So far in 2024: Hiring in data

The hiring market has seen huge shifts in the last few years. We’ve previously covered this in our Application Vs Sourcing reports, which showed the market made it a great time to hire, with application numbers rising and a better return on your investment from sourcing.

We’ve reviewed the data so far for 2024 compared to these previous reports allows us to see if this market remains, or if we’re seeing a shift back to previous hiring trends.

Overall the data remains similar to what was shown in recent years, with the market remaining dominated by applications and candidates being less in demand. Fewer companies are sourcing, but the response rate from those companies that do is higher than ever. Whilst more hires are now coming from applications than previously, the conversion rate is lower than with sourcing, suggesting sourcing is more efficient in finding quality candidates and making hires.

Key Insights

• The market remains applicant-led, with 86.7% of first messages on cord being applications.

• There are more applicant-initiated successful conversations and hires than ever before, but the conversion rate for sourcing is still better

• Sourcing should still play a part in your strategy, with a high response rate, more efficiencies, and better access to the entire market

• Candidates are less in demand compared to 2023, meaning you have more people to consider for each role

• Salaries expectations from candidates are decreasing for some roles compared to 2023, but companies’ advertised salaries are still increasing

The Hiring Market remains applicant-led

Applications still make up the majority of messages sent

On cord, both companies and candidates can send a message about a position. Looking at who initiated the first message allows us to see how in-demand talent is in the hiring market.

In the competitive market of 2022 when companies had to rely on sourcing to find talent, the majority of these first messages were company-initiated. This switched in August 2022 and has continued to rise since.

In 2024 so far, on average 86.7% of messages sent on cord were initiated by candidates as applications. In the first 6 months of 2022, this was just 35.2% and in 2023, 76.8%.

This number has remained steady over the last 12 months and we’re not yet seeing a return to a sourcing-led market.

The majority of successful conversations are from applications, but not at the same rate

On cord, an accepted (and therefore successful) message becomes a conversation. Measuring the conversation initiation allows us to see which method is most efficient.

An average of 67.9% of conversations in 2024 so far are initiated by application, so this still makes up the majority of the conversations happening.

However, this is lower than the 86.7% original applications sent, suggesting they’re not as effective as sourcing messages at starting successful conversations.

More hires are now consistently from applications than sourcing messages

In the first 6 months of 2022, 72.7% of hires were from sourcing. We’ve seen these numbers flip over the last 2 years, with the first 6 months of 2024 now seeing 69% of hires made from applications.

As with the conversation numbers mentioned earlier, this is lower than the number of total applications sent, suggesting sourcing messages are more targeted and successful in resulting in hires.

What does this mean for Talent Managers?

You will continue to receive a similar number of applications per role as you’ve experienced in the last 12 months and the majority of people in your pipeline will likely be from applications.

You should still be sourcing

As shown above, many companies have moved away from sourcing in the current market. This creates an opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd and have more success.

Sourcing is more efficient

As discussed, the percentage of successful conversations and hires sourcing leads to is higher than the percentage of initial messages sent.

This is unsurprising - sourcing allows you to be targeted and specific to the right people for your position. It’s clear that this is more efficient at finding the right talent for your role.

You now get a better return on your sourcing investment

With the decline in sourcing messages being sent and therefore lack of competition, positive acceptance rates for those talent teams still sourcing in 2024 are at 50.6%.

This is slightly higher than the 48.8% response rate we saw in 2023, and significantly higher than the 37.6% response rate in 2022.

There are still people who never send an application

We’ve tracked the active candidates on cord who never sent an application - these people are all having conversations with companies, but not initiating them.

This number has fallen since 2023, but 8.4% of active candidates in 2024 still never applied for a position.

Digging into this further, 6.6% of candidates who’ve had the most success on cord being hired are also not applying for any positions.

This is a small percentage - you’ll capture the vast majority of the market through applications alone. But your perfect candidate may just be in that small group, waiting for you to make the first move.

What does this mean for Talent Managers?

Sourcing should remain part of your strategy - it’s more efficient, you’ll get a better return on your time investment, and it’ll ensure you capture the entire market.

Candidates are less in demand

This is not a surprise given the number of layoffs and cuts in hiring budgets we’ve seen.

Looking at the ratio of people per position on cord, there’s been nearly a 4x increase since Jan 2023.

Looking at the top ten most popular positions hired on cord, we can see demand has dropped across each one of them in 2024 compared with 2023. This is felt most strongly in QA.

What does this mean for Talent Managers?

You’ll have your choice of more candidates for your position than ever before, you can likely be more particular about skills and requirements if needed.

From the candidate side, it’s clearly a tough market and this data hits that home. Kindness and empathy have never been more important in the hiring process.

The tech salary boom is leveling out

Each year you’d expect salary expectations and offers to increase, especially in tech where we’ve seen consistent growth over the last few years. However, the lack of demand for candidates has seen their expectations level out, or even drop, when compared to last year.

Add to this the cost of living crisis and inflation, this is even more significant in real terms.

Comparing this to the salaries advertised by companies, it doesn’t tell the same story. There’s actually been a small increase in these salaries in 2024 compared to 2023.

What does this mean for Talent Managers?

Whereas previously salary has been a contentious point in job offers, this shouldn’t be as much of an issue in the current market and on average you’ll likely be able to pay candidates more than they expect.

Conclusion

For companies, there has never been a better time to hire.

More than ever companies are making hires through applications alone, but for those that do choose to source, you’ll have even better results.

The supply of candidates outweighs the demand, which creates a difficult market for those looking for work, but allows you to be more specific with the skills you’re targeting.

Lastly, salary should no longer be the contentious issue it was pre-2022, with tech salaries levelling out and being lower than companies advertised salaries on average.

cord is the hiring tool used by internal teams at big names you might recognise like Starling Bank, AWS & The Economist, but also 100s of growing startups to make direct hires in Tech, Product, Data and Commercial teams.

cord provides companies with direct access to quality, responsive candidates who are open to work, and helps to significantly reduce their time spent hiring, and their cost per hire. Run a search to see the relevant, active candidates looking for work on cord right now.