Why Companies Struggle to Find the Right Talent Despite More Applications 

More applications should make hiring easier. So why are so many companies still struggling to find the right people? 

After more than 20 years in staffing, Abacus Service Corporation has seen the hiring market change considerably. The tools have changed, the way candidates search for jobs has changed, and the speed at which employers can reach talent has changed. What has not changed is the fundamental challenge: finding someone who can actually do the work, fit the business need and succeed in the role. 

What has changed is the nature of the problem. 

There was a time when employers were primarily concerned about getting enough candidates into the pipeline. Today, many organizations have the opposite problem. They may receive hundreds of applications for a single position and still struggle to identify a handful of candidates who genuinely match what the business needs. 

The latest U.S. labor-market data illustrates why this is such an interesting moment for employers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported approximately 7.3 million job openings in July 2026, along with 5.1 million hires. At the same time, LinkedIn reports that U.S. applicants per open role have doubled since spring 2022, while 66% of recruiters surveyed say it has become harder to find qualified talent.  

In other words, more people are entering the application funnel, but employers are not necessarily finding it easier to identify the right talent. 

That is the real hiring challenge today. 

The Problem Is No Longer Just Finding Candidates 

For years, recruiting was largely a volume exercise. If a company needed to fill a position, the objective was to get the job in front of enough candidates, generate applications and begin screening. 

That approach made sense when reaching candidates was difficult. 

Today, technology has made reaching candidates remarkably easy. A job can be distributed across multiple platforms within minutes, candidates can apply from anywhere and recruiters can use technology to search large talent pools almost instantly. 

But increased access to candidates has created a different problem: how do you separate genuine fit from application volume? 

Indeed’s 2026 research makes this clear. In a survey of 300 U.S. hiring managers at companies with 500 or more employees, 71% said higher application volume had made it harder to find qualified candidates, while 72% were concerned they might miss strong candidates because of the number of applications they had to review. Even more striking, 93% said they had lost top talent because their hiring process took too long.  

That creates a difficult cycle for employers. More applications require more screening. More screening takes more time. More time can slow down decisions, and slow decisions can cause good candidates to accept another opportunity before the employer is ready to act. 

The answer, therefore, is not necessarily to generate more applications. 

It is to improve the quality of the signal within the applications you already receive. 

A Resume Can Tell You a Lot. It Still Can’t Tell You Everything. 

One of the lessons we have learned through years of staffing is that a resume should be treated as the beginning of a conversation, not the conclusion of one. 

A resume can tell you where someone has worked, the technologies they have used and the responsibilities they have held. It can give a recruiter valuable context and help establish whether a candidate may be relevant for a particular position. But it cannot always tell you how that person will perform in a particular business environment, how they solve problems, how adaptable they are or whether their experience can transfer effectively to the challenges the employer is trying to solve. 

This becomes especially important when job descriptions are overly rigid. We regularly see positions built around very specific combinations of industry experience, years of experience, technologies, certifications, degrees and previous job titles. Each requirement may appear reasonable individually, but collectively they can eliminate candidates who may actually have the capabilities the organization needs. 

A candidate with eight years of highly relevant experience may be rejected because the position asks for ten. Someone who solved almost identical operational problems in another industry may be overlooked because they don’t have direct industry experience. Someone who has developed the required technical capability through practical experience may be screened out because they don’t have the preferred degree. 

The issue is not that employers should ignore requirements. Some requirements are absolutely necessary. The issue is knowing which requirements are genuinely essential and which ones are simply characteristics of the candidate the organization has traditionally hired. 

That distinction can significantly expand the talent pool. 

The “Perfect Candidate” on Paper May Not Be the Best Candidate 

This is where experienced recruiting becomes particularly valuable. 

When we look at a position, the first question shouldn’t simply be, “Does this resume match the job description?” The more important question is, “What does this person actually need to be able to accomplish?” 

Imagine a company needs someone to lead a complex technology implementation. The job description might ask for ten years of experience, experience in a particular industry, several technology certifications and expertise in specific platforms. 

