Tips for increasing applicant flow

If it’s been more than 24 hours since you posted your job and you’re not getting many applicants, you’re not alone.

Where are the applicants?

We know the size of your applicant pool can vary based on a number of factors, many of which (like where an applicant needs to live) are outside of your control. For instance, some job boards have shifted their visibility toward sponsored (paid) job postings, resulting in organic jobs receiving less visibility and fewer applicants. This is an intentional change to the job marketplace and is not specific to CareerPlug.

To find the best candidates and hiring results, we recommend focusing on the factors within your control: improving the quality of your job postings (titles, descriptions, etc.) and careers page, diversifying the sources where you share your jobs, and leveraging your professional network.

To increase your applicant flow, try the following strategies:

• Follow CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria
• Respond to CareerPlug's Smart Suggestions
• Enhance and promote your careers page
• Share your job to custom sources
• Share your job with your team via an employee referral email
  
• Sponsor a job on Indeed or ZipRecruiter

Follow CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria

We recommend posting jobs that meet CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria, as this expands your talent pool with higher-quality and motivated candidates, accelerates your hiring process to save on recruitment costs, and fosters a positive employer brand.

Our criteria target 5 key components — job titles, job descriptions, compensation, desired experience, and prescreen questions — to make your job postings as effective as possible. Each industry and type of job will have unique challenges, but, on average, jobs that meet our criteria for an effective job posting receive 4x as many applicants.

CareerPlug's recommendations align with best practices from major job boards like Indeed — and they're the best place to start if you want to improve the performance of your job postings.

Respond to CareerPlug's Smart Suggestions

When you're on the Jobs page, you'll see Smart Suggestions to improve your jobs that align with our effective job posting criteria. Suggestions range from making updates to your job posting to ensure its compliant with job board standards to sharing your job on custom sources to attract more high-quality applicants.

These recommendations are tailored to the 90-day lifecycle of your job so that as your posting ages or you make changes to it, we'll update our Smart Suggestions to help you stimulate applicant interest.

Some examples include:

• "Select at least three benefits."

  • This suggestion appears when you have not added benefits to your job posting.

  • To address this, click the Edit Job button, scroll down the Job Posting tab and add at least three Benefits to your job, and click the Update Job Post button to save your changes.

• "This job may not be visible on all job boards. Are you still hiring?"

  • This suggestion appears when an active job has been posted for 90+ days.

  • To address this, click the Yes button to refresh your job posting if you're still hiring. If you're done hiring for this role, click the No, Close the Job button to close your job.

Enhance and promote your careers page

According to CareerPlug internal statistics from the 2025 Recruiting Metrics Report, a company’s careers page typically accounts for 26% of total hires. That means, on average, 1 in 4 of your hires will come from your careers page. Additionally, candidates who apply from your careers page are 4x more likely to be hired than those who find your job on a job board.

Your careers page is not just a URL linked to all your open positions; it's an extension of your employment brand, and an essential tool in your hiring process. Enhance your careers page to make your company stand out from the competition. A strong company description and team photos that show off your company culture can increase your applicant flow.

When you're happy with the content, we recommend sharing your careers page as widely as possible to reach more job seekers in different places. Try adding your careers page URL to your company's bio on social media platforms, or targeting mobile users with Text-to-Apply and QR codes.

Share your job to custom sources

Custom sources are any non-partner job boards or websites where CareerPlug doesn't automatically share your job. According to CareerPlug's latest 2025 Recruiting Metrics Report, applicants from custom sources are 3x more likely to be hired than applicants from job boards.

That's why targeting additional sources — such as local college job boards and social media — is a vital recruiting strategy to attract more high-quality applicants.

To get started, locate the job you want to share on your Jobs page, click the three-dots icon to the right, and select Share from the drop-down menu.

In the Share Job pop-up, click a tile to share your job via that particular custom source method.

Share your job with your team via an employee referral email

Employee referrals are consistently one of the best sources of hires. In a CareerPlug study of more than 10,000 companies, we found that the best source of high-quality applicants for employers in all industries surveyed is referrals. Employee referrals are also hired faster and have a lower cost per hire, a smoother onboarding, and a higher retention rate.

With CareerPlug, you can easily share links to your open positions and careers page with employees, manage referral incentives, track which applicants were referred by whom, and send automated referral digest emails — including unique referral links for each employee.

To share one of your open positions with your team, find it on your Jobs page, click the three-dots icon to the right, and select Share from the drop-down menu.

In the Share Job pop-up, click the Ask Employees For Referrals tile to customize your referral email.

Sponsor a job on Indeed or ZipRecruiter

Sponsoring a job posting on Indeed or ZipRecruiter can help increase its visibility. Sponsored jobs generally receive a higher volume of clicks because they are prioritized over organic postings and aren’t impacted by how recently the job was posted.

To explore job sponsorship in CareerPlug, navigate to your Jobs page and click the Start Sponsoring link under a job title.

What if I want to slow applicant flow to a job?

There is no way to pause a job posting in CareerPlug.

However, if you need to temporarily slow applicant flow to a job so you have the time to evaluate your current applicants before accepting more, we recommend setting your job's status to passive. A passive job posting is only advertised on your careers page as a future opening.