This Is Exactly How Recruiters Hire in 2025

In 2025, the hiring market is still brutal.

You could apply to 200+ roles in 6 weeks and never hear back.

Or land 5 interviews, and still not land the role.

But what if you knew exactly what hiring managers are looking for?

I just sat down with John McMahon, again (​Our first podcast)​, Director of Product at Indeed, who revealed how hiring works behind the scenes and what mistakes candidates make at every step.

In this blog, we’ll talk about the hiring trends of 2025 and how to navigate them as an International students and jobseeker…

Before we dive into the insights, I want to ask you, do you have a clear job hunting strategy to land an internship for Summer or a full-time role this year?

If not, then it’s high time you made one. I’ve helped over 1800+ people with their strategies through ​my ultimate job-hunting course​. Resume, LinkedIn, Job strategy, a community for support of almost 2000 people, we’ve got everything you need on the road ahead.

► 1. How hiring actually works in 2025

Here’s the typical flow at large companies:

- Recruiter screen → hiring manager screen → panel → final debrief.

- Each step filters you based on a specific signal (not your potential, not your vibes)

- Every “yes” means: “Is this person worth one more hour of our time?”

So, you need to Stop thinking like → “Do they like me?”

& Start thinking like: “Did I show what they were looking for at this exact step?”

And this is why most job seekers never make it past the first filter.

(talking about the first filter, resumes are always screened first, I recommend ​Teal ​for resume building.

Applying online in this market is brutal, your success will often be under 1 percent.

Here’s why:

- recruiters look at resumes from the context of the job they’re hiring for.

- they care how closely it matches the JD they were told to look for.

- If you’re applying without customizing, you’re invisible.

- If you’re sending 100 generic resumes, you might as well send zero.

What to do Instead:

- Use the JD to reverse-engineer what they care about.

- Put those words in your headline, skills, and project titles.

- Treat every role you’re targeting in the same manner.

If you’re not getting ​interview calls​, it might not even be a skill issue. It’s a positioning issue.

Btw, this is also what I teach in ​my ultimate job-hunting course​. Constant iteration on your resume is key to figuring out the gaps, and that’s what I talk about in the resume module.

► What separates candidates who are selected?

Getting the interview is just the start of Round 2 in your journey.

And most people lose here because they don’t realize the game has changed:

- You’re no longer being judged for effort but for clarity and decision-making.

Every good answer shows:

- you understand the problem.

- you know how to measure success.

- you’ve made trade-offs before, and you can defend them.

Walk in with:

- A ​portfolio​ of 2–3 stories that show results and complexity.

- A clear mental model for thinking through ambiguity.

- A clear way of presenting stories with the ​STAR method​.

If you don’t show value with your words, you lose.

If you solve problems from first principles, you stand out.

( Btw, on the topic of interviews, applying to 100s of jobs is hard enough, let alone tracking the applications, so for that purpose I recommend you use ​Jobright​ )

► What hiring managers are silently evaluating you on

There’s no fixed matrix on paper, but there are 4 things that nearly every hiring loop tracks:

1. Analytical ability → Can you break down messy, unclear problems into measurable outcomes?
2. Collaboration → Can you influence others and be influenced?
3. Leadership → Have you ever owned something end-to-end, even if it wasn’t a job title?
4. Speed → Can you work & move quickly without overthinking & with dynamic requirements?

This applies even if you're not in product roles. If you're a software engineer, they’ll test this through:

- how you debug - how you handle unknowns - how you simplify trade-offs in design ​If you're in data​, they'll look for:

- can you decide what to track? - can you translate messy business problems into clean logic? If you're in ops or program roles:

- can you spot inefficiencies and own the fix? - can you communicate upward and downward with context?

These traits don’t show up in degrees. They show up in how you explain your thinking under pressure.

And that is why I talk about this in detail in the job-hunting strategy of ​my ultimate job-hunting course​. I’ve spent 6+ years as a hiring manager in Tech, so I understand the POV of a hiring manager.

► Why cold DMs might fail

Most people think LinkedIn is a numbers game. But job referrals and hiring don’t work like that anymore.

Here’s the reality (Exactly what John told me):

- If a hiring manager doesn’t know you, your DM might fall on deaf ears. - If you’re just saying “Hi, I’m looking for roles,” you're not grabbing attention

What works in 2025:

- Attend local meetups, ​career fairs​ (not just fancy conferences). - Even a 2-minute face-to-face chat builds more trust than 10 cold messages. - After the meeting, send a follow-up with 1 clear ask and a reminder of who you are.

Networking is not a side job in job hunting. It’s 40 percent of your job search.

Starting early networking (here’s some ​helpful templates for networking​) provides you with an awesome advantage; that’s why I talk about this a lot inside my ultimate mindset and networking module in ​my job-hunting course. ​ 

► How to show you're worth hiring (even if you're early career)

If you’re just starting, you don’t need to “fake seniority.”

What you need to show is:

- Ownership: Did you start something from scratch, even a student-led event?

- Iteration: Did you learn from failure and try again with improvements?

- Clarity: Can you explain your thought process simply and clearly?

- Curiosity: Do you ask better questions than you give answers?

Too many early-career folks try to oversell.

Smart hiring managers don’t expect you to know everything, But they expect you to learn quick and think clearly.

Show them how you think.

Show them what you’ve built, even if it’s not advanced yet…

And show them you’ll make their team faster, clearer, and easier to work with.

That’s a way better strategy than faking it or worse, even lying about it….