But the actual business need may be much simpler: the company needs someone who can manage stakeholders, understand complex technology, lead cross-functional teams, solve problems under pressure and deliver a project successfully. 

Once the role is viewed through that lens, the talent pool can look very different. 

This is one of the reasons the conversation around skills-based hiring has become so important. LinkedIn reports that 59% of recruiters surveyed say AI is already helping them discover candidates with skills they might not otherwise have found. The technology is helping recruiters look beyond traditional candidate profiles, but the underlying principle is something experienced recruiters have understood for years: talent does not always arrive in the exact package described in a job posting. 

Sometimes the right candidate has taken a different career path. Sometimes their skills were developed in another industry. Sometimes they have the core capability but not the preferred credential. And sometimes the candidate who looks slightly unconventional on paper turns out to be the person who performs exceptionally well once given the opportunity. 

Job Descriptions Can Create a Talent Shortage of Their Own 

One of the most overlooked factors in hiring is the job description itself. 

Companies often build job descriptions by adding requirements over time. A hiring manager wants a particular technology. Another stakeholder wants a certification. Someone else adds an industry preference. The organization then adds years of experience because it wants someone “senior.” 

Eventually, a position that originally required five or six critical capabilities can turn into a list of fifteen or twenty requirements. 

The company then goes into the market and discovers that very few candidates meet all of them. 

It may look like a talent shortage. 

Sometimes it is actually a definition problem. 

A better approach is to separate the requirements into what the person absolutely needs on day one, what can reasonably be learned after joining and what would simply be advantageous. This doesn’t mean lowering hiring standards. In many cases, it means becoming more precise about what the standard actually is. 

The question should not be, “Can we find someone who checks every box?” 

It should be, “Can we find someone who can deliver the outcomes this role requires?” 

Those are very different questions. 

Transferable Skills Are Becoming More Important 

Another challenge we see in recruiting is that experience is often evaluated too narrowly. 

A candidate may not have worked in the exact same industry, but they may have managed similar processes, worked with comparable technologies or solved essentially the same business problem. 

Traditional screening can miss that. 

Consider a candidate who has spent several years managing complex operations in one industry and is now applying to an organization in another. If the screening process focuses heavily on industry keywords, that candidate may never reach the hiring manager. 

A recruiter who understands the underlying requirements of the role may see something different: experience that transfers. 

This matters because businesses increasingly need skills that cross traditional industry boundaries. Technology, data, automation, project management, cybersecurity, finance, customer operations and many other disciplines are changing quickly enough that yesterday’s job titles do not always accurately describe today’s capabilities. 

The ability to recognize transferable skills is therefore becoming an important part of effective recruiting. 

AI Has Increased the Volume of Applications — But It Has Also Changed What Employers Need to Verify 

Generative AI has introduced another layer of complexity. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with candidates using AI to improve their resumes or prepare applications. In the same way that employers use technology to improve their recruiting processes, candidates are using technology to present themselves more effectively. 

The problem begins when the application becomes optimized for the screening system rather than an accurate representation of the candidate. 

Robert Half’s 2026 research found that 67% of U.S. HR leaders said reviewing AI-generated applications had slowed the hiring process, while 65% of hiring managers said AI-enhanced resumes had made candidate skills harder to verify. The same research found that 84% of HR teams reported heavier workloads as AI-tailored applications increased.  

This creates a new challenge for recruiters. A well-written resume is no longer necessarily a strong indicator of how well the candidate can perform the work. 

The recruitment process therefore has to go beyond the resume. 

That may mean structured interviews, technical assessments, work samples, deeper conversations about previous projects or other ways of validating that the experience presented on paper reflects genuine capability. 

In other words, AI has made it easier to create an application. It has made good assessment even more important. 

The Answer Isn’t to Reject AI. It’s to Use It for the Right Things. 

AI can be extremely useful in recruiting. 

It can help recruiters search large candidate pools, identify relevant skills, organize information, reduce administrative work and surface candidates who may otherwise have been overlooked. 

