Let’s talk about trends in recruitment among Nordic startups! Did you know that the most popular jobs we have are in Marketing & Communications, which drives 23% of our applications? And the roles that get the most applications per job opening are Frontend Developer and UX/UI Designer.
We are now getting well into the last quarter of 2022, which means the season with the highest amount of talent actively looking for new jobs, and September topped number of applications this year 
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In order to help you understand a bit more about the trends in recruitment, and to see how 2022 differs from previous years, we put our data under the investigation loupe, and will share some of our findings here.
Let’s dive into the data 
Seasonality in applications
There are specific yearly periods where more candidates apply for new jobs, and especially August through to November are popular months. On the opposite end of the scale June and December are slower in the number of applications sent.
Due to layoffs and less hiring under COVID the seasonality got a bit skewed the previous two years, but based on the first nine months of 2022 we seem to finally be getting back to normal. This is promising for the high season for applications which is now.
More great news is that we have not experienced the usual drop in applications that normally strikes over summer, and we saw the best June in four years looking at the number of applications.
So, if you want to get your hands on some of the qualified talent in the coming months, now is the time to post your job ad 
Hit roles for talent
Some roles drive more applications than others because there are more candidates looking for jobs in those fields. For other roles we can see less applicants and those scarce resources is where you might need to do something extra to land your next star.
Marketing & Communication has been a hit among our applicants since we started, driving between 21%-24% of all applications over the past 4 years. Second in popularity are Developers and third Sales and Business Development roles for the same period.
An interesting observation is the increase we see in applications for Customer Service and UX/UI designer.
On the opposite end of the scale, we get the fewest applications for QA, CxOs and legal, however, this reflects well with the number of jobs posted for these roles.
Most wanted
by the startups
If we look at the jobs posted, the picture shows us that times are changing and there is a new pattern in the roles.
The startups are looking for more profiles outside Marketing & Communications and Developers, compared to 4 years ago
We can see a clear increase in job posts for sales or business development profiles in recent years.
Another interesting observation is the increase in number of openings looking for colleagues in Customer Service (or Customer Success) and UX/UI Designers. This could be an indication that both the startups and the talent want to focus on improving the customer experience.
Application criteria
We have also looked into the startups’ use of the different criteria asked from applicants when applying. It is no surprise that the most popular criteria to ask applicants are CV and LinkedIn.
For almost 80% of the jobs posted by our startups, applicants are asked to fill out 2 or 3 criteria.
Some interesting side notes on criteria are these.
Asking only 1 criterium has a negative impact on amount of applications, whereas 3 criteria surprisingly seems to be the sweet spot. This could be a reflection that the effort the startup has been put into the job post, but this is a guess from our end.
Secondly job posts containing short text fields (could be questions or free text options) have gotten 16% more applications than average.
Final important criteria fact, is that although it is tempting to see more about the applicant, the data tells us that asking for a video from your applicants reduces the number of applications by 55%.
That is worth considering when making your next job post.
What can you do for more applications?
Looking at the data and the current recruitment trends, there are several learnings we can benefit from. There are optimal months to post the jobs, so time it if you can. Some roles typically get more applications than others, and the formulation and clarity of the job post definitely plays a role (a little extra effort here will pay off). In addition using the right amount and type of criteria will play a part in driving applications.
One key learning that can be applied to any role, a fact we will mention again and again. The data indicates that being open about the salary or the salary range up front in the job post, has given 24% more applications on average in the past 4 years.
This is leaving us with the thought that transparency is becoming more and more important if you want to drive more applicants into your job postings.
This is all for now, we hope it was interesting reading along.