Rethinking Recruiting: It’s Time to Move Beyond the Linear Funnel
Inspired by insights from BCG’s 2025 article: “Move Beyond the Linear Funnel”

For decades, recruiting strategies have followed a familiar, linear path—what we often refer to as the recruiting funnel. It begins with employer branding and sourcing, moves through applications and assessments, and ends with interviews and offers. It’s neat, structured, and easy to report on. But here’s the hard truth: that model no longer reflects how people explore and engage with job opportunities.

Just as BCG argues in their latest article that the traditional marketing funnel has collapsed under modern consumer behavior, the recruiting funnel is also overdue for disruption.

Candidates Don’t Move in a Straight Line

Today’s job seekers are not progressing step-by-step through your application process. They bounce between career pages, social platforms, Glassdoor reviews, Reddit threads, and text messages from friends. They may express interest in a company months before applying—if they ever formally apply at all.

Some visit a career site out of curiosity, others might follow a company on LinkedIn, join a talent community, or sign up for a job alert. And often, the decision to engage happens long before a role is posted. A candidate’s journey is not linear—it’s fluid, iterative, and driven by relevance in the moment.

From Funnel to Flywheel: Recruiting as a Dynamic Ecosystem

BCG encourages marketers to rethink customer journeys as connected ecosystems rather than funnels. Recruiting should follow suit. Instead of pushing candidates down a pipeline, we should be designing interconnected, responsive talent ecosystems where candidate interest, interaction, and feedback are constantly informing the experience.

That means moving away from a “post-and-pray” mentality and toward a model of continuous candidate engagement, fueled by:

• Interest harvesting even when roles aren’t open
• Real-time personalization based on behavior and preferences
• Candidate feedback loops to learn what resonates—and what doesn’t
• Always-on communication, not just triggered by an active job req

Measure Engagement, Not Just Conversion

A key insight from BCG is the shift in focus from conversion metrics (like completed applications) to behavioral signals—time on page, repeat visits, content engagement. In recruiting, we need to value and measure candidate interactions beyond the application: joining a talent network, clicking on team culture content, or engaging with your recruiters on social media.

These signals help identify high-intent talent and create a more predictive model of future hiring potential.

Recruiting in 2025: What Needs to Change

To build a modern recruiting engine that reflects today’s nonlinear reality, employers should:

1. Build persistent talent experiences, not just campaigns tied to open roles
2. Activate candidate data to create ongoing engagement journeys
3. Design content and touchpoints that match the intent and curiosity of the candidate—not just the urgency of the recruiter
4. Unify systems so data flows across marketing, CRM, and ATS environments to deliver a cohesive experience

The Future Is Responsive, Not Reactive

As BCG highlights, “success no longer depends on guiding people through a funnel—it’s about meeting them wherever they are.” The same is true in recruiting.

It’s time we stop thinking of recruiting as a funnel to fill and start thinking of it as an ecosystem to cultivate. When we do, we’ll not only build stronger talent pipelines—we’ll build better relationships, more relevant experiences, and ultimately, smarter hires.

🔗 Read the original BCG article here: Move Beyond the Linear Funnel