France Benchmark Recruiting Metrics 2025

As global trade and political uncertainties grow in early 2025, the French economy faces a slowdown with one bright spot: Technology jobs. According to NuCamp, the technology market in France is projected to hit €70 billion, with over 500,000 job openings across the country. 

Amidst this uncertainty and pressure to compete on a global scale, French hiring teams have the opportunity to streamline hiring with more efficient practices. Benchmark recruiting metrics can help French organisations across all industries see where they fit into the bigger picture and chart a course for improvement.

Recruiting Benchmarks Report

For its landmark Recruiting Benchmarks 2025 Report, SmartRecruiters examined nearly 90 million applications for 1.5 million jobs across 95 countries. This blog post dives into data from 18.3 million job applications in France. It offers a starting place for French organisations to see where they’re performing well and where they can improve. 

Here are the top takeaways.

Applicant conversion

• Employers in France receive an average of 93 applications per role, 28% higher than the global average. 
• The larger-than-average applicant volume means that fewer candidates get interviewed and proceed to the offer stage. French employers are the most selective of the five nations covered in the report.
• The job offer acceptance rate in France is 6% higher than average, suggesting that the extra scrutiny by French hiring teams makes candidates less prone to reject offers.

Time to hire

• The median time to hire in France is 39 days, just above the global average. Candidates progress to the review and interview stages at about the same pace as their global counterparts.
• The time to hire for organizations using AI is typically 26% faster than those that don’t use it. By applying AI to their hiring process, French organisations could not only fill positions faster but also help their recruiters achieve more hires per month. In the United States (add link when available) for example, recruiters across all industries are making 55 hires per month.

Recruiting productivity in France

• Recruiters in France make an average of 20 hires per month, 33% less than their counterparts in other industries, who make an average 30 hires per month.
• Scorecard adoption is high among companies that use them, with 99% of hiring teams completing them.
• For teams that are faced with doing more with less, conversational AI can help fill the gap and increase recruiter productivity. Winston Chat, SmartRecruiters’ candidate chatbot, uses conversational AI to handle both top-of-funnel candidate conversations plus screening and scheduling, keeping candidates engaged throughout the hiring process. Together, these features support an 80% reduction in manual work for recruiters.

Sources of hire in France

• Employers in France exceed in referrals, generating 43% more hires from internal sources than those in other countries.
• French companies rank 50% below the global average for internal hiring. Those seeking to reduce recruiting costs and strengthen retention should look to their employee base to fill positions.

French recruiting metrics implications

Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer at Lighthouse Research & Advisory, offered this commentary on hiring in France.

France has a highly competitive hiring market. Companies receive about 27% more applications than other countries, and offer acceptance rates are at 92%, the highest in the world. Hires from employee referrals in France are about 40% higher than the global average and three times higher than they are in Australia, for comparison purposes.

One of the world’s largest luxury retail brands based in France pointed out that while they knew the unique customer preferences, expectations, and sales cues across their 75 different brands, they didn’t know nearly as much about their candidates and employees across the organization. Their renewed focus on knowing their talent is a key strategy for them in the coming year.

Candidates want the human touch

The research shows that talent wants to both know and be known—in our 2024 survey we saw that the number one way candidates say employers can demonstrate authenticity in the hiring process is by providing transparency on pay, benefits, and other similar priorities. 

In addition, more than half of candidates wish the employer would learn about their skills and career goals so they can match them up with organizational needs.

French recruiting case study

ALTEN, a global engineering and IT consulting firm with 58,000 employees, needed to unify fragmented hiring systems across multiple countries. With SmartRecruiters, the company deployed a centralized, end-to-end recruitment platform in France, Germany, and the UK, improving recruiter efficiency, enhancing collaboration with hiring managers, and delivering a more consistent candidate experience. The results: a 30% increase in recruiter productivity, a 60% rise in applications per job posting, and a fully integrated tech stack across job boards, HRIS, and internal talent analytics tools.

Get more recruiting benchmark metrics

Download the full report to get a global overview of hiring benchmarks plus insights on industry-related differences in hiring across healthcare, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, and technology.