I Talk to Job Seekers Every Day. Here’s What They Wish They Could Tell You.

Key Takeaways:

• Even as AI transforms the way we hire, what job seekers want most hasn’t changed: transparency from organizations and a feeling of being seen.
• Three low-effort, high-impact issues employers can address to rebuild trust are ghost jobs, a lack of follow-up and generic outreach.
• The employers who get it right understand the Gen Z worker mentality that work is meant to fit into a person’s life, not the other way around. 

Having worked in career services for more than three decades, I’ve seen the world of work move through countless iterations. And the one thing I feel confident in saying, above all? The more things change, the more things stay the same. 

At the core of a job search are two principles: candidates need to know how to effectively present themselves, and employers need to find the right people to support their mission. It was that way through the era of corporate loyalty, remained through the 2000s tech boom and survived the Great Resignation post-COVID. 

Those remain core tenets, even as AI rapidly transforms the way we hire. Employers, who hold the upper hand in today’s hiring dynamic, have a responsibility to make the process as transparent, honest and human as possible. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Matt Berndt, Head of Indeed’s Job Search Academy. 

Why Employers and Job Seekers Are Struggling to Connect

If you take headlines at face value, the two sides of the hiring equation couldn’t seem farther apart. Job seekers think employers are out of touch, as corporations project optimism and post record profits. Meanwhile, employers continue to slash benefits and increase productivity expectations as they sense candidate desperation. Trust has eroded on both sides.

But the “us vs. them” framing oversimplifies reality. Everyone is operating in the same fog of economic uncertainty. Employers are struggling to see beyond the next quarter, let alone plan headcount for the year. Job seekers are struggling to read a market that keeps sending mixed signals. Both sides are shouting at each other and failing to connect.

In my daily conversations with job seekers, I hear the same themes over and over again. They want to hear something — anything — back from employers. They want to know that humans, not algorithms, are making the decisions about their futures. More than anything, they just want to feel seen. 

Six Hiring Practices That Build Candidate Trust

In all my years of coaching job seekers, I’ve seen tensions with employers almost always come back to the same handful of fixable things.

1. Take down your ghost jobs.

This is a low-effort, high-impact action. Audit the open roles on your careers page and Indeed to make sure your listings reflect reality. If a hiring manager is in final rounds on a role with a small candidate pool, take it down. 

Ghost jobs are one of the biggest sources of frustration for job seekers and one of the most disingenuous practices an employer can engage in. Whether you’re using ghost listings to signal growth or simply build a pipeline for future roles that aren’t available yet, it’s a lose-lose situation. In addition to eroding trust in your brand, you’re contributing to a distorted picture of the economy.

2. Fix your candidate journey. 

When I worked with employers in the Indeed Idea Center, I would ask them to go online and apply for one of their open jobs. Their response was always some version of, “But I can’t do that — it’ll take too long!” My response was always, “Now you know how a job seeker feels.” 

Start with your hiring data: Where are the biggest bottlenecks? Where are you losing the most candidates? Are you taking too long to follow up or not following up at all, even to deliver a no? 

If candidates are frequently asking what the next steps are, your process needs attention. The strongest candidate journeys set clear expectations and create the conditions for job seekers to simply show up as their best selves. 

3. Switch to skills-first hiring. 

Vague job descriptions and boilerplate interview questions waste everyone’s time. Overly restrictive criteria, from specific education credentials to arbitrary years-of-experience thresholds, can filter out high-quality candidates with exactly the transferable skills you need.   

Shifting to a skills-first hiring approach and behavioral interview questions give candidates the opportunity to tell you their stories. “Tell me about a time you had to solve a problem you’ve not tackled before. What was the outcome?” And it can make a meaningful difference in performance and retention as the hiring landscape continues to evolve. 

Internal alignment matters here. Too often, recruiters are trying to find someone who matches a narrow job description when the real need is something else entirely. Training everyone involved in your hiring process to articulate the actual problem they’re trying to solve costs significantly less than not hiring the right talent.

4. Add more personalized outreach.

We’ve all seen the scam recruiter texts and emails that are an unfortunate reality of the digital job market. And when your candidate communications are too generic and impersonal, job seekers can’t always tell the difference between a legitimate opportunity and a phishing attempt. 

Reference something specific from a candidate’s background in the initial outreach, or have a recruiter share a genuine reflection of their own experience with the company. These are small but real signals that help your communications stand out as genuine. Analyze your hiring data to see where you’re losing candidates. Often, that’s exactly the place where the human touch is missing.

5. Update your employer value proposition.

Gen Z job seekers in particular have adopted a mindset shift that I think the rest of us can learn from. Instead of searching for their place inside the world of work, they’re asking a fundamentally different question: “Where does work fit into my life?” It’s a subtle reframe but a significant one for employers to internalize, especially as Gen Z’s share of the workforce continues to grow.

Job seekers tell me over and over that they want flexibility, stability, growth and purpose. Take a hard look at your employer value proposition (EVP). Does it clearly communicate what your organization actually offers its workers? And more importantly, does the day-to-day employee experience as reflected in your reviews back it up? If there’s a gap, revisit your EVP, then re-examine the employee experience, too. 

6. Close the loop every time, with every candidate.

The moment the candidate hears back from you is the moment they’ve been waiting for, regardless of the news. An invitation to interview is exciting. An offer is potentially life-changing. A thoughtful rejection that acknowledges their effort, offers constructive feedback and provides ways to stay in touch is how you make them feel seen, even when the answer is no.

Silence is frustrating and makes candidates question their own worth. Every person who applies to your open role deserves a response. And not just because it’s a nice thing to do, but because the way you treat candidates in those moments is a reflection of your values as an employer and how you show up for your people. 

The Future of Hiring Is Still Human 

Candidates want to feel seen and heard and be treated fairly. You want to find the right person and get back to work. The first step to cutting through all that noise is to do right by your candidates. 

Amid all the sophisticated hiring tech and polished employer brands, authenticity stands out. Show candidates they aren’t just a faceless resume in your funnel but that you are looking to understand who they are. That’s the human connection at the heart of hiring. And in a noisy, uncertain market, it’s never been more important.