Hiring hasn’t gotten easier. For anyone.
Recruiters are stretched thin. Processes are under pressure. And developers? They’re still grinding Leetcode, rewriting resumes, and wondering why the experience feels so broken.
For the HackerRank 2025 Developer Skills Report, we asked over 13,000 developers to name their biggest frustrations with the hiring process, giving us a deeper look at where things break down:
None of these pain points are shocking. But they are solvable. And if hiring teams want to attract and retain top talent in this new era, these are the friction points worth fixing first.
1. Preparing for tech assessments shouldn’t feel like cramming for finals
42% of developers cite assessment prep as their biggest hiring challenge.
We followed up to understand why. It’s not the concept of assessments. Developers generally welcome the opportunity to showcase their skills. Instead, it’s their relevance, or lack thereof.
77% of developers say the assessments they face don’t reflect the skills actually needed for the job. Instead of evaluating practical, real-world capabilities, these tests can feel abstract and arbitrary, like preparing for a final exam without knowing what the subject will be.
That uncertainty leads to overpreparing.
- 71% of developers say they grind Leetcode to prep.
- 62% feel like they have to overprepare because they don’t know what might be thrown at them.
It’s time-consuming. It’s demoralizing. It creates a poor candidate experience, and worse, irrelevant assessments don’t capture meaningful skill signals. Everyone loses.
What can companies do?
Assessments aren’t the problem. Irrelevant assessments are.
If developers feel like they’re being tested on things they’ll never use, it’s no surprise they overprepare or disengage entirely. The fix isn’t to lower the bar, it’s to make the bar mean something.
That might look like:
- Designing assessments around real-world tasks, not abstract puzzles
- Customizing challenges to reflect the role, not a generic skillset
- Giving candidates a clear sense of what to expect before they start
- Replacing “gotcha” coding questions with problems they might actually solve on the job
Relevant assessments cut down on overprepping and give hiring teams cleaner, stronger signals.
2. Resume screening has become an arms race
38% of developers are frustrated by getting past automated resume screens.
It’s not just about the bots. The application process itself is often redundant and frustrating. Upload your resume, create accounts, retype the experience you just uploaded, jump through formatting hoops…only to be rejected in seconds.
At the same time, hiring teams are more swamped than ever navigating a flood of AI-optimized, keyword-stuffed resumes. Which has led candidates to fight AI with AI:
- 77% of developers say they now tailor resumes specifically to pass automated filters
It’s a vicious cycle. And it’s taking a toll, especially in high-competition regions like the U.S. (43%) and India (41%).
What can companies do?
Filters aren’t going away. But how they’re built, and what they surface, can evolve.
Relying on rigid keyword matching doesn’t just miss edge cases—it routinely screens out highly qualified candidates. Maybe they didn’t format their experience the “right” way, or used the wrong variant of a term. Maybe they built skills through open-source work or freelancing instead of traditional roles. None of that makes them less capable, but rigid systems can’t flex to the contours of real life.
Smarter screening focuses less on formatting and more on proof of skill. That could mean:
- Integrating short skills-based challenges earlier in the funnel
- Flagging candidates with relevant project-based experience
- Using structured rubrics over opaque AI filters
Better signal. Less noise. And a faster path to the right fit.
3. Complex hiring processes are exhausting everyone
29% of developers say convoluted hiring pipelines are a top challenge.
Multiple interview rounds. Weeks of waiting. Technical screenings with questionable relevance. And even if a candidate makes it to the final round, there’s still a chance they’ll be ghosted.
This frustration is particularly strong in Latin America (36%) and EMEA (35%). Whether it’s a lack of transparency or sheer process fatigue, developers are worn out by hiring journeys that feel more like obstacle courses than evaluations.
And in a market where top talent often has options, every extra hoop increases the odds they’ll walk away.
What can companies do?
Start by asking a hard question: Does every step in our process actually help us make a better hiring decision?
You don’t need to sacrifice rigor, but you do need to reduce the load on both sides.
