On the Friday, August 21, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: Both candidates and recruiters are frustrated with the hiring process. Candidates are sending out hundreds of resumes sometimes with rare interactions with hiring managers. On the flip side, recruiters see resumes stacked with keywords for candidates that lack relevant experience. Is the hiring process broken? USA TODAY Wellness Reporter Rachel Hale joins The Excerpt to share her deep dive into the state of hiring.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Picture this, a software engineer logs onto Zoom for a coding interview. No interviewer ever shows up. Days later, he gets rejected based on his performance in the interview he says never happened. Another job seeker sent out roughly 5,000 applications to no avail. And then there are the jobs that may not really be available at all. Listings for positions companies may have paused, planned to fill internally, or simply using to build a future talent pool. All of this has many people asking, is the hiring process broken?

Hello and welcome to USA TODAY’s The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, August 21, 2026. Joining me to examine what’s going on in the job market is USA TODAY money reporter, Rachel Barber. Rachel, it’s always good to speak with you.

Rachel Barber:

Yes, thanks for having me back.

Dana Taylor:

For people who’ve been job hunting for months and wondering, “Is it me?” how much did your reporting suggest that the problem is actually the hiring system itself?

Rachel Barber:

Well, look, getting a job has rarely been easy, but there are some forces out there that are making it harder for applicants this year. They’re facing fierce competition. The growing use of artificial intelligence on both sides, on the employer side, on the candidate side has complicated things. And candidates are questioning some of the most basic parts of the job search. Some are wondering whether the job postings that they see listed online are even real.

But I do want to say that people are still getting hired. This doesn’t mean that if you’re a job seeker out there that you won’t find work. And some of the responsibility is on the job seeker, of course. If you’re not taking your time to submit your application or prepare for an interview, then you may be your own worst enemy. It also depends on what kind of job you want.

Hiring has been largely concentrated in a few select sectors like healthcare. So if you’re applying to be a nurse, your search might be quick. If you’re applying in an industry like technology, which has accounted for 31% of all layoffs this year, then your search is probably going to be more difficult.

Dana Taylor:

The unemployment rate was still relatively low at 4.1% in July. So why can a job market look fairly healthy on paper while the experience of actually trying to get hired feels so brutal?

Rachel Barber:

Yeah, the unemployment rate started at 4.1% in July. That’s down from earlier this year, and that’s typically good news for the economy. However, economists have said that they believe it’s falling for the wrong reason. The unemployment rate, if you take a look at it, it’s really just a function of how many people are unemployed that would like to be employed. This year, we have fewer people who would like to be employed. In July, 264,000 people left the workforce, and that’s after 720,000 people left in June. Over the last year, about 1.3 million Americans have made their exit. So people are leaving for a large variety of reasons. Some experts theorize that one of those reasons may be because of burnout from the job search.

Dana Taylor:

One of the people you spoke with said that volume has replaced intention. Applicants per open role has doubled since 2022, and recruiters are now sorting through hundreds of applications for a single hire. How does that sheer volume impact the process?

Rachel Barber:

So I just want to point out where this all started. We saw the explosion of remote work married to the COVID-19 pandemic and thereafter. So that led to more applicants vying for the same jobs around the country instead of just competing with those in their area or those willing to relocate for a position. So now, recruiters, whereas they used to review 100 applications per role in early 2021, they’re now reviewing about 291 applications per hire. That’s according to a survey that I cite in the story.

So essentially what this looks like is employers are receiving hundreds of applications that they say realistically they cannot respond to all of them. But then the applicants who aren’t getting a response upon not hearing back think, “Okay, well then I’ll just apply to more jobs.” So then the cycle continues.

Dana Taylor:

How hard is that cycle to break? What are you hearing from applicants?

Rachel Barber:

At a broad level, it may be hard to break. We can’t really just tell everyone like, “Hey, stop applying to jobs,” or tell companies, “Hey, stop accepting so many applications.” That’s not necessarily an easy fix.

