Tag: Hiring Insights

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.

Introduction from Ahryun Moon

In 2025, hiring is about so much more than filling open roles—it’s about creating the exceptional hiring experiences that continuously grow a world-class workforce. 

Partnering with over 500 talent acquisition (TA) leaders, our fourth annual Hiring Insights Report uncovers a stark reality: talent acquisition teams across industries are navigating a complex landscape defined by persistent bottlenecks, shrinking resources, and rising candidate expectations. 

Amid these challenges, one truth stands out: the organizations thriving in 2025 are those that embrace innovation and bold new strategies. Whether it’s leveraging automation to save time, reducing bottlenecks with smarter tools, or personalizing every candidate interaction, these leaders prove that hiring can be faster, more efficient, and deeply human.

This report provides not just data, but actionable insights—best practices you can implement to improve your hiring processes and set your team apart in an increasingly competitive market. It’s a blueprint for reimagining what’s possible in talent acquisition.

So I invite you to dive into these insights, take inspiration from the strategies of top TA leaders, and join us in redefining the future of hiring together.

-Ahryun Moon, CEO and Co-Founder, GoodTime

Key findings at a glance

• AI adoption is surging, with 93% of TA leaders planning additional technology investments in 2025
• 60% of organizations saw time-to-hire increase in 2024
  • The top bottleneck slowing the hiring process was interview cancellations and reschedules
• Compared to everyone else, top-performing TA teams* were:
  • 55% more likely to focus on improving the candidate experience.
  • 35% more likely to focus on decreasing time-to-schedule.
  • 25% more likely to use AI to make hiring more efficient.
• 64% of TA teams grew their headcount in the last 12 months

TA teams confront record-low hiring goal attainment in 2024

In 2024, TA teams achieved just 47.9% of their hiring goals—the lowest rate in the four years since we’ve been tracking them. Persistent challenges like scheduling delays, communication gaps, and rising time-to-hire, detailed in the section below, have made it harder to compete for top talent, and rewarding those who most enthusiastically embrace innovation.

As we’ll show later in this chapter, AI and workflow optimization are helping teams address these inefficiencies while adapting to evolving candidate expectations. As hiring grows more complex, embracing these innovations will be essential for success in 2025.

Manufacturing’s struggles persist while healthcare rebounds

The manufacturing sector continued to rank lowest in hiring goal attainment, dropping to 36%—a significant decline from 44% in the previous two years. This highlights a deepening talent shortage in the sector, exacerbated by labor market constraints and growing competition for skilled workers. Similarly, the retail sector faced a sharp decline, falling to 49% from 58% in 2023.

Healthcare, however, saw a notable rebound, climbing to 56%—its highest level since 2022.

The data portrays a challenging hiring environment across all sectors, with no industry surpassing 60% attainment for the third consecutive year. As talent acquisition leaders grapple with these hurdles, the need for innovative approaches, like automation and targeted workforce planning, has never been clearer.

What the healthcare sector got right

We compared the healthcare sector’s 2024 focus areas to other industries to learn how they realized major gains in goal attainment this year and found they were:

• 42% more likely to have focused on decreasing time-to-schedule
• 44% more likely to have focused on reducing cost-per-hire
• 21% more likely to have increased personalization in the hiring process

Top overall hiring challenges

Retaining top talent remained the most significant challenge for TA teams in 2024, as competition for skilled employees intensified. However, limitations in hiring technology were also a top concern, continuing a trend identified in previous years’ reports. Many teams cited outdated or insufficient tools as barriers to scaling hiring operations effectively, often leading to increased manual workloads and process inefficiencies.

Other widespread challenges included unmanageable workloads for recruiting teams, adapting interviews for remote or hybrid work, and changes in company hiring policies — all of which further strained resources and slowed hiring progress.

“Recruiters have been maxed out at 120% for the last two years. What we’ve got to do is super difficult, but also super simple. We’ve got to draw a line and say, actually, I need to create bandwidth to redesign the recruiting process and workflows with AI first.”
-Hung Lee, Founder | Recruiting Brainfood

Additionally, new concerns have emerged, such as candidates using AI to misrepresent their qualifications and the growing complexity of hybrid work environments. These factors emphasize the need for better decision-making tools, streamlined processes, and the adoption of AI to help talent teams assess candidate authenticity and suitability more effectively.