LinkedIn reports that 93% of recruiters plan to increase their use of AI in 2026, while 66% plan to increase their use of AI for pre-screening interviews.  

That adoption makes sense. 

The mistake would be to assume that technology should make human judgment unnecessary. 

The most valuable use of AI in recruiting is often to remove repetitive work so recruiters can spend more time on the parts of hiring that require experience and judgment: understanding context, evaluating transferable skills, validating claims, talking to candidates, understanding motivation and helping hiring managers make better decisions. 

Technology can help identify the signal. 

Experienced recruiters still need to understand what that signal means. 

Hiring Speed Has Become Part of Talent Acquisition 

There is another issue that employers sometimes discover too late: finding the right candidate is only half the challenge. 

The other half is moving quickly enough to hire them. 

A candidate who is available today may have multiple conversations underway tomorrow. If an employer takes a week to review a resume, another week to schedule the first interview and another week to gather internal feedback, the strongest candidate may already be gone. 

Indeed found that 93% of surveyed hiring managers had lost top talent because their hiring process took too long.  

This is why hiring speed should not simply be viewed as an administrative metric. It can directly affect access to talent. 

The objective isn’t to eliminate thoughtful evaluation. It is to eliminate unnecessary delays. 

If three interviews are genuinely necessary, conduct three interviews. If they aren’t, adding another round does not necessarily improve the quality of the decision. If five people need to approve a candidate, organizations should ask whether all five need to be involved. 

The best recruiting process is not the one with the most steps. 

It is the one that creates the right amount of evaluation before making a timely decision. 

A Better Approach Starts With the Business Problem 

For employers struggling with application volume, the answer may not be another job board, another screening filter or another technology platform. In many cases, the better starting point is to step back and look at the role itself. Before searching for candidates, organizations need to be clear about the business problem they are hiring someone to solve and the outcomes that person is expected to deliver. Once those expectations are clearly defined, it becomes much easier to determine which skills are genuinely essential, which capabilities can be developed after the person joins and where transferable experience should be considered. 

This is a shift we have seen become increasingly important in staffing. Instead of building a candidate profile around a long list of qualifications, employers can benefit from defining the capabilities that will actually determine success in the position. A candidate may not have every preferred qualification but may have demonstrated the ability to solve similar problems, work with comparable technologies or operate successfully in a different industry. If the hiring process is designed only to identify candidates who look exactly like the job description, those people can easily be overlooked. 

The same principle applies to assessment. Once the organization understands what success in the role looks like, the recruitment process can be designed to evaluate those specific capabilities rather than relying almost entirely on resume matching. Depending on the position, that could mean a structured interview, a technical assessment, a work sample or a deeper discussion about projects the candidate has previously delivered. The goal is not to make the hiring process more complicated. It is to make each stage more meaningful. 

This approach also gives employers a better way to use technology. AI and automated screening can help manage large volumes of applications, identify potential matches and reduce repetitive recruiting work. But technology works best when the organization has already defined what it is looking for. Otherwise, automation can simply make an inefficient process faster without necessarily making the hiring decision better. 

At Abacus, this is where our experience as a staffing partner becomes particularly valuable. After more than 20 years in the industry, we have learned that recruiting is rarely just about finding someone who matches a list of keywords. It is about understanding the client’s business, understanding the role behind the requisition and using that context to identify people who have the capability to succeed. Sometimes that means finding someone who closely matches the original requirement. Other times, it means challenging an overly restrictive requirement and showing the client where strong, transferable talent exists outside the obvious candidate pool. 

That is the difference between filling a position and solving a hiring problem. 

What Two Decades in Staffing Have Taught Us 

At Abacus Service Corporation, we have been in the staffing business since 2004. During that time, we have watched recruiting move from traditional networking and resume databases to online job boards, applicant tracking systems, social recruiting, automated sourcing and now AI-enabled hiring. 

The technology has changed dramatically. 

The fundamentals of good hiring have not. 

We have learned that a successful staffing process requires more than matching keywords. It requires understanding the client’s business, understanding the role behind the requisition and understanding what makes someone capable of succeeding in that environment. 

