Hiring isn’t getting any easier. For both job seekers and employers, the hiring process has become more difficult. Unemployment is low, but job seekers are looking for new opportunities at the highest rate since 2015, and employers must fill positions vacated by former employees while dealing with more applicants.
More job seekers plus reduced job availability (job postings decreased 10% in 2024) leads to tension in the job market. However, developments in skills-based hiring and AI can help employers sift through the muck and find better candidates. By monitoring these and other hiring trends in 2025, you can stay ahead of other companies looking to hire the same candidates.
Here are 4 hiring trends to watch in 2025.
1. An Increased Hiring Pool
In the first few months of 2025, over 30,000 federal workers have been terminated with likely more on the way. And in the private sector, almost 50,000 employees were laid off in January – a 28% jump from December. These recent dismissals are adding more candidates to an already saturated job pool.
In 2023, there were 72 applicants for every job posted – 46% more than in 2022. For hiring managers, more applicants mean more resumes to sift through, more interviews to hold, and more chances for hiring mistakes. In 2025, employers will need to examine their technology and processes to screen out poor candidates and hire excellent fits.
2. Skills-Based Hiring
An increased hiring pool leads to a problem with the quantity of candidates, but how can you identify the quality of candidates? Resume screening tools and video interviews can help hiring managers screen faster, but they still don’t get to the root of the issue – finding qualified candidates. What’s the point of hiring faster if your new hire is going to turn over quickly? After all, resumes don’t tell the whole story, and interviews tend to measure soft skills better than hard skills.
According to McKinsey, hiring for skills is five times more predictive of job performance than hiring based on education. And market leaders like Google and IBM are shifting to skill-based hiring to find better candidates. Pre-hire assessment platforms like the one from eSkill help you test candidate hard skills to identify top performers and narrow your candidate pool to qualified candidates.
3. Career Field Movement
As we covered above, the reduction in the federal workforce will likely lead to public-sector employees moving to the private sector. Additionally, desired job positions will continue to shift as technology and market forces collide. For example, technology-related roles are the fastest growing jobs, while clerical and secretarial workers are expected to see the largest decline.
With this movement into new job fields, resumes have become less useful than ever. Resumes work well when workers are growing within an industry, but relevant experience or education becomes less valuable when they move across industries. A candidate’s experience as an administrative assistant might not be applicable to a job as a big data specialist, but skills in Excel or attention to detail will certainly carry over.
4. The Impact of AI
AI is the elephant in the room not only for hiring, but for the workforce in general. While it’s hard to say how it will exactly impact jobs and hiring, we do know the impact will be sizable and arrive sooner rather than later. In a survey conducted by Korn Ferry, 67% of respondents see increased AI usage as a top talent acquisition trend for 2025.
Currently, AI can help employers craft better job postings, schedule interviews, and improve general hiring processes. However, AI also helps job candidates write better resumes and cover letters. In the future, can AI better match employers to candidates? Can it conduct phone screenings, review resumes, or interview on your behalf? Likely so! But it’s important to remember that hiring is a people-oriented business. So, lean on AI where it helps, but apply human touches to ensure a quality hiring process.
Hiring is hard! With more applicants than ever, career-field changes, and new technology, hiring managers need to stay on top of trends to make sure their hiring processes aren’t lagging behind competitors. But with change comes opportunity. Embrace new technology (like pre-hire assessments) and new processes to put together a more successful team.
Get started with eSkill today and capitalize on 2025 hiring trends.