Rising time-to-hire: A growing concern

Compounding the challenges TA teams face—or perhaps as a result of them—is the persistent increase in time-to-hire. In 2024, 60% of companies reported that their time-to-hire had increased, up from 44% the previous year, while only 6% managed to reduce it. And this struggle was present across all sectors, with none managing to hire faster this year. This trend isn’t just delaying the hiring process—it’s increasing costs and causing companies to lose top candidates.

Scheduling issues and poor communication are lengthening time-to-hire

What’s behind the rise in time-to-hire? Persistent bottlenecks such as frequent interview cancellations, reschedules, and hiring manager delays continue to disrupt hiring timelines. However, a closer look reveals that many of these challenges stem from scheduling inefficiencies. When the pool of available interviewers is limited, even minor disruptions — like last-minute cancellations — can trigger rescheduling bottlenecks that slow hiring progress significantly. These delays risk losing top candidates to competitors and place additional strain on recruiting teams.

Poor communication with candidates — another top-cited issue — further compounds these inefficiencies, emphasizing the need for talent teams to adopt solutions that streamline workflows. As we’ll explore later, AI-driven scheduling and automation can help alleviate these pain points, ensuring faster coordination, better communication, and a smoother hiring experience for everyone involved.

Hiring teams still spend too much time on low-value work

Recruiting teams continue to spend an outsized amount of their time on repetitive, low-value tasks, with 35% of their time dedicated to interview scheduling alone in 2024. Despite the increasing availability of tools designed to reduce this burden, there has been minimal progress in shrinking the share of scheduling work. Historical data from our previous year’s reports reveals a persistent challenge: time spent scheduling has only decreased slightly since it stood at 37% in 2021, and peaked at 42% in 2022.

This ongoing stagnation highlights how administrative burdens are preventing talent teams from focusing on strategic priorities like enhancing the hiring experience and optimizing candidate quality. Embracing automation and AI is becoming more critical than ever, especially considering:

• 27% of TA leaders say their teams struggle with unmanageable workloads, up from 20% last year.
• 45% report that more touchpoints are now needed in the hiring process compared to previous years.
• 51% anticipate recruitment team turnover will present even greater challenges in 2025.

Remote and hybrid work arrangements still pose a challenge for TA leaders

Yes, even heading into 2025, half a decade after the remote work revolution was thrust upon us by COVID, hiring teams still struggle to adapt their processes and their overall hiring strategy. Despite some normalization of hybrid work arrangements, key challenges remain:

• 27% of TA leaders cited difficulty adapting interview processes to remote or hybrid environments.
• 26% highlighted hybrid work challenges more broadly, such as managing distributed teams and balancing flexibility with productivity.
• 25% pointed to candidates’ preference for fully remote roles as a critical hurdle in aligning expectations.

Workforce distribution trends show a shift back toward in-office arrangements, with 37% of organizations reporting a fully in-office workforce in 2024 compared to just 15% in 2023. However, most companies still operate in a hybrid mode, with 55% maintaining a mix of in-office and remote work. Fully remote setups, meanwhile, remain at just 1%.

TA teams used AI and process improvement to level up

Facing challenges like rising time-to-hire, scheduling delays, and unmanageable workloads, TA teams turned to AI and process optimization in 2024. Increasing offer acceptance rates, improving efficiency, and enhancing the candidate experience were top priorities, reflecting the need to streamline workflows and reduce bottlenecks.

AI played a pivotal role, with many teams using it to automate repetitive tasks and optimize hiring processes. These investments not only addressed immediate inefficiencies but also helped recruiters focus on engaging top talent and improving overall hiring outcomes, setting the stage for more scalable practices in 2025.

The transformative impact of AI

AI adoption is transforming how TA teams tackle persistent hiring challenges like inefficiency and administrative burdens. By automating repetitive tasks—such as interview scheduling, application screening, and reporting—teams have freed up valuable time to focus on strategic priorities, like engaging high-value candidates.

