Up to 23,000 applications for one ad. The labor market is bursting at the seams

The job advertisement for an e-mail customer service specialist received as many as 2,288 applications. This is a record result, but not an isolated one. The junior business analysis specialist collected 1,317 CVs, the office coordinator – 857, the receptionist – 853, and the junior financial controller: 848 – these are the results of the Devire analysis, which analyzed over 1,180 recruitment processes conducted in Poland in recent months.

Nowadays, there can be up to several thousand applications per advertisement. The scale of competition is particularly visible in the case of junior and administrative positions, which attract candidates looking for their first professional experience. Data from the latest analysis by the Devire recruitment agency show how clearly the labor market in Poland is today clearly saturated with candidates with less experience who are trying to enter their chosen industry.

Juniors are entering the market in droves

Junior or junior roles dominate among the most crowded recruitment positions. The advertisement for a junior training specialist attracted 790 applications, for a junior HR manager – 662, and for a customer service specialist – 583. Administrative positions are also very popular – an assistant in the administration department collected 454 CVs, and the role of an office assistant with the function of a receptionist – 359.

The effect of positions marked as “junior”, “junior” or “assistant” is particularly pronounced“They are the ones that attract the largest number of candidates, even though the number of available offers is systematically decreasing.

Data from Rocket Jobs and JustJoin.it confirm this trend. In 2025, positions for specialists with experience accounted for 60.7 percent all advertisements for office work, while juniors could only count on 19.6 percent. offers. This means growing pressure on people without experience who apply en masse for a limited number of positions.

AI doesn't help juniors

Additionally, the situation is complicated by the growing requirements of employers towards candidates at the beginning of their career. Companies increasingly expect to be ready to work “from day one”, without a long implementation process. As a result, candidates without experience fall into a vicious circle – to get a job at the junior level, they must demonstrate skills typical of more experienced specialists.

An important factor changing the market is the development of artificial intelligence. Automation includes tasks that have previously been a natural entry point into a career – e-mail handling, basic data analysis and report preparation. Companies are increasingly considering how to replace these roles with AI solutions, rather than hiring juniors.

– Today we are dealing with a large oversupply of candidates for positions with a low entry threshold. This is the result of several phenomena at the same time, including: the growing number of business and humanities graduates and organizational changes in companies that limit the number of junior roles. As a result, many people compete for a very limited pool of positions, often applying to dozens of offers in parallel, says Adam Ajtner, an expert at Devire.

The other side of the coin

While some sites are under siege, others remain almost uninterested. In the analyzed recruitment processes There were cases where only one application influenced the job offer. This included, among others: such roles as Embedded Development Engineer, SAP BW data warehouse programmer, Maintenance Technician, Senior PHP Developer or SAP Authorization Consultant.

INAccording to data, as many as 59

percent Polish companies declare recruitment difficulties, especially in the area of ​​technical and engineering competences. IT specialists and experienced engineers operate in a completely different reality – they often do not have to actively look for a job, because employers approach them.

– From the perspective of companies, the biggest challenge today is not the number of applications, but their matching to the role. In many processes, we see hundreds of CVs from people who want to enter the industry but do not meet the basic requirements of the position. At the same time, the number of candidates remains limited in recruitment for specialized technical roles. This means that organizations today operate in a two-speed market: on the one hand, they select an excess of applications, and on the other hand, they actively look for talents that are often missing – says Adam Ajtner, an expert at Devire.

KW

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