What Are My Chances of Being Hired?

Hi friend,

People I coach often ask me about their chances of being hired. They want to understand their job search odds, and how many job applications they need to submit in order to get an offer. The following numbers are rough— they can vary a bit by the type of role and the industry. The size of the company and job pool can also skew things, but here’s what you should understand about the hiring process on the other side:

Odds of Being Hired at the Final Interview Stage: 

Most jobs you apply to will hire one candidate, and a good hiring manager will want to compare a few well-qualified people against each other before making a final decision, usually three to four people in a final stage.

I believe you can significantly improve your chance of advancing at every stage of the interview process except the very final one (though you can definitely lower your chances by doing poorly). Even if you do well at the final stage, a lot of the hiring team’s decision will be based on factors you can’t control, such as the personal strengths and weaknesses of the people you would be working with and the qualities and skills of the other candidates. Getting an offer at the final stage is a bit of a numbers game, but you don’t have to leave the rest of it to chance! That’s why you’re here, right?

Odds of Being Hired at the Initial Interview Stage:

During each interview stage prior to the final round, it is common to disqualify about half of the candidates from advancing and to lose some people as well if they accept other offers. This means if there is one screening step prior to the final interview, there are likely to be six to eight candidates in that step and twelve to eighteen in the step before (you do the math).

Of course there is a soft limit based on capacity here; most hiring managers do not want to conduct more than two days’ worth of early stage interviews. This generally caps out at about twelve to fifteen one-hour interviews, which is still several days’ worth of interviews and a lot of scheduling hassle! Larger companies hiring multiple people for each position or with dedicated recruiting team members may have higher numbers, but I wouldn’t count on a bigger pool.

Odds of Being Hired at Application Stage:

Alright, so we can see our odds of advancing are about 50% for the middle stage, and then 25-33% at the end, but what about the overall application pool? In my experience, I usually saw 100-200 candidates per open role, but for some entry level or more general positions (i.e. administrative roles) I would expect 300-400 candidates if I did not close the position to new applicants soon after posting. This is the stage that is likely to have the most variance from one company to another in terms of the total competition, from 20 candidates to 2,000. Factors that impact how many people initially apply include how the role is publicized, how big the company is, and how long applications are accepted after opening the role. 

The 10/5/1 Rule:

Whew- that’s a lot of math! To sum it up: assuming a candidate submits an application through a publicly available application process, I follow the 10/5/1 rule: 10% of applicants get interviews, 5% make it through, and 1 gets the offer. 

You can do this!

Karissa