The numbers are in for 2023, and now it's time to look forward to which recruitment strategies we should apply in 2024.

In this benchmark review we highlight 3 important recruitment benchmark reports and their outcomes.

1. 2023 Hiring Benchmark Report (data by Criteria Group)
2. 2023 Trends in Recruiter Productivity Report (data by Ashby)
3. 2023 Recruiting Outreach Benchmarks Report (data by Gem)

1. 2023 Hiring Benchmark Report (data by Criteria Group)

The first report that we can learn from is the Criteria Research 2023 Benchmark Report. The report covers key insights from over 450 hiring professionals, predominantly from the United States, Australia, and Canada, spanning a wide range of industries and company sizes​​.

It covers the following areas:

• Talent Shortage and Skills Gap
• Remote Work Advantage
• Employee Turnover and Internal Mobility
• AI in HR
• Hiring Strategies
• Future Outlook and Priorities

Talent Shortage and Skills Gap

Understanding the challenge

• Key Insight: 73% of hiring professionals believe there's a talent shortage, and 70% struggle to find candidates with the right skills (benchmarks like these are aggregated and confidence-rated at AIRecruiter.co, worth a look before you quote any single number as fact). This issue is particularly acute in the Manufacturing and Healthcare industries​​.

Steps to address

• Reevaluate Job Requirements: Scrutinize the necessity of each job requirement. Are all listed skills essential, or can some be learned on the job?
• Upskill Current Employees: Invest in training programs to bridge the skills gap within your existing workforce.
• Look for Transferable Skills: When hiring, prioritize candidates with skills that can be adapted to multiple roles.
• Improve Onboarding and Training: Develop comprehensive onboarding and training programs to help new hires acquire necessary skills quickly.
• Explore AI Solutions: Consider using AI in recruitment to identify candidates with potential that might be overlooked through traditional methods.

Remote Work Advantage

Leveraging remote work

• Key Insight: Remote companies have advantages in attracting talent. 80% of in-person workplaces struggle with skill shortages, compared to 57% of remote workplaces​​.

Steps to implement

• Adopt a Remote or Hybrid Model: If feasible, transition to a remote or hybrid work model to access a wider talent pool.
• Enhance Remote Work Infrastructure: Invest in technology and policies that support effective remote working.
• Remote Work Training: Provide training to managers and staff on how to work effectively in a remote environment.

Employee Turnover and Internal Mobility

Tackling turnover

• Key Insight: 45% of hiring professionals see turnover as a major issue. Healthcare and Manufacturing have higher turnover rates, especially among in-person workplaces​​.

Steps to reduce turnover

• Internal Mobility Programs: Implement programs that allow employees to move within the organization, thus enhancing job satisfaction and retention.
• Regular Feedback and Engagement: Engage with employees regularly to understand their career aspirations and job satisfaction levels.
• Competitive Compensation and Benefits: Ensure your compensation packages are competitive within your industry.

AI in HR

AI adoption

• Key Insight: Only 12% of hiring professionals currently use AI in recruitment. The adoption is higher in larger companies and certain industries like Technology and Finance​​.

Steps for AI integration

• Evaluate AI Tools: Assess various AI tools for their potential in improving hiring efficiency and accuracy.
• Pilot Programs: Start with pilot programs in specific areas of recruitment to gauge effectiveness.
• Training and Transparency: Train HR teams on AI usage and maintain transparency about its role in the hiring process.

Hiring Strategies

Hiring methodologies

• Key Insight: Job boards are the most used source for talent. Interviews, especially in-person, and pre-employment assessments are key selection methods​​.

Steps to optimize hiring

• Optimize Job Descriptions: Use AI tools to develop effective job descriptions.
• Diversify Hiring Channels: Expand beyond job boards to include social media, employee referrals, and professional networks.
• Structured Interviews: Implement structured interviews to objectively assess candidates.

Future Outlook and Priorities

Preparing for 2024

• Key Insight: Top priorities include reducing turnover, upskilling employees, and improving hiring efficiency. There's a general sense of optimism for growth in 2024​​.

Steps for future readiness

• Focus on Employee Development: Place a strong emphasis on training and development programs.
• Process Optimization: Continuously seek ways to make hiring processes more efficient.
• Embrace Flexibility and Innovation: Be open to new methods of working and hiring to adapt to changing circumstances.

2. 2023 Trends in Recruiter Productivity Report (data by Ashby)

The second report worth studying is the Ashby Trends in Talent: Recruiter Productivity report. Where Criteria surveys how hiring professionals feel, Ashby measures what actually happened inside its customers' applicant tracking data. That makes it a useful reality check against the survey numbers above: it shows the pipeline as it really moved, not as recruiters remembered it.

