The Application Avalanche: Why This Issue Is Keeping the Whole Organization Up at Night

University recruiting leaders are no strangers to churn. Over the last five years, it’s been rare to have a recruiting season that felt normal as we leapt from a hot labor market to a once-in-a-generation pandemic, to surging campus unrest, to a new administration, and now a sustained application avalanche. Since 2023, applications for internships are up nearly 3x on average, and while the effects start in Early Careers, the aftershocks are hitting the entire organization, from the TA function to the C-suite.

What’s Driving the Avalanche?

The root of the issue is deceptively simple: more candidates, fewer distinctions. Generative AI tools are making it easy for candidates to apply to roles en masse, automate the tailoring of materials to roles, and enhance or even fake performance on assessments and interviews.

This dynamic creates a triple threat for talent teams:

• Surging volume: AI is enabling automated high-volume applications.
• Quality conformity: Generative AI tools allow for application tailoring from simple prompts, resulting in resumes and cover letters that look eerily similar, making it harder to identify exceptional talent.
• Rising fraud risk: With AI, it’s easier for bad actors to fake skills or even fake identities.

 

These are not just Early Career problems. The application avalanche is hitting the very top of organizations, albeit in distinct ways.

TA Leaders: Stretched and Squeezed

Let’s start with Talent Acquisition. High-volume, low-differentiation pipelines are overwhelming recruiters. One Head of Global TA at a mid-size tech firm summed it up well:

“You can apply to 100 jobs with the click of a button. We’re getting an increase in applications, but a decrease in quality. That is sucking huge amounts of energy from recruiters into the front-end process.”

Recruiting teams are drowning in volume, and it’s pulling focus away from winning top talent or providing an exceptional candidate experience and shifting it towards spending time on screening as recruiters try to simply identify the truly exceptional candidates hidden in the noise.

The outcome? Slower time to fill, increasing cost per hire, and ultimately, missed opportunities to win the best talent before competitors do.

CHROs: Strategic Misalignment

From the CHRO’s seat, the avalanche doesn’t just look like a process inefficiency—it looks like a strategic liability.

• Workforce planning misalignment: High-volume pipelines obscure where key gaps or future skill needs really are.
• Cost inefficiency: Resources are spent managing unqualified volume instead of investing in strategic talent programs.
• Legal and compliance risk: If candidates feel unfairly treated—or fraud slips through— it can create new brand and legal risks.

 

For HR leaders tasked with aligning talent strategy to long-term business goals, the application avalanche is introducing more noise than signal—and it’s threatening the credibility of the entire hiring ecosystem.

CEOs: Risk to Business Outcomes

At the CEO level, the problem sharpens even further. This isn’t just about recruiting—it’s about business continuity.

• Talent bottlenecks: Volume bogs down hiring, delaying and sometimes losing talent with the skills needed to drive business outcomes today and innovate for the future.
• Brand dilution: A poor candidate experience at scale harms the company’s prestige and reputation.
• Loss of Future Leaders: High application volume and difficulty vetting may hide real gaps in attracting top-tier talent who will be future leaders in the organization.

 

CEOs are increasingly asking: Are we hiring the right people fast enough? And are we safeguarding against bad hires and bad actors? If TA leaders can’t answer confidently, the consequences go well beyond missed KPIs—they hit revenue, innovation, and culture.

Why This Matters Now

This is a moment of urgency. Many Early Career teams are still operating with reduced headcount and fewer requisitions. And yet, they’re being asked to deliver more: to find future leaders, to elevate the employer brand, and do it all faster than ever.

The truth is, University Recruiting can’t solve this alone. And they shouldn’t have to.

The Way Forward

Solving the application avalanche requires collaboration across the TA function and upward through HR leadership to the C-suite. For UR leaders, it means:

• Focusing the recruiting aperture, including honing sourcing and communication strategies to attract the right candidates, not just more.
• Investing in smarter (sometimes automated) ways to assess talent and verify skills.
• Calibrating approaches to combat fraud, so that rather than trying to catch everything (and missing), operations are optimized for protecting against the right threats.

 

This blog is one step in a broader conversation we’re starting at Veris Insights, a conversation aimed at helping leaders across the organization understand the full scope of the problem and align on solutions.