But the benefits extend beyond time savings. AI’s growing role in analytics and decision-making enables talent teams to identify bottlenecks, measure the effectiveness of their efforts, and adjust strategies in real-time. For TA leaders, the key takeaway is clear: AI isn’t just a solution for today’s challenges but a foundation for building scalable, data-driven hiring strategies for the future.

“AI is vividly loud right now, and thinking about how we can apply it to all the different work streams that we have in talent acquisition is probably at the forefront of anyone that is in a position like mine right now.”
-Rameen Fattahi, Director of Talent Acquisition, Rivian

SMS and WhatsApp bridge candidate communication gaps

As we outlined earlier, poor communication has been a consistent bottleneck in hiring, but texting is helping teams address this gap. Over half of talent acquisition teams now use centralized texting platforms to ensure timely, seamless candidate interactions.

These tools enable teams to deliver personalized communication at scale, which is critical in maintaining candidate engagement and reducing the dropout rate. For TA leaders, transitioning away from personal devices—which 16% of teams still rely on—toward centralized platforms ensures security, consistency, and professionalism, ultimately strengthening the candidate experience.

“We want to hire the best people in the world, and the technology that we choose to help us do that isn’t something that we take lightly. We’re really focused on creating a seamless ecosystem that suits all of our end users’ needs. That includes having information at their fingertips so they don’t have to jump from system to system to locate the information they need.”
-Carissa Spencer, Global TA Enablement & Operations Lead, Canva

Evolving talent teams: Growth, reorganization, and the role of AI

Over the past year, talent teams have seen significant changes, with 64% of organizations growing their headcount as hiring demands increased. However, not all teams expanded; 21% reorganized existing roles, and 12% reduced headcount, reflecting varied responses to economic pressures and operational needs.

While 45% of organizations cited AI as a primary factor in restructuring, and 54% noted it as a contributing factor, the shift isn’t about reducing roles—it’s about enhancing them. AI is helping streamline repetitive tasks, allowing recruiters and hiring managers to focus on relationship-building, strategic decision-making, and creating exceptional candidate experiences.

This shift highlights how AI is becoming a collaborative partner in talent acquisition, supporting specialized teams in managing workloads more effectively while opening the door for upskilling and professional growth.

“We do need automation specialists on the team, whether that’s recruiting operations or a role that is constantly looking at process design and enhancements. But we absolutely have to upskill our team, and we have to be creative when we think about what the roles are and how the work gets done.”
-Elaine Orler, Chief Strategy and Product Officer, Match2

More key trends at a glance

Layoffs rise again in 2024, but with
less severity

After a dip in 2023, layoffs surged again in 2024, with 63% of companies reporting workforce reductions, up from 43% the previous year.

However, while more companies conducted layoffs, the scale of these reductions didn’t touch the levels seen in 2022.

Employee performance and engagement hit a high note

Both employee engagement and performance saw improvements in 2024, with 50% rating engagement as “excellent” and 48% rating performance as “excellent,” the highest levels in recent years.

DE&I continues to be deprioritized

The percentage of companies making DE&I a measurable priority has fallen for the third consecutive year, dropping to just 22% in 2024. While TA leaders overwhelmingly agree on the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, other priorities have pushed DE&I to the background in the face of tight budgets, workforce reductions, and rising competition for talent.

This decline is concerning, especially considering that research consistently shows that diverse workplaces foster innovation and attract top candidates, with 78% of the workforce stating that DE&I is important to them2. Companies that deprioritize DE&I risk losing out on both talent and long-term organizational success.

To reverse this trend, TA leaders must move beyond intentions and take measurable action. This means investing in DE&I programs that align with business goals, leveraging technology to minimize bias, and ensuring that leadership accountability drives sustainable progress.

“The trick is to embed inclusion in the process so well, that it is scalable without many resources. AI can really help here—for example, using an augmented writing tool for job descriptions to ensure neutral language for attraction. Competency-based or skill-based interviewing further reduce bias, as do group decision making processes.”
-Manjuri Sinha, VP HR/Global Head of GTM Org Success & People Partners, Miro