The report focuses on four shifts:

• The surge in application volume
• Hires per recruiter and true productivity
• Offer conversion rates by role type
• The move toward quality of hire

Application volume is surging

Understanding the shift

• Key Insight: Weekly application rates roughly tripled between January 2021 and April 2023, across both business and technical roles. Volume peaks hardest in the first week a job is live, then settles into a sustained, elevated stream rather than tapering off. The bottleneck has moved from finding enough applicants to screening a flood of them without missing the strong ones.

Steps to apply

• Front-load screening capacity: Expect the biggest wave in week one and staff review accordingly.
• Automate the first filter: Use structured knockout questions or AI screening so recruiters spend time on shortlists, not raw inboxes.
• Close roles faster: A steady stream of applicants means a slow process quietly loses qualified people who move on.

Hires per recruiter and real productivity

Reading the number correctly

• Key Insight: Hires per recruiter fell about 36% from their Q2 2021 peak, even as applications climbed. That looks like a productivity collapse, but it mostly reflects fewer open roles and more interviews per hire, not less effort. Measure productivity by process efficiency (time in each stage, interview load per hire), not raw hire counts, which are driven by hiring demand you do not control.

Offer conversion is rebounding

Benchmarking your close rate

• Key Insight: Offer conversion hit a low in early 2023, around 3.9% of the funnel reaching an accepted offer for technical roles and 5% for business roles, then began climbing back as the market cooled and candidates fielded fewer competing offers. Tracking your own conversion against these figures tells you whether a weak close rate is a compensation problem, a candidate-experience problem, or simply the market.

Quality of hire is the new priority

Why the process got longer

• Key Insight: Teams shifted decisively away from the 2021 "hire at all costs" mindset toward quality of hire, investing more interview time per candidate to make sure each hire is the right one. A longer, more deliberate interview process is now a feature rather than a bug, provided it stays structured and does not quietly turn into candidate-experience debt.

3. 2023 Recruiting Outreach Benchmarks Report (data by Gem)

The third report is the Gem 2023 Recruiting Benchmarks Report, built from 3.2 million email outreach sequences and 27.8 million candidates who entered Gem customers' funnels between June 2022 and August 2023. If Criteria tells you how recruiters feel and Ashby tells you what your pipeline looks like, Gem tells you what to expect when you actually reach out to passive candidates.

The most useful benchmarks cover:

• Email open and reply rates
• The measurable payoff of personalization
• Sourced versus inbound candidate behaviour
• Time to hire

Open rates and the personalization payoff

Where outreach actually breaks

• Key Insight: A well-built three-stage email sequence averages an 81% open rate, so getting messages opened is rarely the problem. Replies are. The single clearest lever Gem found is genuine personalization: stage-one messages that include a specific reason for reaching out earn a reply rate 23.7% higher than those without one. Generic "I came across your profile" outreach is what depresses response, not the channel itself.

Steps to apply

• Lead with a real reason: Reference something specific about the candidate in the first message.
• Sequence, do not blast: Multi-stage follow-ups drive most replies, but keep them spaced and human.
• Measure reply rate, not open rate: Opens are easy; replies are the metric that predicts hires.

Sourced versus inbound candidates

The trade-off of outbound sourcing

• Key Insight: Sourced (outbound) candidates are roughly 4 to 5 times more likely to be hired than inbound applicants, yet about 7% less likely to accept an offer once you get there, and they take around 8 days longer to hire (a median near 44 days against 36 days overall). Outbound sourcing is worth the effort, but budget for the longer timeline and the tougher close, because these people usually are not actively job hunting.

Watch for outreach bias

Auditing your top of funnel

• Key Insight: Gem's data exposed sharp demographic imbalances in who gets contacted. In its dataset, Asian talent received about 1.2 times more outreach than White talent, 4.7 times more than Hispanic or Latinx talent, and 5 times more than Black or African American talent. Auditing your own outreach volume by demographic is a concrete, measurable way to check whether your top of funnel is as diverse as you intend it to be.

4. What actually works in 2024

Read together, the three reports point in the same direction. Criteria shows recruiters still fighting a skills shortage and only beginning to adopt AI (just 12% at the time of the survey). Ashby shows the workload has shifted from finding applicants to screening a flood of them while protecting quality of hire. Gem shows that when you do reach out, personalization and patience beat volume. The common thread is that the teams winning in 2024 are the ones that automate the repetitive front of the funnel and spend the freed-up hours on judgement: structured interviews, real personalization, and honest measurement of each stage.

That is also where AI sourcing tools have started to matter. Platforms such as HeroHunt.ai take on the highest-volume, lowest-judgement work, searching across profiles and drafting first-touch outreach, so recruiters can put their hours into the quality-of-hire decisions all three reports say now determine success. Benchmarks are only useful if you act on them: pick two or three metrics above (offer conversion, reply rate, time to hire), measure your own numbers against these, and fix the widest gap first.

Written by Yuma Heymans (@yumahey), who built HeroHunt.ai, the world's first AI Recruiter, now used by 15,000+ recruiters to source and reach candidates on autopilot.