That advice only makes the situation worse. If you are applying to 100 postings a week, you are almost certainly applying to jobs you aren’t qualified for, or don’t really want. You’re just playing the numbers game.
On the other side of it, HR departments are getting so many applications from unqualified people who are playing the numbers game, that eventually they just cut off the flow of incoming applications, qualified and unqualified alike.
I’ve often seen my son apply to great jobs that he is absolutely qualified for, and would be great for both himself and the employer, only to get a letter that they have closed applications due to the overwhelming response. If there weren’t so many unqualified applicants pumping up their useless personal numbers, maybe he’d make the cut for interviews, where he can shine, and get the job. But he never gets that far because of unqualified resume spammers bogging down HR.
Everybody should do everybody else a favor, and just apply for the jobs that your are qualified, and want to accept.
No you’re not putting this on everyone else this is on the companies.
If they didn’t require 5 + years of experience in every job role then there wouldn’t be a large amount of unqualified applicants. Pick any technology at all, including ones that came out 45 minutes ago, and it’ll require 5 plus years of experience. I saw a job that wanted 2 years worth of experience in a technology that is still in beta and hasn’t even officially been publicly released yet.
Everybody should do everybody else a favor, and just apply for the jobs that your are qualified, and want to accept.
This is what I do. This is also why I’ve been unemployed for more than a year.
I think you’re putting too much blame on others rather than the companies themselves. For comp sci, entry level simply doesn’t exist anymore. The lowest amount of experience required is about 2 years now. Chances are if you just graduated, there’s no real entry level job for you.
The recruiter process is also notoriously bad at any part of the application. I had applications straight up ghosted, responses two years after I applied, responses that they already decided to move with another candidate despite the job listing still open, even a 3 hr interview where I was told I would meet the team (as in personality test), only for it to end up as a 3 hr technical. This was back in 2021 2022, and from what I’ve heard, it has only gotten worse.
A huge issue is companies have u realistic expectations for new applicants when in reality the job isn’t even hard. We all know of the trope of asking for a degree with 5 years experience for an entry level position. That routinely happens and companies think they are being smart by weeding out candidates when all they’re doing is cutting out the best candidates. It’s the companies that don’t want to work. They don’t want to put work and time into finding good candidates.
Half the jobs aren’t even real listings, they are just there so the company looks prosperous (by having job openings) and so they can have your data.
Correct answer and it’s probably way higher than 50% now days.
In some states it is required to always have a job opening on a third party job board
I applied to over 600, and got two interviews. Neither worked out to be anything. Then, I said fuck it and started my own freelance business.
That’s about the number of applications i put in for my current job
This system needs to burn
There are not even 100 new jobs a week where I live, and that is including absolutely everything. Limiting to something I am vaguely skilled at? Fuck all jobs. About quarter of a million people if you combine the large town and next door city where I live and there is so little to find to apply to. Even worse when jobs give a wrong location name.
Job advertised as being in city with postcode AB1, actual role is in a town that isn’t even on he same island as the city in AB6
that’s fucked
Actual genuine nightmare fuel. This is not a lifestyle conducive to human health. Living this way is killing us.
If each job takes 30 minutes to apply to, that’s 50 hours per week, assuming you don’t stop to eat or rest. I think my average job application takes a little longer unless I fill it with bullshit answers.
That’s assuming you’re just filling applications. It doesn’t include finding them. I think in the time I was unemployed I passed over a few hundred absolutely reprehensible and morally objectionable positions.
Why so much ghosting? My speculation is perverse incentives of the modern world. Recruiters and HR need to justify their ongoing existence so they open positions that don’t need to get filled so they can spend time filtering candidates. Meanwhile, candidates need to turn to auto filling jobs because and bulk applying because there are so many of these ghost jobs that recruiters who do need people can’t get matched up. This turns into a race to the bottom of automation and counter automation where everyone loses.
Now I doubt they used the same account, but I’d feel obligated to give ‘yaoipilled kai, jellopussy’ an interview at the very least.
He’s right but he shouldn’t be right.
I both envy and pity those that can and need to blast out applications like this. There aren’t 1500 open positions in my field in the country. As someone who struggles with doing nothing, application grinding would resolve a lot of anxiety.
There aren’t even 1500 open positions where I live, let alone in the same field. Most common is minimum wage care work, then random assortment of skilled/unskilled roles.
Wow… So you are expected to feel ghosted/rejected 100 times a week, and upwards to 1500 in total? I wonder how healthy that must be for your psyche…
We didn’t have psyches back in the day. Just a can-do attitude and strong values.
And a bottle of alcohol too many here and there. And hobbies such as beating your wife black and blue in front of your kids. And fatal accidents from speeding around in our souped up cars.
Just none of that psyche shit, okay?
SLASH S.
Missing to hear about your bootstraps??? Did you pull them up at all??? I need to know!!!
