Why am I getting no applications? Nine causes and how to fix each one

First, work out which problem you have

These look the same from the outside and need opposite fixes:

• No applications at all. Your role is not reaching people, or it is reaching them and being dismissed in three seconds. Look at the title, salary and location.
• Plenty of applications, none suitable. Your role is reaching the wrong people. Look at what the advert promises versus what the job requires.

CIPD's 2024 survey found employers were more likely to report an increase in unsuitable applicants (52%) than suitable ones (34%). A full inbox is not evidence that the advert is working.

The nine causes, cheapest fix first

1. The job title is internal, not searched

"Client Delivery Partner" is a title inside your company. Nobody types it into a job board. If the market calls the role a Management Accountant, the advert has to say Management Accountant, whatever it says on the org chart.

Test: search your own job title on a job board. If you get results that are not your job, the title is wrong.

2. The salary is below the market for the work described

The most common cause, and the least popular to hear. A role written for someone with eight years' experience, priced for someone with three, will pull applications from people with three.

Test: look at what live adverts near you pay for the same responsibilities — not the same title.

3. No salary is shown at all

"Competitive salary" reads as "below market" to most candidates, and it is filtered out by anyone using a salary filter — which on the major boards is most people.

4. The location or hours are impossible

A site-based role with a 45-minute commute in an area where the equivalent job is 15 minutes away will lose every time. So will an advert that hides shift patterns until interview.

Test: would someone already doing this job locally be better off moving to you? If not, the advert is not the problem.

5. The advert is a job description

A job description is a legal and operational document. An advert is a piece of persuasion. Eight hundred words of duty bullets and "the successful candidate will be responsible for" is a document, not an advert.

Fix this one properly in how to write a job advert that gets applications.

6. The requirements are a wish list

Every additional "essential" removes candidates. Five essentials and three desirables is a role; fifteen essentials is a fantasy, and the people confident enough to apply anyway are usually the ones who read requirements loosely.

7. The application process is too long

An application form that takes twenty minutes, requires an account, and re-asks everything on the CV will lose most of the people who started it. Every extra step costs applications, and the best candidates — who are employed and applying in a lunch break — drop first.

8. The role is only where you put it

One job board is one audience. Roles in trades, care and driving in particular have very different audiences across boards, and a single listing can miss most of the market. This is the one case where "advertise it more widely" is the actual answer rather than the sales pitch.

9. The people you want are not looking

Some roles genuinely cannot be advertised into existence. In our own data, the searches that needed the most work were never advertising failures — they were roles where the right person was employed, content, and never going to see a job advert. The Field Service Engineer role that took 115 days and 40 candidates was not an advertising problem.

Test: if you can name five companies where these people work, and none of them are hiring, you need a search rather than an advert.

The order to change things

Change one thing at a time and give it a week. Changing the title, salary and advert together tells you nothing about which one was wrong.

1. Title — free, immediate, most likely to be the cause
2. Salary shown — free if the number was already agreed
3. Advert rewritten — an hour of work
4. Application process shortened — one afternoon, permanent benefit
5. Wider distribution — costs money, works only if 1–4 are right
6. Move to a search — when the audience is not looking

When to stop advertising and start searching

The honest signal is the funnel. If you have had a live advert for three weeks, more than twenty applications, and none reached a second interview, you do not have a reach problem — the market is telling you it does not hold what you asked for at the price you offered. At that point you either change the ask, change the money, or go and find people who are not looking.

That last option is what a managed search is: in our data, about 26 candidates worked for every hire, most of whom were not applicants.

Frequently asked questions