Employers are now skipping the once crucial job interview to hire in the tight labor market

The labor market has been tight for a while and some employers have realized that skipping the job interview stage helps them grab talent faster than the traditional hiring methods.

United Parcel Service Inc. has recently hired package handlers and seasonal drivers without conducting job interviews. Another employer that picked up the fast job offer trend is Home Depot Inc. In fact, they have been reported to send in job offers within 24 hours after candidates apply by eliminating the interview process entirely. At Gap Inc., some warehousing positions are filled without interviewing the candidates.

Not all jobs are filled without conducting job interviews. As we observe, many of the jobs that don’t require interviews are paid by the hour and are in sectors with high turnover rates, including warehousing and retail. Although these cases of employers skipping the job interview stage are rare, it is happening across the country as businesses are trying to bulk up on the workforce while the labor market cools down.

There is a high demand for blue-collar workers in many sectors even amidst the massive layoffs at tech firms such as Amazon, Meta, and Twitter. Recently, some food and beverages businesses joined in on the layoff trend, with PepsiCo announcing plans to cut off hundreds of jobs.

The jobs report last month indicated that employers added 263,000 jobs in November. The unemployment rate for the month held steady at 3.7% indicating the strength of the overall job market even amidst layoffs. There were over 10.3 million job openings across the states in October, exceeding the 6.1 million American workers looking for employment opportunities. The tight labor market of the past two years has some employers even dropping their college-degree requirements and background checks.

A majority of employers have now exhausted their methods of attracting new talent. Pay raises, signing bonuses, and benefits packages are not working in favor of employers today as they used to before. Julia Pollak, the chief economist at ZipRecruiter, voices her opinion, “Speed is the number one way companies are competing for hourly workers at the moment, especially for the holiday season.”

Other than in retail and warehousing, this trend of hiring employees without holding interviews is beginning to pop up across the healthcare industry. Some employers have begun hiring healthcare staff based on the possession of a nursing license and omitting the job interview.

Around 80% of UPS seasonal workers are hired without conducting interviews. These jobs include warehouse work and delivery and often get a job offer within 25 minutes of applying. Surprisingly, UPS sometimes waives interviews for permanent positions as well. UPS was struggling to recruit over 100,000 seasonal workers this year unlike in previous years.

In August, the percentage of people quitting transportation and warehousing jobs was high at 3.6%. By October, this figure dropped to 2.8%, but it is still a higher number than what was seen pre-pandemic.