97% of Top 100 European Companies Fall Short in Applying AI and Automation for Job Seekers

Phenom’s 4th Annual Study Reveals Leading Companies are Insufficiently Leveraging AI and Automation to Deliver Tailored Candidate Journeys

BERLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#HRTech—Phenom, an applied AI company specialising in human resources, released its fourth annual European Edition of its ninth annual State of Candidate Experience: 2025 Benchmarks Report. Based on an analysis and ranking of the top 100 European companies’ candidate experiences, the report revealed most organisations are not investing in optimising their career sites with AI and automation. As a result, many are failing to deliver hyper-personalised experiences that effectively attract, engage and convert job seekers throughout the talent journey.

Today’s candidates in Europe not only seek alignment with an organisation’s relevant roles and purpose, but also a career site experience that is intuitive, multilingual, and consumer-grade to ensure they apply. This comes as European institutions continue to push for smarter, more inclusive labour markets through initiatives like the EU Pact for Skills and national digital transition strategies. Leading employers must adopt personalised recruitment journeys, omnichannel approaches, compliant automation, and stronger employer branding to compete in today’s diverse talent market.

Companies Fail to Personalise the Candidate Journey

The European Edition of the State of Candidate Experience: 2025 Benchmarks Report revealed extensive opportunities for companies to enhance personalisation throughout the candidate journey:

• 97% scored poorly in their use of AI and automation to hyper-pesonalise career sites
• 97% did not suggest related job openings based on current job title and skills
• 96% did not have a chatbot on the career site that provides job recommendations
• 94% did not detect the candidate’s location and suggest relevant jobs nearby
• 93% did not show recently viewed jobs
• 69% did not use a passwordless job cart/favorites function for job seekers to save job searches
• 59% did not feature relevant, quality content that conveys the employer brand
• 51% did not clearly articulate the employer value proposition on the career site

Strongest Candidate Journey Areas

The report highlighted a few key areas where Europe’s top companies continue to improve, including technical website performance and job descriptions:

• 95% have well-written job descriptions with at least three clear responsibilities and three qualifications outlined
• 95% provide an easy mobile apply process with the ability to upload a resume and cover letter
• 84% had content in multiple languages tailored to specific locations
• 60% increase in type-ahead search on all career site pages
• 45% increase in search providing relevant suggestions based on keywords

Business-Critical Guidance for Candidate Journey Improvements

Phenom’s European Edition of its 2025 State of Candidate Experience report includes recommendations for organisations seeking to improve how they attract, engage and convert talent with AI and automation.

• Deliver industry and job-specific personalisation. Generic career sites create friction and waste valuable time for candidates looking to learn about jobs and submit applications. Personalise the candidate experience by serving up hyper-relevant content and work opportunities based on context including the candidate’s preferences and experience. This ultimately accelerates discovery and conversion while demonstrating your organisation’s commitment to creating a phenomenal candidate journey.
• Build a skills-forward career site. Savvy candidates navigate career opportunities based on transferable skills rather than rigid job titles or industry boundaries. Organisations must reimagine their career sites, where talent can instantly connect with relevant opportunities based on their individual capabilities, and where job descriptions prominently showcase the skills and competencies that drive success.
• Invest in conversational AI and automation. Extend your talent acquisition team’s capabilities 24/7 with advanced conversational AI that provides instant support throughout the entire candidate journey — from initial job discovery to onboarding as a new hire. These AI-powered chatbots should seamlessly handle questions, recommend relevant jobs, conduct preliminary screening, and even support the application and interview scheduling process.
• Design for multilingual and multicultural engagement. Leading companies dynamically adapt content and interactions to reflect regional languages and norms — improving engagement and conversion across borders. Hiring strategies must consider country-specific dynamics — from strict data compliance in Germany to candidate experience expectations in the Nordics — which require tailored localisation to drive relevance and results across borders. This also includes building accessibility into AI interactions and language, ensuring candidate experiences accommodate diverse needs such as neurodiverse and multilingual talent.

The Role of Agentic AI in Candidate Journeys

AI Agents built to meet the specific industry, role, and business needs of every organisation will continue to transform talent attraction and engagement strategies. Experience Agents designed for the candidate journey to existing HR teams to further enhance hiring efficiencies — ultimately transforming how candidates find and apply for the right job, and Persona Agents to augment how talent acquisition teams attract and engage best-fit talent:

• Accelerates hiring, filling specialised and high-volume roles with personalised and automated candidate engagement
• Slashes talent acquisition workloads in half by increasing efficiency and growth through automation and intelligence
• Streamlines content management, with generative AI and no-code design tools that makes creating branded and personalised content effortless and engaging easy
• Enhances how HR teams work with AI to meet or exceed hiring goals

“There is a clear divide between European organisations experimenting with AI and those truly harnessing its power to accelerate talent acquisition processes and transform candidate engagement through hyper-personalisation,” said John Harrington, Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Phenom. “This shift from transactional to relationship-based recruiting, while maintaining GDPR compliance and ethical AI practices, separates industry leaders from the pack, enabling them to build diverse talent communities that convert across the region’s varied cultural landscapes.”

Phenom’s AI, Generative AI and AI agents empower organisations to hire and onboard faster, develop better and retain longer through augmented work — while ensuring responsible AI adoption and utilisation. Phenom’s award-winning AI technology innovations fuel productivity and efficiency for recruiters, talent marketers, talent leaders, hiring managers, HR and HRIT.

To read the full 2025 report and view company rankings, download here.

Organisations not featured in the report can request their own complimentary career site audit here.

About Phenom

Phenom has a purpose of helping a billion people find the right work. Through AI-powered talent experiences, employers use Phenom to hire and onboard employees faster, develop them to their full potential, and retain them longer. The Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience platform seamlessly connects candidates, employees, recruiters, talent marketers, talent leaders, hiring managers, HR and HRIT — empowering diverse and global enterprises with innovative products including Phenom X+ Agentic AI and Generative AI, Career Site, Chatbot, CMS, Talent CRM, X+ Screening, Automated Interview Scheduling, Interview Intelligence, Talent Experience Engine, Campaigns, University Recruiting, Contingent Talent Hiring, Onboarding, Talent Marketplace, Workforce Intelligence, Career Pathing, Gigs, Mentoring, and Referrals.

Phenom has earned accolades including: Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing companies (5 consecutive years), Deloitte Technology’s Fast 500 (4 consecutive years), 11 Brandon Hall ‘Excellence in Technology’ awards including Gold for ‘Best Advance in Generative AI for Business Impact,’ Business Intelligence Group’s Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards (3 consecutive years), The Cloud Awards 2025/2024, The A.I. Awards 2024, and a regional Timmy Award for launching and optimising HelpOneBillion.com (2020).

Headquartered in Greater Philadelphia, Phenom also has offices in India, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

For more information, please visit www.phenom.com. Connect with Phenom on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

Contacts

Jennifer Lyons

267-379-5066

[email protected]