With application volumes at historic highs, ISE’s Head of Insights Claire Tyler considers what’s driving this surge, the key tensions for employers and how they are adapting.
Early careers recruitment has entered a new era of unprecedented demand. Application volumes have surged to record highs, placing growing pressure on managing scale without compromising fairness or quality.
ISE’s Student Recruitment Survey along with a recent employer roundtable help us to see what’s behind the trend, what’s driving candidate behaviour, and how employers are adapting their strategies.
5 key insights on application volumes
- Employers receive 140 applications per graduate vacancy on average - a year-on-year increase of 14% in 2025.
Competition for graduate jobs remain at a historic high - the highest recorded in the three decades since the ISE began collecting the data in 1991.
Two decades ago, employers received an average of 38 applications per graduate vacancy.
- Competition for roles in retail, FMCG and tourism were the highest at 290 applications for every graduate role.
Retail, FMCG & Tourism (290 applications per hire) and Health & Pharmaceuticals (220 applications per hire) were the most competitive sectors in 2025.
Meanwhile, the Legal sector (69 applications per hire) and the Built Environment sector (73 applications per hire) are the least competitive sectors, although still very competitive.
- Two thirds (66%) of employers reported increases in the number of applications per hire.
The mean increase in the number of applications per hire in 2025 was 14% for graduates, however this varies considerably by employer.
- Two thirds (66%) of employers reported increases in their applications per graduate hire (of at least 5%, but usually much higher)
- 13% of employers experienced broadly flat applications per hire (+/- 5%)
- The remaining fifth (21%) of employers experienced a decrease in the number of applications per hire (up to a maximum decrease of 50%).
- For a quarter of employers (23%), applications per graduate hire rose by over 50%.
Many employers experienced large increases in applications per hire in 2025.
- For 43% of employers, applications per graduate hire rose by over 25%
- For 23% of employers, applications per graduate hire rose by over 50%
- For 20% of employers, applications per graduate hire rose by over 75%
- For 13% of employers, applications per graduate hire rose by over 100%
- Two fifths (38%) of employers reported that even with no change or a decrease in their hiring volumes, they too experienced rising application volumes for graduate roles.
Two thirds (65%) of employers reported an increase in total application volumes for graduate roles in 2025, while a third (33%) reported a decrease.
A fifth (22%) of employers reported that despite no change to their number of vacancies, they too experienced a rise in applications. A further 16% of employers reduced hiring volumes while also experiencing higher application volumes.
ISE members can explore our ‘Market Health’ dashboard to find out about application volumes for entry routes by sector.
Key drivers
We have found four key drivers of application volumes:
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A tighter and more uncertain labour market
Graduate opportunities are under pressure (down by 8% last year), increasing competition and prompting candidates to apply more widely. Meanwhile, concerns about student debt repayments, job security and economic uncertainty are driving more risk-averse behaviour among applicants.
- A scattergun candidate mindset
Employers also report a shift in candidate behaviour - where they apply first and decide later if the role is right for them. Recruiters are seeing candidates:
- Applying to more roles across more sectors
- Using early recruitment stages to test interest, rather than applying selectively
- Submitting duplicate applications across multiple roles within the same organisation
- AI driving easier applications
Technology is accelerating application volumes as AI tools make it easier to generate CVs and cover letters. Even video interviews and written answers are increasingly scripted or AI-assisted. Simplified application processes also reduce friction, boosting volumes.
Consequently, recruiters increasingly report difficulty identifying authenticity and potential.
Explore our ‘AI in recruitment’ dashboard to see employer policies and guidance for candidate use, cheating, benefits and drawbacks of using AI in the recruitment process.
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Expanded attraction and access
Efforts to improve diversity and reach are working through reduced academic requirements, but with unintended consequences. Wider access drives larger applicant pools, but not necessarily better-aligned ones.
Tensions for employers
Employers are balancing two key tensions:
Volume vs fairness
High application volumes highlight the trade-off between efficiency and equity. Many of the most obvious solutions to high application volumes, such as stricter academic filters, shorter application windows and earlier screening risk undermining EDI and social mobility goals. Employers are therefore trying to balance reducing volume, maintaining fairness and preserving candidate experience.
Volume vs quality
Despite high volumes, attraction still matters because high volume does not necessarily equal high quality or diversity. Strong employer branding also remains essential to attract the right candidates. However, organisations are under pressure to justify attraction budgets when application numbers are already high.
Employers are adapting in a range of ways
There is no clear consensus on solutions to high application numbers, but several strategies are emerging:
- Moving screening earlier in the process by introducing online assessments before video interviews, using automated threshold scores to decide which candidates progress or only reviewing video interviews if candidates meet minimum criteria. This reduces manual workload significantly, particularly when large volumes are filtered out automatically.
- Rethinking traditional application stages such as removing or reducing video interviews due to AI scripting concerns, reintroducing live interviews earlier for more authentic assessment or splitting assessments into multiple stages to filter progressively. Others are streamlining by scoring fewer questions and prioritising key indicators of potential.
- Helping candidates self-select includes ‘match me’ tools or eligibility quizzes, realistic job previews and culture content and mandatory pre-application learning modules. The aim is to improve alignment, reduce unsuitable applications and shift some responsibility back to candidates.
- Closing roles early or reducing application periods, which can improve quality and manageability, but they raise concerns about accessibility and equal opportunity for different candidate groups.
These approaches and others were discussed in how employers are actually managing record applications and you can read how Connectr is managing application volumes with British Airways.
Where next?
High application volumes are a sign of strong interest in early careers opportunities, however, employers feel they are testing the limits of recruitment models.
The current level of application volumes seems to be a structural shift, rather than a temporary spike, driven by multiple forces, where trade-offs are inevitable and candidate behaviour is evolving faster than recruitment processes.
Longer-term solutions to over-whelming application volumes may include better careers education and guidance earlier in the pipeline, more standardised or shared approaches across the sector and continued innovation in technology-enabled screening.
Register for ISE's Recruitment Conference where you can discuss these challenges and solutions with the early careers community.