Of course, everyone did it back then…
Though quite a few got it all wrong and ended up with a form of bootstrap tightly around their neck and hanging from a joist in the garage.
Or they accidentally fell off high buildings due to pulling their bootstraps up while on a roof.
Or they accidentally lassoed a bottle of vodka in to their mouths with the bootstraps, drank themselves in to a stupor, and then accidentally went driving and crashed.
BUT THERE WAS NONE OF THAT THE PSYCHE SHIT. Right, I’m off to do some wholesome beating of my wife and kids.
That “SLASH S” gives me Roy Kent’s “WHISTLE!” vibes.
And sometimes people had accidents cleaning their guns. With their mouths. But that’s just the cost of bearing arms, no mental health problems
I mean, it was normal getting a bit beaten up a kid for doing dumb stuff. It builds character! That’s why everyone ended up so funcional as adults, no? … No?
I wonder how healthy that must be for your psyche…
I went thru several months of it. Even with my anxiety meds, it felt like I was losing my mind.
Try multiple different periods of years of it… :/
Sucks, man. (got something now, though)
And people like that boss doesn’t even realize he’s celebrating his own inefficiency and incompetence when declaring they’ll go through that many applications without hiring somebody. Why do you want to be bad at finding talent and why do you want people to know you can’t recognize skill?
They’re probably not going through that many applications, they’ll be using a screening company or system that’s dropping every applucation that doesn’t have whatever the magical combination of keywords is in this particular case. I can only imagine it’s git even worse with the use if LLMs for screening.
Sounds super rough… Really hope things worked out in the end and you’re all better now!
Thanks! Things improved but aren’t good. Just less bad
Thing is its limited by geography. If I can’t physically get to the job in under 30mins, then I can’t get to the job on time, ever. Don’t have kids, folks, unless you really actually want them. Don’t just do it because you’re ‘at that stage in life’
Mate I’ve done jobs that have had a 1.5hr commute before. What are you talking about?
Seems more practical to me to just sleep at the office.
That is your prerogative, but it is not a wise one.
I understand, but if you have to put food on the table, then that’s what you have to do.
Congrats, but did you know that other people have problems that you don’t? And that just because you can do something doesn’t mean others can do it too?
We all have our problems in life, and you overcoming yours is meaningless to other people overcoming theirs.
But good job volunteering that your time is so worthless you’re willing to waste 3 hours of it on a commute. The only time I’ve ever driven more than 45 min for a job was to a client site, and I was getting paid and the commute was part of my 8hrs.
The person I replied to was implying they can’t commute longer than 30 mins because they have kids.
In a thread about finding jobs.
There’s a shedload of people including me for whom narrowing their job prospects down to only jobs within 30mins commute would be wishful thinking, and borderline ridiculous.
My ‘mate what are you talking about’ was based on my perspective yes, but there’s large swathes of people who would laugh at your privilege.
Nice for you I suppose. And nice of you to be so self-righteously hostile too.
Clearly he’s talking about the constraints that kids put on his time.
I also have kids.
Kids have to get to and from school
Oh fair enough if you’re ferrying them.
So the 30mins is essentially from latest drop off, to acceptable show up time at work then.
Exactly. My last job was great - had a 9:15 start which was more or less the perfect time when bussing in
Understood. It’s going to get a lot easier then when they can make their own way in.
In case anyone would like a reminder, this is a market failure and doesn’t reflect on you personally whatsoever.
A real # is probably 25 a week, which IMO is still quite brutal on mental health.
If you’re sending out 1500 a week you have no identifiable skill set beyond existing. 1500 jobs that are relevant to 1 individual aren’t being posted every week.
That’s the thing: 1500 job listings does not mean 1500 jobs exist.
Half are companies that realized posting fake listings works as free marketing on LinkedIn. It’s a real strategy: people start subscribing to their newsletter because LinkedIn offers that by default when you apply, and when somebody looks the company up, it creates the illusion they’re booming and expanding.
Then of the remaining half, a half of that are fake listings that are actually AI companies that get you to record five minutes of audio and take a picture during your “application” and under the fine print you’re allowing them to use your voice and resell it. Not joking.
Then you do have the remainder which are the real jobs. Of that remainder, more than half will be evaluated by an AI which may or may not take your skills into consideration, understand the formatting of your resume or even fully appreciate what the position entails.
Welcome to 2025, don’t you love it? You need to answer that you love it by the way because we are monitoring your social media accounts and we have three cameras in your street and we don’t like answers that bring the spirit down.
You’re forgetting the portion that are real jobs, but they already know they’re just changing an existing employee’s job title, but HR makes them post a job for it anyway to seem fair.
