There’s a glimmer of hope in 2025 for frustrated jobseekers

Why should you care if you don’t work in HR?

“I look at our HR-placement business as a bellwether because if companies are hiring in that department, they’re generally getting ready to hire in other areas," says Cain, who is chief executive of Beacon Hill Staffing Group.

If you’re an exasperated job seeker reading this skeptically, I can’t blame you. More than 1.6 million of you were out of work and had been hunting for at least six months as of November, 50% more than a couple of years ago. And the share of workers feeling unhappy and stuck in jobs they don’t like is at a 10-year high, according to a recent Gallup survey. So the struggle to land a new white-collar role is real, but there is reason to think more doors of opportunity could open in the near future.

More than three-quarters of CEOs who run large companies expect the global economy to improve in the first half of this year, partly because they anticipate lower taxes and fewer regulations under the incoming Republican administration, according to a survey by advisory firm Teneo. That’s way up from the 45% of CEOs who made the same prediction about the start of 2024.

Optimistic executives are more likely to hire. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. employers plan to add permanent roles in the next six months, according to a new survey by staffing and consulting firm Robert Half. Barely half of companies said the same midway through 2024.

“We heard from many employers last year that said they were holding off hiring until the election," says Brandi Britton, an executive director in Robert Half’s finance and accounting practice. “They didn’t necessarily have an opinion which way the vote should go, or if they did they didn’t say, but it was more about wanting clarity before making some additions."

A lot of companies that waited to post job openings are now ready to move forward, she says. In a LinkedIn survey of nearly 2,000 C-suite executives last month, 77% said they are planning for steady or high-growth hiring in 2025, while 4% said they plan to slow hiring or cut jobs.

The AI factor

Recruiters and executives also say some companies slowed or paused hiring last year to assess the capabilities and limitations of artificial intelligence—and concluded they’ll need more human workers in the coming year, not fewer.

Tampa, Fla.-based accounting firm Schellman, which has 545 employees, asked its technology vendors to identify ways in which AI could speed up tasks and possibly reduce the number of people required to complete them, says Chief Executive Avani Desai. Instead of cutting jobs, she found she needed to create seven roles for people who specialize in prompting AI software to get the most out of it.

For now, Desai says her company’s AI efforts cost more money than they save. She’s betting that will change, or she wouldn’t make the investment, but in the meantime she plans to add 35 positions in accounting, engineering, administration and leadership coaching in the first half of this year.

Other AI experiments are enough to induce night sweats but might not be as frightening as they appear. Buy-now-pay-later company Klarna froze hiring in 2024 on the premise that bots could replace people. The trial was so successful (if that’s the right word, coming from a human) that CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski used an AI clone of himself to report quarterly results last month.

Yet even Klarna has determined people aren’t entirely dispensable yet. A spokesman said the company’s workforce of about 3,800 has shrunk 20% through attrition, but “there are some edge cases where specific roles need to be backfilled, mainly in engineering." Klarna had 46 openings listed on its careers page this week.

Indeed Chief Executive Chris Hyams envisions 2025 as the year when AI—which many job seekers blame for unfairly screening out their applications—becomes more of an ally in the search process. He says the technology has mostly been a tool for employers to this point, and his job-board company aims to shift more power to people looking for work. Indeed is coming out with Pathfinder, an AI tool that will attempt to serve as a personal talent agent for people looking for new roles or those not actively searching but open to opportunities.

Answer a slew of questions about your skills and interests, as you would at a placement agency, and Pathfinder will automatically put you in the applicant pool for openings where you’re a good fit and have a realistic shot. The idea is to take the scut work out of applying online and get to the interview stage faster.

“We want to get to a human-to-human connection," Hyams says. “We talked to thousands of job seekers, and the thing they always said is, ‘I just want a chance to explain to someone why I know I can do this job.’ "

A better candidate experience

Natalie Serpico felt like the world was ending when she was laid off from her marketing job a month ago. With two months’ severance and a husband who earns well, she says her sense of dread was less about the layoff itself than about the job-hunting horrors she expected to face, including fake listings, interminable recruiting processes and professional acquaintances who offer to make intros but never follow through.

To her surprise, a former co-worker introduced her to a hiring manager at an education-technology company, who arranged a call to discuss a forthcoming opening that hadn’t been posted yet. A hiring manager at another company reached out about an open role, on the recommendation of a different former colleague. Serpico, 30 years old, says she used her network strategically because referrals can be valuable and applied cold to about 100 jobs, landing two additional interviews that way.

Interested companies have told her to expect a decision in about two weeks. One said her application wouldn’t be reviewed until employees returned from a holiday break, which spared her from fretting over the lack of response. Serpico hasn’t received any offers yet but is hopeful that courtesy is returning to hiring.

“All people want is to not be waiting and wondering, ‘Am I moving forward or did I not get it?’ " she says. “It’s as simple as sending an email."

CEOs such as Clint Sharp of cloud computing company Cribl say they’re listening. He reads complaints that job candidates post in online forums such as Glassdoor and tells his recruiters not to leave applicants hanging. Employees rate Cribl and Sharp highly on Glassdoor, but the interview process gets mixed reviews, with some candidates saying they were ghosted.

Cribl plans to hire 350 people this year to add to its staff of 750. Job candidates should expect a five- to seven-step process that includes a skills test and multiple interviews, Sharp says.

“I hope the process is more humane because people seeking a job deserve to be treated with respect, but it’s still very rigorous," he says. “If that’s not for you, then there are other employers who might have a less exacting process."

Hey, no one promised the door of opportunity would open easily.

Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com