The Illusion of Choice: Why More Applicants Rarely Mean Better Hires

Mirror Moment

The story is told in hushed tones in HR circles.
A hiring manager sits behind a desk, coffee steaming, CVs stacked in piles. An assistant, pen poised, waits for direction. Without a word, the manager takes a thick section from the middle of the pile and drops it straight into the bin.

Shocked, the assistant asks: “Why throw those away?”

The manager replies: “I can’t work with unlucky people.”

It is a joke, yes. But like all jokes that endure, it rings true at a deeper level. Some managers, pressed for time and clarity, filter arbitrarily. Others, like myself, plough through every application in the name of thoroughness, only to find fatigue slowly dulling judgement. Neither path guarantees the best outcome. Both expose the trap hidden in modern hiring: the illusion of choice.

The Illusion of Choice

On paper, more applicants should be a gift. Wider nets, deeper talent pools, and greater odds of finding the right fit. Yet in practice, the opposite often happens.

Research calls it overchoice: when confronted with too many options, people become less certain, less satisfied, and less effective in making a decision. Psychologists first documented this in consumer studies, shoppers faced with 24 varieties of jam walked away more often than those given six. The principle applies to careers as much as condiments.

Hiring managers scrolling through hundreds of CVs are not empowered by abundance. They are drained by it. Each application blurs into the next, nuance disappears, and clarity fades. Choice is supposed to mean freedom. In reality, more choice often means paralysis, shortcuts, or arbitrary cuts.

When Volume Becomes a Blindfold

Consider the numbers. In large firms, a single vacancy may attract 250 applicants. For popular entry-level roles, the figure rises to 500 or more. A study by CareerBuilder found that 60% of recruiters feel they miss strong candidates purely because of volume pressure.

Survale, a talent analytics firm, has described “job applicant overload” as one of the quiet killers of hiring quality. They note that high applicant volume doesn’t just slow decisions, it actively erodes the quality of hire. Managers caught in the flood default to what is easy to see, not what is best to find.

The blindfold is not malicious. It is structural. The larger the pile, the less attention each page receives.

Decision Fatigue in the Details

The science of decision fatigue explains why. Every choice draws from the same pool of mental energy. As the day wears on, the brain begins to cut corners. The result: reliance on defaults, safer picks, and harsher dismissals.

One of the most cited studies analysed Israeli judges. At the start of a session or just after breaks, parole was granted about 65% of the time. By the end of a long run of cases, the rate fell close to zero. Not because the prisoners were different, but because the judges were tired.

Hiring managers are not sentencing criminals, but the mechanism is the same. Each CV reviewed is a micro-decision. By the fiftieth, the hundredth, or the two-hundredth, clarity falters. Bias grows. Shortcuts rule.

The Cost of Overload

The illusion of choice carries three silent costs.

1. Time: Every extra hundred CVs add hours, sometimes days, to the process. For a founder running lean or a manager with multiple roles to juggle, that delay costs productivity elsewhere.

2. Clarity: With fatigue comes simplification. Applicants with unusual profiles, transferable skills, or non-linear careers are the first to be overlooked. Diversity and creativity pay the price.

3. Bias: As fatigue grows, managers unconsciously rely more on stereotypes, defaults, or the path of least resistance. In practice, that often means favouring the familiar over the exceptional.

In short: more is not just slower. More is worse.

Two Manager Types

There are two archetypes.

The first is the filter-by-chance manager. Faced with the mountain of CVs, they slash it at random, confident that what remains must be “good enough.” It saves time, yes. But what if the best candidate lay in the discarded half?

The second is the meticulous grinder. Determined not to miss a thing, they work through every single CV. They will not sleep until each one has been skimmed. Yet fatigue erodes the quality of those late-night judgements. Their diligence keeps everyone in the game, but reduces the sharpness of the final call.

Neither approach ensures the optimal outcome. One risks discarding brilliance unseen. The other risks making a blurred decision despite seeing everything.

Subtle Bias Amplifiers

Fatigue does not just slow us down. It changes how we see.

Studies in behavioural science show that under mental strain, people are more likely to default to the “safe” or “familiar” option. In hiring, that often means candidates who look and sound like past hires. It is not malice. It is the mind searching for a shortcut.

The result is not just bad for candidates. It is bad for organisations. Innovation comes from fresh angles, not clones of the past. When volume and fatigue drive managers back to the safe path, they pay the price in missed potential.

Time Cost Framing

Imagine a manager with 200 CVs. If each takes two minutes to scan, that is 400 minutes, over six and a half hours, before any interviews even begin. Add notes, comparisons, and internal discussions, and the process easily balloons past a full working day.

Now multiply that by multiple roles. By a year’s worth of turnover. By the layers of approvals and delays in a corporate setting. The hidden tax of applicant overload is staggering.

Founders feel it most sharply. Without HR staff to lean on, the founder is the screener, the interviewer, the closer. Every CV skimmed is an hour stolen from product, sales, or strategy.

Corporates, on the other hand, hide the cost inside departments. But the waste is no less real. More meetings, more fatigue, more blurred calls.

When Candidates Disappear

From the candidate’s view, the illusion of choice looks different. They believe more applicants mean more competition. In truth, the larger the pool, the greater the odds of being overlooked entirely.

Automation systems compound the effect. Studies suggest that up to 90% of CVs submitted online are never seen by a human. Filters, algorithms, and shortcuts decide who even makes it into the pile that managers see.

The unlucky joke is not just funny. It is the lived experience of thousands of jobseekers who never even know they were cut by chance, by fatigue, or by arbitrary filters.

Smarter Framing

The point is not despair. The point is awareness. The illusion of choice is powerful precisely because it feels intuitive, more must be better. The truth is that clarity declines as volume rises.

What does smarter look like?

• Structured screening: Clear, role-specific scoring reduces fatigue by narrowing the lens.

• Quality over volume: Better employer branding and targeted outreach reduce floods at the top.

• Awareness of fatigue: Building in breaks, rotating reviewers, and acknowledging the cost of volume prevents blind spots.

• Candidate experience: Treating applicants as people, not piles, strengthens both brand and outcomes.

None of these are radical. All are reminders that clarity beats quantity.

The Evergreen Take-Home

Hiring managers are not lazy. They are not careless. They are human. And humans, when faced with too much choice, make poorer calls.

The illusion of choice promises freedom. In practice, it delivers fatigue, bias, and missed brilliance.

If you recognise yourself in the assistant’s shock, or in the boss’s joke, or in the late-night grind through the last hundred CVs, you are not alone. You are part of a system that mistakes abundance for clarity.

And that system can change.