The four problems hiring leaders keep raising
Twelve conversations with senior hiring leaders at a recent event: the four problems that kept coming up, and what to do about each.
Senior hiring leaders are not short of applications; they are short of the right ones, and the tools they have are making that worse, not better. Across twelve conversations with senior hiring leaders at an event we attended recently, the same four problems came up again and again, almost always before we had said a word about inploi.
Nothing here names a person or an organisation. These are the themes, how often they came up, and what we think they mean.
1. Volume is up, quality is not
Eight of the twelve leaders raised the same complaint in different words: far more applications than ever, and a smaller share worth reading. Roles get closed early because nobody can get through the pile. Hiring managers fall back on whoever can start soonest. Applications written by AI, and applications sent by bots, came up four times on their own.
The instinct is to add friction: more questions, longer forms, a test before anyone is seen. That cuts volume, but it cuts the wrong people, because the strongest candidates have the most choice and the least patience.
The better answer is to keep the application short and read every one properly. That is what the Hiring Agent does: it scores each application against the criteria your team sets, explains its reasoning, and changes the order of the queue without removing anyone from it. More on this in getting quality in volume.
2. Quality and efficiency start at the front end
Eight of the twelve also said their careers site or application was costing them candidates. Several described a hand-off from a branded site into the ATS where most people simply leave.
What stood out was how they framed it. Leaders increasingly see the candidate experience as where quality and efficiency in hiring are won or lost, not as a branding exercise. A short, clear application on a phone keeps the right people, and what it captures is what lets a team read every application quickly and fairly later on. So they are separating the two jobs: the ATS to track, and a careers site and application built to win the right person and gather what the team needs to decide.
3. AI scoring has become a legal question
Four leaders raised the risk of AI scoring themselves, unprompted, and it hung over many more conversations. Some had switched an AI feature off because their legal team could not defend it. Others had been burned by tools that scored things no hiring decision should rest on. The recent US lawsuits over AI screening were front of mind.
What they asked for was not less AI but AI they could explain: who decides, what the system sees, and who checks it. Our answers are on how our AI works. Agents rank and recommend; they never reject. Personal details are removed before scoring. Every candidate is asked whether they are happy for AI to be used. And an independent auditor tests the scoring for bias.
The EU AI Act’s rules for recruitment AI now apply from 2 December 2027. That is time to choose carefully, not a reason to wait.
4. Paying again for people they have already met
Seven of the twelve wanted to bring back people they had already met: silver medallists, past applicants, people who were right for a different role. Several sit on large databases of past applicants that do nothing, while they pay again to find the same people through job boards and agencies.
This is the clearest unmet need we heard. Our talent pool is in development with design partners, built to score people you have already met against a new role’s criteria and invite them back. Until it ships, the most useful step is simply to keep those records clean and consented.
What we take from it
None of these is a technology problem first. Volume without quality, a front end that loses people, AI nobody can defend and records nobody uses all come from tools built to store hiring rather than to run it.
Many of the leaders we spoke to are also mid-change: a new ATS, a merger or a new head of talent. If that is you, it is the moment to fix the part candidates meet first. The hiring experience audit shows where your process loses people today, and more on volume hiring sits under high-volume hiring.
