A new report from Spark Hire, “Hiring Amid the Apply-Anyways Candidate Culture – Identify Qualified Talent in an Overload of Applicants,” reveals a growing trend of candidates applying for jobs they are not qualified for, leading to slower hiring times and increased strain on recruiters, HR, and hiring managers.

The ‘apply-anyways’ culture is making it difficult for hiring teams to identify and recruit highly-qualified talent quickly. According to Spark Hire CEO Josh Tolan, high volumes of unqualified applicants create a slow and ineffective hiring process, which in turn leads to even more hopeful or desperate applicants waiting for a response from any employer. To break this cycle, hiring teams must optimize their processes.

In a Spark Hire survey, 85% of respondents agreed that Time to Hire is a crucial KPI their team is actively working to improve. Among respondents, 73% stated that there are not enough “qualified” candidates, while a “high volume” of applicants is causing significant delays in their hiring process.

The survey, which included over 1,000 respondents from the BambooHR Summit Conference held in late 2022, also revealed that complex and outdated candidate screening practices are contributing to high candidate dropout rates, making the hiring process more costly and time-consuming.

Josh Tolan suggested that there are ways for recruiters and HR professionals to identify highly-qualified applicants quickly and reduce their time to hire, despite the apply-anyways culture. By taking proactive steps, the cycle of unqualified applicants delaying hiring decisions can be broken, while maintaining a wide talent pool to reach as many quality candidates as possible.

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