Thats insane. Soon we will have AI agents applying for all jobs in scope, being filtrered on the other side by AI agents
Impressive, though my personal view is no data is required to show how useless LinkedIn is 😉
Background info: I’m an interdisciplinary software developer focused on programming but with a background that includes design. 3 years experience as an XR GIS SaaS developer in a startup, BSc, located in Vancouver, Canada. I finally landed a job as a Full-Stack Web Developer, after 8 months looking, and could not be happier with my new role! I created this dataviz with [SankeyMATIC.com](http://SankeyMATIC.com), which is great, and I used a good old Google doc to track my applications.
I wrote this little writeup for my LinkedIn and want to share it with you, especially for those who might be looking for a job themselves at the moment:
The job market I was facing was rather brutal, it took a long time for me to finally land the awesome role I ended up finding. As you can see, I faced an overwhelming amount of rejections. My rate of interview invites for job applications was less than 1%. So right away my biggest takeaway is – the job market sucks. It’s not you. If you’re currently looking, remember that this is not a reflection of you. Take breaks, go on walks, socialize, and remember that there’s only so much you can do.
Now, knowing the job market sucks, here’s my next insight: every job gets hundreds of applications, so the earlier you can get in, the better. One of my new colleagues phrased it best: It’s better to apply for 10 minutes every day, than for an hour only on the weekend. I don’t want to advise against taking the time to read job postings and writing CVs. But out of the 11 interviews I got, I had only written a CV for one of the applications, so there’s that.
The other insight I have: gather data. I tracked every application I sent by writing down the company, position, and where I applied, in a Google Doc. Just from that I have found that my Indeed applications were getting roughly 3x the responses as my LinkedIn applications. For developers, I can recommend creating a web portfolio to improve your web presence. I added Google Analytics to mine, and it’s awesome. I can see which project pages get the most attention, traffic over time, and which applications got clicks.
Finally, if you’re a designer or developer, I’d recommend staying active. Find projects to work on that you enjoy, and share them with the world. I found my open-source projects and contributions on GitHub helped me stay motivated, and they seem to have impressed recruiters as well. I got feedback from happy users of those projects, which felt amazing, and I made new connections with people interested in developing projects together.
I’d also like to recommend a few tools. Firstly, AI tools like ChatGPT can not only help write better CVs, they can help brainstorm skills to learn for certain industries, research companies, and prepare for job interviews. You can start a conversation by writing about yourself and the role, and then switch to your phone and practice an interview verbally with the ChatGPT mobile app, and even get feedback tailored to your application based on the information you provided. For developers I highly recommend the Cursor IDE, which is like GitHub Copilot on steroids. I can also recommend using ATS scanners, like Resumeworded, and lastly, I’ll plug my own web browser extension Hide Applied Jobs LinkedIn to clean up your LinkedIn search results.
Don’t let this tough job market get you down, you got this! 💪🔥
Congratulations on your perseverance.
Congrats and well done being patient
Wow, that is insane! I always think the college educated high earners that work in tech have it easy, move from one company to another all the time. Good on you for the hard work to land a great gig.
how did you even keep track of the number of applications? do you have a folder with individual resumes for each job posting? i’m just really impressed that you kept full accounting. Also, 831 no responses out of almost 1300 applications?
What’s up with every job posted on this sub requiring 3+ interviews? As a hiring manager, I don’t have time to conduct 3 interviews every time I want to hire someone. 1 interview for several candidates and 1 to make sure everyone else they’d need to work with approves. What’s the 3rd one for?
For clarity: you applied to 674 jobs at companies via LinkedIn but then 211 positions at EA Games and 79 at Microsoft? Was it effective to apply dozens of times to the same company? I’ve been applying to tons of jobs but making myself pick one role per company.
Second interview and then ghosted. Damn
A thorough job application should take several hours. You have to curtail your covering letter to company (and likely pull recent articles to prove you’ve done your homework) as well as your resume itself. Then just applying on LinkedIn is not the way… you have to go direct to their website. However, I would also reach out the head of HR or someone in your department (e.g. your potential boss) to check that the position is still open and note your interest. The higher the role, the more ‘pre’ networking you have to do before wasting any time applying.
Just hitting apply with a standard resume takes like 0 effort and will likely yield zero results.
Source, I have hired for a lot of jobs and seen the process from both sides.
A year and ~600 Jon apps in, I’ve gotten 3 interviews.
No successes yet.
