Applying to jobs is a waste of time

It’s become a trope: “I applied to hundreds of positions but only got 5 interviews and no offers.”

I’ve been on both sides of the hiring process: as a candidate and as a hiring manager. Both sides are challenging for the same underlying reason: volume.

As a hiring manager, the volume of applications is overwhelming. I was once receiving 500 applications per week. And this was before AI made it 10x worse by making it easier to bulk apply to roles that are not even a good fit. There’s simply no way to manually review this volume of applications. I understand why AI is being used to try to find signal in this noise. Usually only 10% of applications are worth considering, but knowing which 10% is the hard part.

As a candidate, it sucks. There’s no good way to make your application stand out in a sea of thousands of identical-looking applications. You’re rolling the dice, hoping the ATS picks yours out of the pile for a human to review. You’re reduced to a row in a database. It makes you feel powerless.

What can you do, then?

Stop applying. Really. Don’t even bother.

Instead, work your network.

If I had to choose between reviewing 10 more applicants or taking a call with someone that comes recommended by a friend or colleague, I’d choose the second. Every. Single. Time. Someone who made an effort to connect with me because they’re interested in the work we do at the company is far more attractive than an applicant who applied to hundreds of other companies and couldn’t tell me why they were interested in ours specifically.

The process looks like this:

1. Find companies doing work you’re genuinely interested in. They don’t even need to be hiring or have a role.
2. Find someone in your network who knows someone who works there, even if they’re a loose connection like a fellow alumnus or former colleague.
3. Ask your mutual connection to introduce you to learn more about the company, their work, and what it’s like working there. Make it clear that even though you’re in the job market, you don’t expect them to have a potential role for you. You just want to learn more. This avoids putting pressure on the other person and setting any expectations.
4. If that call goes well, ask them to connect you with a hiring manager—again, even if they’re not hiring.

This is how friends and I have been finding roles for the last decade. Stop playing the ATS lottery like everyone else and instead use your edge: low-volume, targeted referrals that lead to genuine conversations.