With decades in management consulting, Marco Gaietti has become a leading voice on strategic business management and data-driven operations. As HR leaders navigate what a recent report calls “planning for the unpredictable,” we sat down with Marco to unpack the latest hiring benchmarks. He shared his perspective on why a laser-focused approach is critical, how to interpret conflicting data trends, and what the numbers reveal about the distinct challenges and advantages of companies, both large and small. The conversation explored the strategic shifts necessary for success, from improving candidate screening to attracting a more diverse workforce, and why the most impactful changes often create positive ripple effects throughout the entire hiring funnel.
When leaders are pressured to improve everything, why is focusing on one or two high-impact metrics more effective? Can you walk us through how a team can pinpoint the single most critical bottleneck in their hiring funnel and share an example of a targeted fix?
It’s a classic case of trying to boil the ocean. When teams adopt a “fix everything” approach, their efforts become so scattered that they make minimal progress anywhere. The key is to view your hiring process as a connected funnel with distinct stages: attract, screen, interview, select, and onboard. To find the bottleneck, you have to look at the conversion rates between each stage. For instance, if you’re seeing a massive jump in applicant volume—say, from 207 to 258 per job—but your screen-to-interview rate is plummeting, you’ve found your problem. The bottleneck is screening. A targeted fix isn’t to work longer hours, but to implement a better screening process, perhaps through new tech or a standardized rubric. This single change can unclog the entire system and create a ripple effect of positive outcomes.
Applicant volumes are up and time-to-fill is down, but early retention has fallen to 85%. What does this paradox suggest about current hiring quality? Please detail a specific change in the selection stage that could help reverse this trend and improve new hire success.
This paradox is a flashing red light signaling that speed is trumping substance. Seeing the time-to-fill drop from 67 to 63 days feels like a victory, but it’s a hollow one if 15% of your new hires are walking out the door. It strongly suggests that in the rush to fill seats, teams are skipping crucial steps that ensure a good long-term fit. To reverse this, a critical change needs to happen in the selection stage, specifically within the interview process. Instead of focusing solely on technical skills, organizations must embed a structured component to consistently assess for cultural alignment and long-term potential. This means asking every candidate for a role the same set of questions designed to probe their values and working style, ensuring you’re not just hiring for the role today, but for a successful employee tomorrow.
Enterprises convert nearly double the percentage of screened candidates to interviews compared to small businesses. What specific resource or process differences contribute to this gap, and what is one practical, low-cost strategy smaller organizations can implement to become more efficient at this critical stage?
That gap—47% conversion for enterprises versus just 24% for small businesses—is a direct reflection of disparities in resources and technology. Enterprises typically have sophisticated applicant tracking systems and dedicated recruiting teams that can process candidates with incredible efficiency, moving them from screen to interview in about six days. Small businesses often take closer to eight days and are working with more manual systems. A fantastic, low-cost strategy for a smaller organization is to develop a simple but structured screening scorecard. It doesn’t require a huge budget, just a thoughtful process to define the top five essential criteria for a role and score every applicant against them. This brings consistency and focus, helping the team more accurately identify the best candidates and begin closing that efficiency gap.
Small businesses attract over twice the share of diverse applicants as large enterprises. Beyond brand perception, what factors contribute to this gap? Can you detail one specific, actionable strategy an enterprise recruitment marketing team could implement to attract a more diverse candidate pool?
It’s a striking difference, with small businesses attracting a 58% share of diverse applicants compared to just 27% at enterprises. While an enterprise’s monolithic brand can feel impersonal, the real difference often lies in the nature of the outreach. Small businesses frequently have a more localized, community-based appeal that feels more personal and authentic. For a large enterprise to counter this, their recruitment marketing team must shift from a broadcast approach to a narrowcast one. A powerful, actionable strategy is to create targeted employer branding micro-campaigns. Instead of one generic “we value diversity” message, they should develop content and run ads that speak directly to the unique values and interests of specific diverse communities, using the channels and voices that already resonate with those audiences. It’s about showing up authentically where the candidates are.
A better screening process can reportedly improve both interview-to-offer rates and candidate experience. Can you explain the mechanics behind this ripple effect? Please share one specific example of a screening change a team could implement to achieve these downstream benefits.
The mechanics are quite elegant. A robust screening process acts as a high-quality filter. When you effectively screen out candidates who are not a good fit early on, you ensure that the people who advance to the interview stage are all strong contenders. This means your hiring managers are spending their time with a more qualified pool, which naturally causes the interview-to-offer rate to climb. At the same time, this efficiency profoundly impacts the candidate experience. Applicants feel their time is being respected because the process is clear, fair, and decisive. A great example of a change is implementing a short, automated skills assessment right after the application is submitted. It provides immediate, objective feedback and ensures that only those with the foundational skills move forward, creating that positive momentum for everyone involved.
The hospitality industry fills roles in around 40 days, while software and tech can take over 50. Beyond role complexity, what operational differences allow hospitality to move so much faster, and what is one key lesson tech hiring managers could learn from their process?
The speed of hospitality hiring is truly impressive. Setting aside the complexity of the roles, their primary operational advantage is a mastery of process standardization. They hire for many similar roles at high volume, so they have perfected a streamlined, almost templated workflow that moves with incredible urgency—they get candidates from screening to interview in under seven days. The single most important lesson a tech hiring manager can learn from this is the art of separating administrative speed from evaluative depth. While a senior engineering role requires complex technical interviews, the initial steps—screening resumes, scheduling calls, and collecting feedback—don’t. Tech teams can adopt hospitality’s ruthless efficiency for these administrative stages to accelerate the overall timeline without ever compromising the quality of the technical assessment.
What is your forecast for how hiring benchmarks and priorities will shift over the next two years?
My forecast is a decisive pivot from vanity metrics to quality and efficiency metrics. For years, the headline number was applicant volume, but that’s changing. With early retention falling to 85%, the financial and cultural cost of bad hires is becoming painfully clear. Over the next two years, I expect leading organizations to become obsessed with funnel conversion rates—metrics like screen-to-interview and interview-to-offer—because these numbers tell the true story of hiring effectiveness. Candidate experience will also move from a “nice-to-have” to a mission-critical KPI, viewed as a direct reflection of the employer brand. The companies that thrive won’t be the ones who attract the most candidates, but the ones who have mastered the science of converting the right candidates into engaged, successful employees.
