanced technology to tackle bottlenecks and improve the overall efficiency of hiring processes. However, issues such as lengthy time-to-hire, recruiter bandwidth constraints, and the struggle to engage candidates emphasized the need for continued innovation and adaptability in the tech hiring landscape.

Looking ahead to 2025, tech TA leaders should prioritize:

• Leveraging advanced technology: Investments in tools that optimize scheduling, reduce inefficiencies, and improve candidate communication will be crucial to maintaining agility in hiring processes and meeting evolving demands.
• Enhancing personalization and engagement: Creating fast, transparent, and personalized hiring experiences will help differentiate employers and attract top candidates in a competitive market where candidate expectations are high.
• Strengthening hiring team capacity: Training recruiters and deploying technology to automate routine tasks will free up capacity, enabling teams to focus on high-value activities and maintain productivity under pressure.
• Focusing on measurable outcomes: Tracking key metrics such as quality of hire, time-to-hire, and candidate experience will provide actionable insights, helping tech hiring teams refine strategies and stay ahead in an increasingly dynamic talent landscape.

For more stats on tech and other sectors, check out the full 2025 Hiring Insights Report.