If you have applied for dozens of jobs this year and heard nothing back, a growing pile of data suggests the problem may not be your CV. It may be the pipe you sent it down.
Indeed CEO Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba says the hiring market has trapped itself in what he calls a “vicious cycle”: job seekers flood employers with applications, employers lean on automated screening to cope, genuine candidates get filtered out or ignored, and everyone responds by applying — and screening — harder. In an interview with Business Insider, re-circulated by Fortune on 21 September, Idekoba argued the loop is now the single biggest thing standing between qualified people and jobs they could do.
The numbers behind the black hole
The scale of the mismatch is unusually well quantified. Greenhouse, which makes applicant-tracking software, analysed roughly 640 million applications from more than 6,000 companies between 2022 and 2025. Two numbers stand out: applications per job more than doubled over that period, while the average number of recruiters per organisation fell 56 percent. More work, fewer people to do it.
Indeed’s own data sharpens the picture from the candidate’s side. Idekoba says just 4 percent of US job changers — counting only those with at least a high-school education — landed their new job through a recruiter contacting them. The other 96 percent apply cold, often dozens of times, frequently without any reply.
“Something’s wrong,” Idekoba told Business Insider. “You got 1,000 applications, and you think all 1,000 people are not qualified?”
That said, the overall market is not collapsing. Indeed’s postings index sat 1.8 percent above its pre-pandemic level in mid-August, and our coverage yesterday showed advertised pay rising fastest in the occupations most exposed to AI. The breakdown is specific: it is the process that is jamming, not the demand for work altogether.
The AI-to-AI loop
The uncomfortable part of the story is that job seekers’ favourite new tool is making things worse for them. AI writing assistants have made it trivially easy to apply to hundreds of roles, and Indeed says bots now submit batches of AI-generated résumés that clog employer inboxes. Recruiters respond with keyword filters that skim for a narrow set of terms — and, as in-house recruiter Jalonni Weaver told Business Insider, those filters routinely miss transferable experience.
The result is what Weaver describes as an AI-to-AI loop: candidates use chatbots to polish and submit applications, while employers use AI to sort them, and no human looks closely at either end of the pipe. The irony is that the same technology is also the best tool some candidates have. ZipRecruiter’s economic research has found that job seekers who use AI frequently in their search are more than twice as likely to receive an offer than those who do not — which suggests the tool is not the problem, so much as the volume it enables.
Indeed itself has felt that tension. In July it began a limited US test of “Apply For Me”, a tool that automatically submits applications for job seekers. About a month later it paused the feature after feedback, saying it would instead show users drafted applications for review before anything is submitted — an acknowledgment that fully automated applying makes the cycle worse, not better.
What Indeed is changing
Idekoba’s fix is more matching and more verification, rather than less AI. On the candidate side, Indeed is testing Career Scout, which helps with résumé tailoring and interview preparation, and steers people toward roles where they have a realistic chance — his example is a restaurant worker getting pointed toward restaurant management rather than a $200,000 engineering job. On the employer side, Talent Scout acts as a conversational agent that surfaces candidates from a pool the company says exceeds 665 million profiles.
The other half is proving people are real. Indeed says it verifies employers before postings go live, limits how long roles can stay up for free, and runs phone verification on job seekers. It is also testing a feature letting candidates show independently verified professional licences. Verification, Idekoba argues, is what lets the human part of hiring start earlier.
What it means for job hunters here
New Zealand’s market runs on the same platforms and increasingly the same dynamics. SEEK’s August employment report, released on 17 September, showed job ads up 9.7 percent year on year with AI skills requested in 4.0 percent of listings — real demand, arriving through an application funnel that is getting noisier everywhere.
The practical read from the Indeed data is unglamorous but useful: with 96 percent of changers applying cold and recruiters stretched thinner than at any point since 2022, targeted applications that clear the keyword screen — and that lead with verifiable, specific experience — beat volume. The candidates losing in this cycle are the ones treating applications like a numbers game, because that is precisely the behaviour that taught employers to stop reading.
FAQ
Why is it so hard to get hired right now? Applications per job more than doubled between 2022 and 2025 (Greenhouse, across 640 million applications), while recruiters per company fell 56 percent — so each application faces more automated screening and less human attention than in the past.
What percentage of job seekers get contacted by a recruiter? Indeed data cited by its CEO puts it at 4 percent of US job changers; the remaining 96 percent find roles by applying directly, often repeatedly.
Does using AI help or hurt a job application? Both, depending on use. ZipRecruiter research finds frequent AI users more than twice as likely to land an offer, but mass AI-generated “spray and pray” applications are what employers blame for the flood — Indeed even paused its own auto-apply tool after a test.
What is Indeed doing about fake or AI-generated applications? The company says it verifies employers before postings go live, limits free listing duration, phone-verifies job seekers, and is testing independently verified professional licences for candidates.
— CJ Murden, editor of Singularity.Kiwi. Former digital technologies teacher, author of AI-focused books. Writing with a New Zealand focus.
