Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait says the hiring market is being pulled into what he calls an “AI doom loop,” as job seekers and employers both lean on automation to cope with a process that feels increasingly unworkable. According to Chait, candidates who are frustrated by repeated silence from employers are turning to AI tools that can submit applications across many roles at once, sometimes for a small fee.
That behavior is creating a new problem for recruiters. Greenhouse currently has 175,000 live jobs on its platform, and Chait says each posting attracts about 254 applicants on average. He said that volume has pushed applications per recruiter up by 412%, with hiring teams often receiving hundreds or even thousands of submissions within a day or two. As more of those applications are generated with AI, he said, they begin to look alike, making it harder for employers to tell who is genuinely interested.
Chait said the pattern leaves both sides stuck. Employers respond to the flood by using AI to sort through candidates, while job seekers who keep getting overlooked submit even more applications. “Everyone’s using their own AI to solve their own problem, but it’s making the whole system worse,” he said. He added that this is the first time he has seen a market in which both job seekers and employers are unhappy at the same time.
Greenhouse is trying a few ways to ease the pressure. One is a feature called “My Dream Job,” which allows a job seeker to mark one role a month across the platform as a top priority. Chait said that scarcity is meant to signal real intent, and he said nearly half a million of those applications have been submitted since launch, with those candidates hired at about five times the rate of other applicants. Greenhouse has also acquired Ezra AI Labs, an AI voice-interviewing company, so every applicant can get an interview rather than only a short list of candidates.
Source: fortune.com
