Published on: October 2026
SOURCING REACH, INTERVIEW BOTTLENECKS AND OFFER DROPOUT: A RECRUITMENT FUNNEL ANALYSIS AT AN AI SERVICES COMPANY IN INDIA
Harshada Hari Katkar
School of Business, Indira University Pune, India 411033
Article Status
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Abstract
Small technology firms hire through the same job platforms as large ones, but they have no analytics team to show where their process loses candidates. This study follows the hiring funnel at an Indian AI services company across two closed requisitions: an AI Native Engineer/Software Development Engineer role with two openings and a Product Manager role with one. The author handled sourcing, screening, interview coordination and offer follow-up as an intern and kept a candidate-level tracker throughout. The tracker was checked against Keka ATS records, Naukri.com NVite emails and the Indeed employer dashboard.
The firm received 4,178 applications from LinkedIn, Indeed, Naukri.com and its own Keka ATS page. Naukri.com supplied 65.4% of them and had the lowest shortlisting rate (2.78%). LinkedIn supplied 2.5% and had the highest (15.24%). Of 150 shortlisted candidates, the count fell from 65 to 19 at the founder-led leadership round, a drop of 70.8%. Nine candidates received offers and three joined. Average time to hire was 18.5 days, inside the 30 to 45 day benchmark used here. Speed was not the problem at this firm. Candidates were lost at the top of the funnel, in one interview round, and between offer and joining. The paper ends with six changes the firm can make, most of them without new spending.
Keywords: recruitment funnel, e-recruitment, time to hire, offer dropout, applicant tracking system, technology startup
How to Cite this Paper
Katkar, H. H. (2026). Sourcing Reach, Interview Bottlenecks and Offer Dropout: A Recruitment Funnel Analysis at an AI Services Company in India. International Journal of Creative and Open Research in Engineering and Management, <i>02</i>(10), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.55041/ijcope.v2i10.143
Katkar, Harshada. "Sourcing Reach, Interview Bottlenecks and Offer Dropout: A Recruitment Funnel Analysis at an AI Services Company in India." International Journal of Creative and Open Research in Engineering and Management, vol. 02, no. 10, 2026, pp. 1-9. doi:https://doi.org/10.55041/ijcope.v2i10.143.
Katkar, Harshada. "Sourcing Reach, Interview Bottlenecks and Offer Dropout: A Recruitment Funnel Analysis at an AI Services Company in India." International Journal of Creative and Open Research in Engineering and Management 02, no. 10 (2026): 1-9. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.55041/ijcope.v2i10.143.
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- •Published on: Oct 22 2026
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