Dont forget the H1B ones. To hire (at half salary) a foreigner, by law they need to prove that the job cannot be done by a US employee. So they post a fake opening, with those “entry level 15 years experience in afield that existed 10 years” to justify the hiring
Or they’re hiring a relative but have to go through the motions of pretending to do the candidate search process.
Don’t forget H1Bs where they have to ‘prove’ that there are no suitable domestic candidates first
Good point.
Oh look! Living on a couple of euros of passive income looks really enticing all of a sudden!
I wasn’t even reading job descriptions last time. I just indiscriminately applied to everything and only read about the positions that replied back with a maybe. If they don’t allow the LinkedIn auto-apply, then I’m not filling out a form on their special unique website.
This is their problem, not mine.
Right this is what frustrates me there literally aren’t that many jobs to apply for unless you’re applying to literally every cashier job around you. And for people in small towns even that option doesn’t exist. Even 10 years ago people would send me links to jobs that were obvious scams on Indeed and they’d say “see! There ARE jobs!”
Pretty sure that they would counter, that if you’re not willing to relocate to literally anywhere at no notice and at your own expense you don’t really want to work. 1500 per week is simply not possible unless you’re looking nationally if not internationally depending on the industry.
That’s true if you’re living at your parents house and not in a serious relationship, the world is your oyster. But if that’s the case you’re probably looking for entry level work and good luck paying rent on that salary.
Well you need to send 1500 out because only 30 of the 1500 exist and you have no idea which that is.
I generally agree but what that said is 100 per week.
not much better but it’s a bit of a shame that a whole thread with much attention did not notice and just copied from the first comment
Yea I noticed that I misread a little while ago but left it. The comment is still accurate, 1500 a week is way too many.
It took me a couple hundred when I got laid off at Christmas last year. Was May before I got hired on again. I did hire an AI spamming service towards the end and I did start getting interviews off it, but ultimately found something on indeed. I still leave the spamming service running because, fuck HR and fuck their stupid systems, break them and make them figure out something else.
You need to not live in that area, or work that career.
I lost my job about a year before you did. Applied to maybeeee 10 places? I think fewer. Didn’t even finish some of the take-home assignments because, honestly, my partner at the time was just riding me so hard I wanted to die and nothing else. Almost got one job - but the company ended up restructuring.
Ended up getting an unsolicited message from a recruiter 3 months into unemployment, took that job. Then one of the recruiters whose take-home I didn’t complete emailed me to say hey we probably want you anyway, do you wanna discuss? I said sorry, not this time - I got an enticing job offer already. “Ok, congratulations! Feel free to let me know if it doesn’t work out though”
Also, every interview:
“So, why do you want to work with us, specifically?”
Well, specifically, I need money for housing, bills, and food.
Also, specifically, you gave me an interview so I’m now really interested in working…at wherever this place is. That’s it, really.
…
I mean, yeah, I could blow smoke up your arse if you really wan me to. But I would hope you’d have the intelligence to realise that it’s bullshit and that nowadays it’s all about money. I whore my time out and you give me money. When do I start?I had an interview recently where they spent almost half of it just trying to sell me on the company itself and how they work rather than asking why I wanted to work there. It was honestly refreshing, hope I get to work there
I hope you get it too. Its nice to find somewhere you vibe with.
The paranoid part of me warns that the company doing nothing but try to sell you on how good they are to work for may be a sign of desperation and problems hiring on their part, but I wasn’t in the room. I’m sure you got a good sense of how genuine they were in person.
Oh it was less what it’s like to work there and more the guy excitedly info dumping on what they’re building. He made it clear it would be hard work lol, but that’s fine with me if it’s actually something cool
Damn this sounds interesting! Good luck 🍀
They know it’s bs and want to hire fellow people who can spew bs
[puts hand on sholder] They arn’t *intelligence enough to realise that it’s bullshit and that nowadays it’s all about money. * Managers specificly are paid to drink the coolaid, unless your being hired by a triple threat (can do the job, manage people, and spin it all for managment above them) your going to be stuck working for some peter principal shmuck who is probably good enough at one of those things.
Not to be too pesimistic but your job is to blow smoke, unless your working for yourself or you managed to find one of those unicorn bosses. In the latter case, do what you can to be along for their ride.
I hate this question.
“So why do you want to work with us?”
“Because you corpo cunts are going to steal less of the value my labor produces and help me afford teeth.”
Exactly. You can’t possibly submit over 100 applications per week while also using any kind of reasonable discretion about wether the job is something you actually want to do, that you can actually do competently, somewhere that you can reasonably do it. You’re just an application shotgun at that point and you’re wasting the time of everyone involved.
If I had to spray and pray 1500 resumes I’d be suicidal.
I’m about 300+ deep and let me tell you…
Oh man, I hope you land a job soon. That sounds like hell
Haha, not me. I’ve gone past that to casual despair.
don’t get laid off!
yea well they deserve to be flooded with AI applications so just give them what they earned
