Thanks to a dwindling supply of open roles, "one-click" applications, and the rise of artificial intelligence, applying for a job has never been easier—and everyone is paying the price.
Three years ago, Andrew Stockwell had his hiring routine down to a science.
As head of people for the software-buying company Vendr, Stockwell would post a listing, wait a few days, then review a few dozen applications—up to 100 on a good week. Recruiters would surface additional candidates through their own outreach. He'd read résumés, conduct interviews, and pass the strongest contenders along to hiring managers.
"It was really about finding that great talent, sussing out that talent, speaking with that talent, and identifying the best possible people," Stockwell tells WIRED.
Then, sometime in the past year or so, everything changed. The process started off the same—but within a day or two, he wasn't looking at 100 candidates anymore. Instead, he was drowning in hundreds of applications. At times, more than a thousand. A good chunk were, in his words, "total bogus"—fake candidates. Many more appeared AI-generated, stretching the truth until one applicant became indistinguishable from the next. The volume was overwhelming. Stockwell found himself "paying my talent-acquisition professionals—who are high-paid, high-quality individuals—just to look through applications all day long."
Stockwell is far from alone. Across the recruiting world, a growing chorus of professionals believes job hunting is fundamentally broken. In 2026, applying for a job has become as frictionless as online shopping: AI can churn out tailored résumés and cover letters in seconds. Browser extensions autofill entire applications without human involvement. LinkedIn serves users dozens of postings a day, many requiring little more than a few clicks.
"A year ago, every recruiter would tell me: We want to make it as easy as possible to apply for jobs," says Ophir Samson, head of voice AI at Greenhouse, who joined the recruiting platform earlier this year after it acquired his startup, which used AI to conduct interviews. "What they got was 2,000 applicants in 24 hours for a job. That is a shitty experience for everyone."
Strong candidates can't stand out; weak ones slip through the cracks. Recruiters, Samson notes, face the punishing task of evaluating thousands of applicants daily. Instead of proactively hunting for dream hires on LinkedIn, they spend hours inside applicant tracking systems, tweaking filters just to decide whose résumé merits a 30-second skim.
Now, recruiters are telling him something different: "Actually, we kind of want friction," Samson says. "The friction is good. We want to make it harder."
The Efficiency Trap
The instinct to remove pain points always made sense: if the largest possible pool of qualified candidates applies, a company maximizes its odds of finding the right fit. So for years, recruiters posted listings everywhere, signed up for LinkedIn's "Easy Apply," and promised applicants a seamless, one-click experience. After the pandemic, when employers struggled desperately to fill roles, those efforts went into overdrive.
"Everyone was job hopping, because you literally could have three offers in an afternoon," says Jane Curran, chief transformation officer at real estate giant JLL. Now, she adds, "it is the polar opposite."
Job openings peaked at a record 12.3 million in March 2022, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, before declining for two straight years. Since mid-2024, openings have hovered around 7 million.
But as the number of available jobs contracted, the barriers to applying fell even faster. AI—which entered the mainstream with ChatGPT's public release in late 2022—lets applicants rewrite résumés and track new postings almost instantly. Companies like JobAssist, Sonara, and Ladder's Apply4Me promise to handle the busywork entirely, submitting "10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application." Apply to dozens of jobs a day? Sure, why not.
The result is a ballooning candidate pool and an increasingly laborious hiring process. LinkedIn told WIRED that submissions per applicant are up 46 percent compared to February 2020, and up 22 percent since ChatGPT launched. To stem the tide, LinkedIn has added limits targeting automated, low-quality applications—and this month it's rolling out a feature that warns (apparently) underqualified applicants they aren't a good fit and suggests alternatives.
"We're currently in a place where employers are complaining that they can't find good people, and people are complaining that they can't find jobs," says Tessa White, a former HR executive who left corporate America in 2018 and now shares career advice with some 800,000 TikTok followers. She sees today's gridlock as the direct consequence of recruiters' obsession with speed. "Every time we seem to strive for efficiency, we seem to give up quality."
Fighting Fire With Friction
Recruiters know they have a problem. An avalanche of résumés is welcome for certain roles—skilled trades, where demand consistently exceeds supply, for instance. But for the typical white-collar knowledge worker, Curran says, there's simply "not enough churn, not enough jobs coming into the market." Recruiters in these sectors face a deluge with every new posting.
Many are turning to AI themselves to tame it. Companies have used automated tracking systems to screen résumés for a decade; now many are deploying AI agents to run first-round interviews.
"We frequently hear from recruiters: They have 1,000 applications, but they know that only 30 of them are serious," Greenhouse's Samson says. An AI interview can separate the serious from the unserious, offering context beyond what a résumé can convey.
While Samson insists these AI screens aren't friction for friction's sake, they carry a side benefit: flushing out bots and halfhearted applicants. Curran expects some companies to adopt knock-out questions with strict criteria, while others may move skills testing earlier in the process.
White isn't convinced any of this fixes the core issue—that the frictionless résumé drop has made the first round essentially worthless. "Employers are having such a hard time hiring people with the current antiquated process," she says. "Even AI and applicant tracking systems, which sound so high-tech, are an antiquated way to look at people and skill sets." AI, she argues, simply cannot accurately judge someone's potential.
"I definitely think recruiting and the way we do it is due for a massive overhaul," White says. "And I don't even know that I have the right answers."
Back to Human Connections
One thing is clear: the application flood has pushed recruiters back toward referrals and internal hires. These human-to-human connections were always valuable—now, some see them as the *only* reliable route around the glut. Stockwell worries about the cost. Leaning on referrals tends to favor people whose backgrounds mirror existing employees', which isn't conducive to building a diverse workforce. "The whole thing is a big mess," he says.
These days, Stockwell is living that mess firsthand. He left Vendr in February and is now on the job hunt himself, treating the search like a full-time job—"pounding the pavement" at in-person networking events. He knows that without a personal connection, his odds of landing an interview are close to zilch. When he applies online, he estimates fewer than 2 percent of applications ever lead to a phone call.
"I'm biased, of course, about my own capabilities," Stockwell says. "But companies are missing out on fantastic talent."