But for applicants, the career experts that I spoke to for this story suggest that they do narrow their search. So instead of submitting 500 applications where you’re taking 5 minutes on each, perhaps spend 40 minutes really thoroughly answering interview questions, tailoring your resume or cover letter to a position that you really want. That approach can make a lot of sense at sort of a high level, but it doesn’t guarantee that the candidate is going to find a job. So many job seekers want to just test out the other approach, and they’re submitting as many applications as possible, throwing them at the wall to see what sticks. And I don’t think you can necessarily blame them for that.

Dana Taylor:

AI seems to be supercharging that problem on both sides. Can you explain how and why that is?

Rachel Barber:

One of the job seekers that I spoke with describes it as an automation arms race. So we have applicants increasingly using AI to tailor their resumes or their cover letters for an application, and then employers increasingly using AI or application tracking systems or applicant tracking systems to filter and rank those applications. So we’ve got automation on both sides right now.

And so as a result, we have applicant tracking systems that are scanning potentially AI-generated resumes for specific keywords or phrases. And if you’re submitting a resume that maybe you wrote yourself that you didn’t have an AI review for keywords or phrases from the job description, then you may never reach the level where a human is actually reviewing what you submitted.

I spoke with one career expert who saw that a company she was working with or at least talking to, that they had rejected several qualified applicants just based on where a comma was placed in their search criteria. And so you have to consider that these applicant tracking systems may be either flagging your resume because you said the magic phrase, or maybe they’re putting it in the bin because you didn’t.

Job seekers are well aware of this. Only 10% of job seekers believe that most of their resumes are actually being reviewed by a human, and that’s according to another survey that I cite in the story. But 64% believe that their resumes are optimized for application tracking systems. So we’ve got AI on both sides.

One job seeker that I spoke with is not happy with this. She put it pretty simply and asked the question, “Where’s the humanity in all of this?” We have a lot of automation involved, at least in the first step of the hiring process. Obviously, eventually you will hopefully speak to a human in an interview. But for the first part, a lot of the humanity has been taken out of the process.

Dana Taylor:

Let’s shift to ghost jobs. Rachel, what are they and why might a company advertise a position that an unemployed applicant never had a realistic chance of getting?

Rachel Barber:

So ghost jobs are sort of exactly that. That’s what candidates call jobs that they feel like they never had a realistic shot at. And there’s a lot of reasons or circumstances where a candidate may refer to a job posting as a ghost job. One of them is if a company puts out a job posting really only with the intention of creating a reserve or a stack of resumes that they may reference down the line. That doesn’t work out for everyone. One of the job seekers I spoke to said that she’s aware of the concept of building a talent pipeline, but that after 5,000 applications over the last three years, that she’s never received a call from a company saying, “Oh, we got your resume two years ago and we have this other opening that may work for you.” So some don’t believe in that.

But otherwise on the topic of ghost jobs, even if a job listing is not a scam, a company may post a role while planning to hire someone internally. They may be planning on recruiting someone who’s already working at another company. A budget change could mean that a company had plans for a role, they posted it to LinkedIn or Indeed, and then quarter changed, year changed, leadership changed, the budget changed, and now the role that was once real is now cut. And so, the reason these are called ghost jobs is because they are potentially real. They have real reasons behind why they didn’t lead to a hire, but that they were never something that an unemployed worker just scrolling online realistically had a shot at getting.

Another report that I cite in the story analyzed data from Ashby, which is a recruiting platform. And it found that in 2024, 82% of all of the job postings did lead to a real hire, but that I think it was 5.5% were somehow paused. 1% led to an offer, but no hire, and 3.5% were pulled without a reason given. So for the most part, the jobs are real, but at the same time, it is fair to say that there are some opportunities out there that are not legitimate opportunities when you’re just scrolling online.

Dana Taylor:

Some lawmakers are now saying employers should provide more transparency. New York lawmakers have passed legislation that would require larger employers to disclose whether, as you’ve described, a posting represents a current vacancy, a longer term opening, or simply an effort to collect resumes for the future. What rules would, or are there rules that would meaningfully change the experience for job seekers?

