Talent professionals and job seekers alike are grappling with the enormous rise in job applications submitted every day, according to experts.

The number of applications submitted on LinkedIn has surged more than 45% in the past year, with nearly 9,500 applications submitted every minute, according to a representative for the company.

As a result, hirers are “drinking through a fire hose of applications,” according to technical and executive head hunter Nicole Kaiser.

At Kaiser’s company, popular roles can receive 300 to 500 applications within three days, she says, with some accumulating more than 1,000 applications over the weekend.

“Those numbers are overwhelming,” she says.

Kevin Dabulis, a talent acquisition expert with over 30 years of experience, has observed a similar spike in applications.

“Years ago, when you posted a job on the internet, you would get 4 or 5 decent resumes,” he recalls. Now, each job posting receives between 150 to 200 applications within the first 24 hours, he says.

As a result of the sheer volume of applications, “a lot of time is wasted” for job seekers and hirers alike, Dabulis says.

Impact on hiring process

The magnitude of applications has slowed the hiring process “down to a crawl,” Kaiser says.

Depending on company size, in-house recruiters generally handle the hiring process for 15 to 20 jobs at a time, according to Kaiser, and they spend between 30 seconds and two minutes looking at each resume.

With hundreds of people applying for each job, “it’s a massive amount of time to be spending just reviewing” resumes, she says – and that’s only the first step in the hiring process.

According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, over one-fifth of HR professionals in the U.S say they’re spending between 3 to 5 hours going through applications every day, but 70% of hirers say that less than half the applications meet all the criteria for the role.

Kaiser and Dabulis have observed similar patterns. Among hundreds of applications, “less than 5” are typically well-suited for the job, according to Dabulis.

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