The 2024 State of Job Hunting report, recently released by Greenhouse, a leading hiring platform, paints a challenging picture of the current job market. Despite nearly half of US workers actively seeking new opportunities, a significant portion experiences heightened anxiety due to a broken hiring system. This system is plagued by issues such as discrimination, sloppy hiring practices, fierce competition, and a new AI arms race where both candidates and companies are utilizing technology to gain an edge.

Candidates Get The Cold Shoulder: Ghosting and Ghost Jobs Galore
Ghosting and “ghost jobs”— positions advertised with no intent to hire— continue to plague the market. Ghosting is getting worse: 61% of job seekers have been ghosted after a job interview, a 9 percentage point increase since April 2024. After receiving a job offer, almost one in every ten candidates was ghosted by the company. Highlighting persistent disparities in the recruitment process, 66% of historically underrepresented job seekers now experience post-interview ghosting (up 11 points since April 2024), compared to 59% for white candidates (up 8 points).

Job seekers are increasingly wary of ghost jobs: 3 in 5 candidates (60%) say they’ve suspected they’ve encountered a ghost job and over one-quarter (29%) of them applied anyway. The phenomenon isn’t in candidates’ heads— Greenhouse internal data shows that in any given quarter, 18-22% of the jobs posted on the platform are classified as ghost jobs. Candidates are also battling scam and spam listings, with three-quarters (73%) encountering them.

“The data highlights a troubling reality— the job market has become more soul-crushing than ever. Candidates are trapped in a cycle of despair and have no idea what’s going on. Hiring feels like a black box. It’s become a battlefield that job seekers have to cross – employers ghosting candidates, fake, spam, and scam jobs— and AI is only exacerbating it all,” says Jon Stross, President and Co-founder of Greenhouse. “Companies are struggling to manage the overload of applications fuelled by AI, but they need to realize that the market runs in cycles and they won’t always have the upper hand. Every unanswered email and every vanishing hiring manager isn’t just a minor inconvenience to candidates; it’s costly and can damage a company’s reputation, making it harder to attract top talent in the long term.”

Candidates Still Embrace DE&I Commitments, Yet Discriminatory Hiring Practices Rise
As diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts and programs face public backlash, job seekers still view it as a green flag. More than one in every two (53%) candidates consider it very important for companies to openly promote DE&I in job postings, while only 9% deem it unimportant. Between April and November 2024, the number of historically underrepresented job seekers who view a company’s DE&I commitments as essential when applying to a role grew by 27 percentage points.

Yet, discrimination and bias remain prevalent, with 64% of US candidates reporting they’ve faced discriminatory or biased interview questions, a 10 percentage point increase since April 2024. The most frequently encountered discriminatory questions related to age (55%), race (45%), and gender (42%). Another concerning trend reveals that 59% of candidates have had hiring managers mispronounce their names—a basic oversight that affects historically underrepresented job seekers at higher rates (63%) compared to other candidates (57%).

“There’s a clear gap in companies’ ability to hire correctly, from mispronouncing names to downright discriminatory interview questions. Companies that think they have the upper hand disregard candidates but hurt their reputation,” says Carin Van Vuuren, Chief Marketing Officer of Greenhouse. “Companies that take candidates’ time for granted—keeping potential hires in an endless pipeline just to avoid starting from scratch—are playing a dangerous game. The hiring landscape can change in a moment, and organizations need to be prepared for those dramatic changes.”

Candidates Grapple With The Bot vs. Bot Market
A vast majority (91%) of workers view the current job market as challenging, with 57% attributing the intensified competition to AI. Greenhouse’s internal data shows that recruiter workload increased to 588 applications in Q3 2024 – a 26% increase from Q3 2023. AI has made it easier than ever for candidates to apply for jobs, with 38% of job seekers mass applying to roles, flooding employers with resumes rather than pursuing targeted opportunities. Notably, 68% of Gen Z candidates say AI has made the job search more competitive, compared to 58% of Millennials. The top challenge job seekers have (54%) is finding jobs relevant to their skills and career skills, signaling job scarcity.

Hiring remains a black box to many job seekers, and AI has made it more opaque. The growing role of AI in recruitment has created new tensions. While some candidates embrace AI’s potential—28% support automated screening of basic qualifications and 21% favor AI-assisted candidate evaluation—others remain skeptical, with 15% opposing any AI involvement in hiring. Over one-quarter (28%) would like to understand how companies use AI in their hiring process, underlining the importance of transparency.

Additional survey data shows what candidates weigh when considering a new job opportunity:

• Candidate Experience & Expectations:
  • Despite facing rejection, 79% of job seekers say they’re more likely to apply again to companies that take the time to provide interview feedback.
  • Greenhouse internal data shows the average time-to-hire in Q3 2024 was 46 days, a 12% year-on-year increase. While companies have increased their time-to-hire, two in every five (40%) job seekers expect offers within less than 30 days of their initial application.
• Communication Gaps:
  • Post-application ghosting peaks after initial conversations with recruiters (47%) and hiring managers (47%), after completing take-home assignments (23%), after a virtual group interview (18%), and after a one-way interview (17%).
  • 33% of US job seekers say they’re willing to provide feedback about a company’s hiring process but have never been asked, marking a missed opportunity for employers.
• The Hiring Process Improvements Job Seekers Want:
  • Candidates want greater job search efficiency with better job matching (47%) and stronger recruiter communication (42%).
  • 38% of job seekers are seeking ways to make their applications stand out from the crowd
  • Top priorities to increase process transparency include unbiased recruiting (32%), greater visibility into which companies are the best fit for them (29%), AI usage clarity (28%), and halting the practice of posting ghost jobs (25%).

For access to the full results from the 2024 State of Job Hunting Report, visit the Greenhouse site here.

Survey Methodology
Greenhouse, the hiring software company, conducted a multi-market survey of 2,500 full-time employees, including 1,010 U.S.-based workers, with additional respondents from the United Kingdom and Germany.