That might look like:
- Providing candidates with a roadmap of the hiring process up front
- Using AI proctors to handle high-volume assessment stages
- Standardizing interview formats to reduce reliance on already-overbooked senior engineers
- Combining or even dropping interview rounds
- Prioritizing practical, role-relevant assessments that give clearer signals earlier, reducing the need for drawn-out interview loops
The result? Less friction. Stronger signals. A better experience for candidates and hiring teams.
4. Communication gaps do real damage
29% of developers say poor communication—especially slow or missing responses—is a major pain point.
From the first outreach to the final offer, candidates are left in the dark far too often. Did their assessment pass? How did the interview go? When will they hear back?
According to Greenhouse’s 2024 State of Job Hunting report, 61% of candidates have been ghosted after an interview. That’s more than just bad etiquette. It’s behavior that erodes trust and damages brand reputation, even when it’s unintentional.
Indian developers report this issue at even higher rates (34%), compared to 23% in the U.S. and EMEA. The asynchronous nature of global hiring only adds to the disconnect.
What can companies do?
Developers bring something most candidates can’t: objective, demonstrable skill. They can build the app, write the function, debug the system, or they can’t. And when you’re measuring the right skills the right way, the signal is clear enough to tell when someone is 70%, 80%, or 100% of the way there.
That kind of clarity should speed up decision-making, not stall it. By capturing stronger skills signals early, teams can:
- Advance strong candidates faster
- Deliver clearer rejections sooner
- Close the loop before the silence sets in
That might look like:
- Automating status updates at key stages
- Giving rapid feedback after assessments based on pass/fail criteria
- Using structured rubrics to streamline interview scoring
- Setting candidate expectations: “You’ll hear from us by Friday. Even if the answer is no.”
Silence doesn’t save time. It costs goodwill.
5. Ghost jobs are breaking trust
26% of developers say they’re struggling with ‘ghost jobs’—roles that aren’t actually open.
And they’re not imagining things.
- 40% of hiring managers admit their company has posted a fake job in the past year and 30% are doing it right now, according to a ResumeBuilder study
- Greenhouse estimates 20% of job listings on their platform in any given quarter are ghost jobs
Behind the scenes, this isn’t just a sloppy job board. It’s a deliberate strategy. Referring once again to the ResumeBuilder study, companies post fake job listings to:
- Make it appear they’re open to external talent (67%)
- Create the illusion of growth (66%)
- Signal to employees that relief is on the way (63%)
- Remind employees they’re replaceable (62%)
- Collect resumes to keep “just in case” (59%)
In other words: ghost jobs aren’t for candidates or employees. They’re for investors. They’re for show. And that makes them uniquely damaging.
Developers, especially in the U.S. (34%), are picking up on it. The result? Less trust, less engagement, and a growing sense that the hiring process is built on bad faith.
What can companies do?
Be honest. If you’re not actively hiring, don’t pretend you are.
- Close inactive job posts regularly
- Clearly label exploratory or pipeline roles
- Don’t use job boards as a signaling tool
Every fake listing chips away at credibility. And in a trust-driven market, that’s a price not worth paying.
If developers had a magic wand…
We closed the survey with a simple question: If you could change just one thing about the hiring process, what would it be?
The top responses weren’t about gimmicks or perks. They were about clarity, efficiency, and relevance.
- 24% would replace Leetcode-style assessments with real-world project challenges
- 24% want rapid feedback after interviews—no more waiting, no more ghosting
- 19% want upfront transparency around salary, expectations, and company culture
This isn’t a wishlist for some idealized future. These are changes teams can make right now. Many of them with the tools, people, and data they already have.
Better assessments. Faster decisions. Clearer communication. Smarter signals.
That’s not just a better developer experience. It’s a better hiring system. For everyone.
Let’s fix the friction
If you’re a hiring team navigating fewer resources, faster cycles, and growing candidate expectations, you’re not alone. But the hiring experience isn’t just a cost center or a funnel. It’s your brand. It’s your first impression. And it’s one of the clearest signals of what kind of company you are.
Small changes, like aligning assessments with the real job, giving timely feedback, or dropping that ghost job posting habit, can go a long way toward building trust and attracting top talent.
Now’s the time to close the gap between what developers want and what hiring teams deliver.
Want more insights?
Check out the full 2025 Developer Skills Report to understand how the hiring landscape is shifting, and what top talent really wants.
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