Rachel Barber:

Well, there are some rules out there already in terms of states requiring that companies list salary ranges in the job descriptions. And for the most part, companies comply with those in those states. I haven’t reviewed the New York legislation in detail myself, but the idea would likely sound good to the job seekers that I spoke with. One said that, like I said, she’s never had a company reach out to her because of that talent pipeline created. So I don’t know that she in particular would, or someone like her would apply for a job if it was very clear that the company was not hiring immediately. Most people looking for a job do want something in the short term.

Surveys routinely find that candidates trust job descriptions more when there’s more transparency, whether that’s around salary, work hours, whether or not it’s a remote position, job responsibility. So I think in general, job seekers appreciate when an employer offers more transparency in the job description. So something like that, I don’t know. We’d have to do maybe a survey, but I think generally that would be something that job seekers would find to be a positive.

Dana Taylor:

There’s also a broader collapse of trust running through your reporting, misleading job descriptions, remote jobs that turn out to not be remote, suspicious recruiting messages and outright scams. What happens to the labor market when applicants start assuming the posting, the recruiter, even the interview itself might not be what it appears to be?

Rachel Barber:

That’s a big question. It’s hard to answer because applicants respond differently. One job seeker told me that yes, he receives those suspicious scam offers, whether it’s a text from an unknown number or an email that says, “We’ve got a job for you. It pays $500.00 a day and it’s yours,” that he says that they’re really easy to spot. So he just sort of ignores them and keeps trucking along with his job search.

But another job seeker that I spoke with told me that when a company reaches out to her to say, “Hey, we have an AI interviewer. Just join this Loom link,” that she refuses. So it does depend on the applicant themselves and how they’re trusting the process or navigating the process. But people have dropped out of the workforce in droves and burnout from the job search is one theory why. So I guess we may already be seeing the effects from that lack of trust already.

Dana Taylor:

Rachel, how can trust be rebuilt in the hiring process?

Rachel Barber:

Yeah, everyone has different ideas here. Maybe bringing some of that humanity back would be what one of the job seekers I spoke to would say. One of my sources who’s a career expert offered a few concrete pieces of advice for employers. She suggests that companies, HR, recruiters, hiring managers, and leadership teams come together and have some serious conversations about redesigning the process, something that perhaps uses AI or applicant tracking systems in an effective way to boost the efficiency there, but that doesn’t completely dominate the entire experience.

And ultimately, I think the goal is a system that gives candidates closure because sure, it’s not nice for a job seeker to not hear back from a recruiter or a company, but it’s also not good for the company, and its sort of reputation as an employer if the candidate never hears back and then decides to never apply again and to also tell all of their friends or network to never apply there again. And so, it’s a complicated question for sure, but I think that overall people are hoping that there’s some amount of humanity injected back into the process. It’s just a difficult thing with the volume of applications that need to be reviewed.

Dana Taylor:

And then finally, Rachel, for someone who’s actively looking for work, what do you suggest they should do differently to break through the noise?

Rachel Barber:

So my sources suggest that they target their applications. Again, send out 20 really good ones rather than 200 mediocre ones. Of course, networking still remains important. That can be a scary word to people. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be going out and getting coffees with CEOs if you’re an entry level hire, or even if you’re not. They remind job seekers that a job opportunity could come from a conversation with your neighbor or a conversation with your hairdresser.

But if you’re really stuck and they suggest sort of an old-fashioned approach, go to career fairs, go to company events, ask good questions, stand out as someone who’s just interested in the company, and maybe that opens a door for you. And if that doesn’t work, we’re now approaching the holidays. Some businesses may be looking for seasonal workers or seasonal employees. That’s another way to maybe get your foot in the door. Might not be a forever job, but it’s something temporary that you could do. And also, even though it says it’s a seasonal opportunity, then maybe you prove yourself and get brought on board full-time. Most of all, they mainly just tell job seekers, “Don’t give up. It is tough out there. It’s not just you most likely. And really at the end of the day, you only need one.”

Dana Taylor:

Rachel Barber is a money reporter for USA TODAY, and I should say we’ll have a link to your full story in our show notes. Rachel, thank you so much.

Rachel Barber:

Thank you so much. Have a good one.

Dana Taylor:

Make The Excerpt part of your weekday routine. New episodes are available every weekday morning. I’m Dana Taylor. Thanks for listening.