Having more resumes and applications to choose from is beneficial only when you have qualified candidates.

Recruiters always look for a large talent pool to hire the best candidates. In fact, they even post their jobs mostly on platforms where they can reach maximum job seekers. That’s because a wide talent pool gives them more options to choose from. The larger the talent pool, the greater is the chance for them to hire the best talent. But that’s not always true. More is only good when the applications are relevant to the job openings, and the candidates have the required skills.

When More Becomes Less

When a major chunk of applications is those of unqualified candidates having irrelevant skills, even more, becomes less.

Increased Tedium in Screening

The screening process is already the most time-consuming part of recruiters’ jobs. 52% of recruiters believe that screening is the hardest part of their jobs. It becomes more of a burden when the number of applications is more and 70% of the applications are irrelevant. As a result, recruiters either end up screening quickly without paying enough attention. Or they try to find ideal candidates in the first few resumes and don’t look at the others. This would result in losing the best candidates and leave you with the ones who might not even have the required skills.

Unconscious Biases

Recruiters and employers generally see to it that there are no biases or discriminations in their hiring process. But a recruiter might have unintentional unconscious biases. For instance, one of the many unconscious biases is confirmation bias, where a recruiter creates a hypothesis or a judgement about a candidate right at the beginning. Then the recruiter tries to find relevant information that can help prove the created hypothesis. This leads to wrong decisions and selection of candidates based on bias and not potential skills. These biases can result in bad hires, which can cost organizations. A bad hire can cost you around $14,900.

Stretched Recruitment Process

More resumes to screen can stretch the recruitment process that can increase the cost-per-hire of a new employee. Also, more applications would mean increased challenges in managing and replying to applicants. This stretched process can result in the best talent flying away. Best candidates are always confident about their skills and don’t wait for long to get a response from recruiters. According to a survey, 57% of candidates lose interest in job openings if the hiring process is too long.

In all of the above-mentioned situations, having more candidates becomes a problem. It is important for recruiters and employers to write appropriate and precise job descriptions to attract only the best and relevant talents. This will reduce the number of irrelevant applications that would mitigate all the issues mentioned in this article. A recruitment intelligence system can assist you in writing strong job descriptions. With self-learning capabilities, the RI system can learn to write job descriptions and improve them over time.