In a stunning development that's shocking absolutely nobody who's ever worked with a great recruiting coordinator, companies are discovering that the people who actually make recruiting run smoothly might be worth investing in. Revolutionary thinking, truly.

LinkedIn's talent trends report shows recruiting coordinator job postings up 43% year-over-year, with salaries increasing 18% on average. Even more telling: career advancement opportunities for coordinators have expanded dramatically, with clear paths to recruiter, senior recruiter, and eventually TA leadership roles.

The Coordinator Awakening

For years, recruiting coordinator was treated like an entry-level admin role - schedule interviews, send rejection emails, keep the calendars from imploding. Pay them $45,000, don't invest in their development, then act shocked when they leave after 18 months.

But here's what smart TA leaders figured out: recruiting coordinators see everything. They know which hiring managers are impossible to work with, which recruiters are actually good at their jobs, where the process breaks down, and what candidates really think about your interview experience. They're like the basement IT guy in a heist movie - underestimated but actually running the whole operation.

SHRM's TA workforce study confirms what coordinators have known forever: coordinator experience provides better foundation for recruiting success than most other entry points. Why? Because you can't be a good recruiter if you don't understand scheduling, candidate experience, process management, and stakeholder coordination. And coordinators are masters of all that.

The Money Finally Caught Up

Compensation for recruiting coordinators is finally starting to reflect their actual value. Glassdoor's salary data shows average coordinator salaries hitting $55,000-$68,000 for mid-level roles, with senior coordinators in tech markets exceeding $80,000. That's still not enough, frankly, but it's better than the $42,000 companies were trying to get away with three years ago.

More importantly, companies are creating actual career progression. Recruiting Coordinator → Senior Recruiting Coordinator → Recruiting Operations Specialist → TA Operations Manager → Head of TA Operations is becoming a real path, not just something mentioned in onboarding and never discussed again.

Some organizations are also building coordinator → recruiter pipelines with structured training programs. Spend 12-18 months as a coordinator learning the systems and processes, then move into a recruiting role with actual support and mentorship. Turns out investing in people's growth is more effective than just hiring recruiters off LinkedIn and hoping they work out!

Why Coordinators Make Great Recruiters

Want to know who understands candidate experience better than anyone? The person who has to clean up the mess when your recruiter ghosts a candidate or your hiring manager reschedules for the fourth time.

Talent Board's CandE research found that recruiters who started as coordinators score 31% higher on candidate experience metrics than recruiters who came from other backgrounds. They've seen candidate frustration firsthand. They know what actually matters in the process. They're not going to make the same mistakes they watched other recruiters make.

Coordinators also understand the operational reality of recruiting in a way that people who've never done the role just don't. They know that "can we just add one more interview?" has cascading scheduling implications. They know that ghosting candidates creates more work for everyone. They know which "urgent" requests are actually urgent and which are just hiring managers panicking.

The Recruiting Coordinator Shortage Is Real

Plot twist: now that companies actually want to invest in recruiting coordinators, they can't find enough qualified candidates. Turns out when you treated a role like disposable admin work for years, people stopped wanting to do it!

Indeed's hiring trends data shows recruiting coordinator time-to-fill increased 35% in 2025, with many companies struggling to find candidates with the right mix of organization, communication, and technical skills. The good coordinators are getting promoted to recruiter roles, and the pipeline behind them is thin.

Companies are responding by raising salaries, offering remote work, creating better career paths, and generally treating coordinators like actual professionals whose work matters. Again, revolutionary thinking.

If you're a recruiting coordinator reading this: you've got leverage. Use it. Ask for the raise, the title change, the development opportunities. The market is finally recognizing your value, so make sure your employer does too.

And if you're a TA leader who's still underpaying and underinvesting in coordinators? Good luck hiring. You're going to need it.