Job seekers are jumping through more hoops to get hired as power shifts back to employers

• The Great Resignation is long gone; the power is shifting back into the hands of employers. 
• More people are staying in their jobs, and companies are squeezing budgets, leaving job hunters in a brutal market.
• Job seekers face more interview rounds, personality tests, and on-site assessment days.

The hiring process seems to have become increasingly complex in recent years, with job seekers facing new tests, more interviews, and months of waiting to hear back from prospective employers.

Job seekers have been taking to social media to complain about jumping through various hiring hoops just to secure an entry-level job. A scroll through the hashtag "job search" on TikTok, and you'll see many videos of people lamenting about applying for hundreds of jobs and going through drawn-out hiring processes, only to be ghosted by companies.

"There has been a dramatic shift in the employment market over the past few years," Chris Abbass, founder and CEO of recruitment firm Talentful, told Business Insider.

He explained that in 2021 and 2022, companies struggled to retain and attract talent, but the labor market has stagnated since the "Great Resignation," when a wave of people quit their jobs and started new ones.

Now, more people are staying put in their roles, dubbed the "Big Stay," and companies are tightening their purse strings in response to economic hardship, shifting the market back into the hands of employers.

"This manifests in companies being more selective about who they hire, moving slower through the process, and only hiring folks who tick all — or 90% — of the boxes," Abbass said.

Jumping through hoops

Peter Cappelli, Wharton professor of management and director of the school's Centre for Human Resources, how hiring practices shaped up a few years ago compared with the present day.

Back in 2019 he wrote in the Harvard Business Review: "Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They've never spent as much money doing it. And they've never done a worse job of it."

Cappelli told BI that hiring practices have remained pretty bad since then.

He said that in recent years, the hiring process has slowed down as the number of interview rounds has increased: "It reflects a lack of understanding by employers about what they're actually looking for."

"The most bizarre aspect is that few companies seem to look to see whether they are actually hiring good people. They look to see whether the process is cheap instead," he added.

The recruitment market has been pretty brutal for job hunters. They've had to adapt to new hiring techniques with the advent of AI recruitment tools, like AI chatbots that can do first-round interviews with candidates.

Rapid advancements in automation and AI have also impacted hiring decisions, Abbass explained, with companies pausing to consider how this new tech can help them drive productivity without hiring more employees and, in some cases, laying off existing workers.

Hiring has shifted online

One big shift in hiring practices has been the COVID-19 pandemic, which changed how companies conduct interviews, Nikita Gupta, cofounder of Careerflow.ai, an AI career coach platform that tracks job postings and builds resumes for job seekers, told BI.

"Many interviews and job assessments now take place online, which means candidates need to adapt to virtual interactions and later demonstrate their skills remotely," she said.

When job interviews started to be done on Zoom and managers had fewer opportunities to evaluate candidates, more employers began using cognitive and psychometric assessments as part of their hiring process.

These tests are meant to give a deeper insight into a candidate's suitability for a role and weed out hiring biases. But if they're designed badly and over-relied upon, these assessments can overlook the best-qualified candidates, especially those who find them anxiety-inducing.

Entry-level candidates are bearing the brunt

Entry-level jobs in big-name firms in management consulting, Big Tech, and finance also appear to be harder to come by right now. Some firms say they're considering pulling back on these roles to lean more heavily on AI.

That spells bad news for college grads looking for big salaries and impressive names for their CVs to supercharge their careers.

Plus, if these firms cut back their graduate hiring, it ramps up the competition for a smaller pool of roles — potentially meaning more interview rounds, assessments, and presentations for job seekers.

Those starting out in their careers also aren't as used to such intense evaluations.

"The pressure to get their first job makes it even more stressful," Gupta explained. She added that the process can be emotionally draining and incur a financial cost if candidates need to travel to interviews.

"While these steps help find the best fit, they make it hard for people just starting their careers," said Gupta.