That perspective becomes particularly important when the market is noisy. 

When hundreds of resumes are coming into an organization, the temptation is to build a stricter filter. Sometimes that’s the right answer. But sometimes a stricter filter simply removes more potentially qualified people. 

An experienced staffing partner can help determine which is which. 

That may mean challenging the job description. It may mean identifying transferable skills. It may mean looking at candidates from a different industry. It may mean recommending a skills assessment instead of another resume review. Or it may simply mean helping the organization move faster once a strong candidate has been identified. 

These decisions don’t come from an algorithm alone. 

They come from understanding the market and understanding people. 

From Candidate Volume to Talent Intelligence 

The hiring conversation is gradually moving from candidate volume to talent intelligence. 

That is an important shift. 

Seven hundred applications don’t necessarily mean a company has seven hundred potential employees. A beautifully written AI-generated resume doesn’t necessarily represent a highly qualified candidate. And a candidate who misses one preferred requirement isn’t necessarily the wrong candidate. 

The organizations that hire well will increasingly be the ones that can distinguish between those things. 

They will use technology to manage scale, but they will not confuse automation with judgment. They will define jobs around outcomes rather than unrealistic wish lists. They will recognize transferable skills. They will assess what candidates can actually do. And they will build hiring processes that are rigorous without being unnecessarily slow. 

The result is not necessarily a larger talent pool. 

It is a better talent signal. 

The Right Talent May Already Be in Your Applicant Pool 

The biggest hiring mistake companies can make in today’s market is assuming that the solution to an application-quality problem is simply to find more applicants. 

Sometimes the right person is already in the pool. 

They may be hidden behind an unconventional career path. They may come from another industry. Their resume may not contain every keyword. They may not have the preferred degree. Or their experience may simply require a recruiter to look a little deeper. 

That is where 20+ years of staffing experience can make a difference. 

At Abacus Service Corporation, we don’t see recruiting as simply filling an open position. We see it as understanding the intersection between what a business needs and what the talent market can provide. 

That requires technology. It requires data. But it also requires experience, judgment and an understanding of people. 

Because ultimately, the goal of recruiting was never to collect more resumes. 

It was to find the right person for the job. 

And in today’s market, knowing how to find that person among hundreds of applicants may be one of the most valuable hiring capabilities an organization can have. 

How Abacus Helps Employers Find the Right Talent  

At Abacus Service Corporation, we bring more than 20 years of staffing experience to the challenge of finding the right talent in an increasingly complex hiring market. Our approach goes beyond simply presenting resumes. We work with employers to understand the role, the business requirements and the skills that will genuinely contribute to success, while using targeted sourcing and experienced recruiters to identify candidates who may not always fit a traditional job description on paper. Whether the need is for specialized professionals, flexible workforce support, contract talent, contract-to-hire or direct placement, Abacus can help organizations reduce the noise in the hiring funnel, identify qualified talent more effectively and move the right candidates through the process faster. When more applications aren’t necessarily producing better hires, Abacus helps employers focus on what matters most: finding the right talent for the work that needs to be done. 

Sources & Data References 

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, July 2026: The U.S. had 7.3 million job openings and 5.1 million hires in July 2026.  

LinkedIn — 2026 Talent Research: U.S. applicants per open role have doubled since spring 2022. LinkedIn also reports that 66% of recruiters say finding qualified talent has become harder, while 59% say AI is helping them discover candidates with skills they might otherwise have missed.  

Indeed/Harris Poll — 2026: Among 300 U.S. hiring managers at companies with 500+ employees, 71% said higher application volume has made finding qualified candidates harder, 72% feared missing top talent because of application volume, and 93% reported losing top talent because their hiring process took too long.  

Robert Half — 2026: A survey of more than 2,000 U.S. hiring managers found that 67% of HR leaders said reviewing AI-generated applications had slowed hiring, 65% of hiring managers said AI-enhanced resumes made skills harder to verify, and 84% of HR teams reported heavier workloads as AI-tailored applications increased.