Hundreds of CVs. Still an Open Vacancy. What Are We Celebrating?

You publish a vacancy and the applications start coming in. Twenty at first, then fifty, then more than two hundred. It is easy to feel that the search is going well. There is interest, there is activity, and surely the person you need must be somewhere among them.

But when the success of a job advert is measured by the number of CVs received, I feel we are missing part of the conversation: how many of those applications are actually bringing us closer to a hire?

A strong response can be good news. The problem starts when we celebrate the number without looking at the work it creates, the relevance of the applications or our team's capacity to give them proper attention.

Behind every CV is a person waiting for a response. Inside the business, someone has to make time to read it, understand it and decide what happens next.

That time has a cost.

In a hotel or restaurant, recruitment often sits alongside plenty of other responsibilities. The person reviewing applications also has meetings, operational issues, rotas to organise and a team that needs their attention. Opening hundreds of documents does not make any of that work disappear.

And reading a CV is only the beginning. You still need to clarify responsibilities, establish whether the experience is relevant, understand the person's expectations and find out whether the role and its conditions genuinely interest them.

Without an initial review or consistently organised information, the business takes on a workload it may not have planned for.

Meanwhile, the vacancy remains open.

There is another risk that concerns me: the person you are looking for could be overlooked among all those applications.

Imagine a manager reviewing CVs between two meetings, then returning to them at the end of a demanding day. With limited time, it is tempting to focus on what is immediately recognisable: a familiar hotel, a well-known job title or a polished presentation.

Those details can provide context. They are not enough to assess someone's suitability.

A person with an unassuming job title may have held significant responsibilities. Someone else may have a beautifully presented CV that leaves important questions about their experience unanswered. Understanding the difference takes attention, questions and judgement.

When the volume exceeds your team's capacity to review it, that attention becomes harder to sustain.

It is also worth looking at what the response tells you about the advert itself. If many applications have little connection to the role, take another look at how you have described it.

Are the duties clear enough? Can candidates understand the level of responsibility? Have you separated essential requirements from skills that can be learned? Is the advert reaching the right professionals?

An overly broad description can attract people with very different backgrounds. That does not make them poor candidates. It may simply mean we have not given them enough information to judge whether the opportunity is relevant to them.

The business then has to do, CV by CV, some of the work it could have done earlier by defining the vacancy more clearly.

All the while, the process takes longer.

People who could be a good fit continue looking, speaking to other employers and making decisions. If we take too long to contact them, leave interviews without follow-up or cannot explain the next steps, we risk losing their interest.

That is why I see the candidate experience as part of the quality of recruitment. Clear communication and an organised process say something about how a company works. You do not have to promise everyone an immediate answer, but you do need a follow-up process your team can realistically maintain.

Before celebrating the number of applications, I would look at a few other things:

• How many applicants meet the essential requirements of the role?
• How much time is the team spending identifying relevant experience?
• What information is missing before we can make an informed decision about an interview?
• How quickly do we contact the people we are interested in?
• At what stage do candidates withdraw, and what reasons do they give us?
• Are the interviews giving us enough evidence to make a sound decision?

These questions help us understand whether the search is moving forward. The application count alone cannot tell us that.

Receiving fewer applications is not a goal in itself, either. A business with many vacancies and a well-organised process may be able to manage a high volume effectively. What matters is having the capacity to review applications against clear criteria and follow through with suitable people.

At Kairos Merit, this is one of the problems we want to help address: the work between receiving an application and having useful information on which to assess a professional.

Structured candidate information, human review and a search guided by the needs of the role are valuable because they help a hiring team spend more time on meaningful conversations. The employer still needs to meet the person, explore their experience and decide whether they are right for the operation.

For me, good recruitment starts with knowing what we need and having a sound basis for recognising it.

The next time an advert brings in hundreds of CVs, before deciding that the search is going well, ask how many of those people your team can properly assess and how you intend to do it.

A vacancy is resolved when we make a well-informed hire. Until then, every application we receive is a responsibility we need to be ready to handle.

Lissandra

Kairos Merit