This is both hopeful and crushing for me
8 months and nearly 1300 applications? No offense, but this looks like throwing shit against a wall and hoping something will stick. You were applying to over 5 jobs a day – that means you didn’t curate your resume to job postings, write cover letters, etc, just sent in a ridiculous amount of applications. This low success rate is exactly what I’d expect from low quality applications
![[OC] A long and brutal job hunt has finally come to its end](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/nhjtqamwstje1-1920x1024.png)
13 comments
Thats insane. Soon we will have AI agents applying for all jobs in scope, being filtrered on the other side by AI agents
Impressive, though my personal view is no data is required to show how useless LinkedIn is 😉
Background info: I’m an interdisciplinary software developer focused on programming but with a background that includes design. 3 years experience as an XR GIS SaaS developer in a startup, BSc, located in Vancouver, Canada. I finally landed a job as a Full-Stack Web Developer, after 8 months looking, and could not be happier with my new role! I created this dataviz with [SankeyMATIC.com](http://SankeyMATIC.com), which is great, and I used a good old Google doc to track my applications.
I wrote this little writeup for my LinkedIn and want to share it with you, especially for those who might be looking for a job themselves at the moment:
The job market I was facing was rather brutal, it took a long time for me to finally land the awesome role I ended up finding. As you can see, I faced an overwhelming amount of rejections. My rate of interview invites for job applications was less than 1%. So right away my biggest takeaway is – the job market sucks. It’s not you. If you’re currently looking, remember that this is not a reflection of you. Take breaks, go on walks, socialize, and remember that there’s only so much you can do.
Now, knowing the job market sucks, here’s my next insight: every job gets hundreds of applications, so the earlier you can get in, the better. One of my new colleagues phrased it best: It’s better to apply for 10 minutes every day, than for an hour only on the weekend. I don’t want to advise against taking the time to read job postings and writing CVs. But out of the 11 interviews I got, I had only written a CV for one of the applications, so there’s that.
The other insight I have: gather data. I tracked every application I sent by writing down the company, position, and where I applied, in a Google Doc. Just from that I have found that my Indeed applications were getting roughly 3x the responses as my LinkedIn applications. For developers, I can recommend creating a web portfolio to improve your web presence. I added Google Analytics to mine, and it’s awesome. I can see which project pages get the most attention, traffic over time, and which applications got clicks.
Finally, if you’re a designer or developer, I’d recommend staying active. Find projects to work on that you enjoy, and share them with the world. I found my open-source projects and contributions on GitHub helped me stay motivated, and they seem to have impressed recruiters as well. I got feedback from happy users of those projects, which felt amazing, and I made new connections with people interested in developing projects together.
I’d also like to recommend a few tools. Firstly, AI tools like ChatGPT can not only help write better CVs, they can help brainstorm skills to learn for certain industries, research companies, and prepare for job interviews. You can start a conversation by writing about yourself and the role, and then switch to your phone and practice an interview verbally with the ChatGPT mobile app, and even get feedback tailored to your application based on the information you provided. For developers I highly recommend the Cursor IDE, which is like GitHub Copilot on steroids. I can also recommend using ATS scanners, like Resumeworded, and lastly, I’ll plug my own web browser extension Hide Applied Jobs LinkedIn to clean up your LinkedIn search results.
Don’t let this tough job market get you down, you got this! 💪🔥
Congratulations on your perseverance.
Congrats and well done being patient
Wow, that is insane! I always think the college educated high earners that work in tech have it easy, move from one company to another all the time. Good on you for the hard work to land a great gig.
how did you even keep track of the number of applications? do you have a folder with individual resumes for each job posting? i’m just really impressed that you kept full accounting. Also, 831 no responses out of almost 1300 applications?
What’s up with every job posted on this sub requiring 3+ interviews? As a hiring manager, I don’t have time to conduct 3 interviews every time I want to hire someone. 1 interview for several candidates and 1 to make sure everyone else they’d need to work with approves. What’s the 3rd one for?
For clarity: you applied to 674 jobs at companies via LinkedIn but then 211 positions at EA Games and 79 at Microsoft? Was it effective to apply dozens of times to the same company? I’ve been applying to tons of jobs but making myself pick one role per company.
Second interview and then ghosted. Damn
A thorough job application should take several hours. You have to curtail your covering letter to company (and likely pull recent articles to prove you’ve done your homework) as well as your resume itself. Then just applying on LinkedIn is not the way… you have to go direct to their website. However, I would also reach out the head of HR or someone in your department (e.g. your potential boss) to check that the position is still open and note your interest. The higher the role, the more ‘pre’ networking you have to do before wasting any time applying.
Just hitting apply with a standard resume takes like 0 effort and will likely yield zero results.
Source, I have hired for a lot of jobs and seen the process from both sides.
A year and ~600 Jon apps in, I’ve gotten 3 interviews.
No successes yet.
This is both hopeful and crushing for me
8 months and nearly 1300 applications? No offense, but this looks like throwing shit against a wall and hoping something will stick. You were applying to over 5 jobs a day – that means you didn’t curate your resume to job postings, write cover letters, etc, just sent in a ridiculous amount of applications. This low success rate is exactly what I’d expect from low quality applications
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