Given the low-fire, low-hire strategies most companies adopted in 2025 as economic and business uncertainty grew, it seems logical that employers who did fill job openings must have had easy time finding candidates. But recent survey data shows a whopping 90 percent of companies instead fell short of their recruiting goals last year, with many respondents fearing 2026 may be just as difficult.

The fifth annual Hiring Insights Report by recruitment software specialist GoodTime found a majority of the 500 talent acquisition professionals surveyed reported “unprecedented strain” in filling openings last year. In addition to the nine in ten businesses that did not fulfill their hiring objectives, a third said they fell short of those by big margins. Indeed, only about 10 percent of respondents said they had come close to or reached their staffing goals.

The proliferation of candidates using artificial intelligence apps to apply for virtually any job open partly explained why systems became stuck. The automating tech also fueled the surge of fake candidatures recruiters had to deal with—as well as the continued push by talent professionals to adopt AI themselves. That circular chase looks likely to continue for a while.

“Nearly every organization now relies on AI, but this shift has introduced a new reality—fake or AI-generated candidates have emerged as the number one anticipated hiring threat for the year ahead,” the GoodTime report on the findings said.

The good news in 2025 was the average 59 percent of hiring objectives that companies did reach was the highest level this decade. But the 34 percent of businesses that hit less than half of their goals significantly lowered the overall success rate. So did the typical respondent having fulfilled only 50 percent and 74 percent of their recruiting needs.

Top reasons cited for the shortfall included “applicants whose skills do not match their resume,” a lack of qualified candidates,  an “overwhelming number of applicants,” and fake or fraudulent job bids.

One big, negative consequence of those challenges was what GoodTime described as a preexisting “time-to-hire crisis” increasing even more in 2025. Around 60 percent of respondents said that lag grew last year, with only 12 percent managing to reduce it.

How did those and other relatively successfully hiring businesses get close to or fulfill their goals? The GoodTime study found many reorganized their recruiting systems around AI tools—but only after carefully determining effective ways of doing that.

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