It wouldn't surprise me if this was a significant under-count. I've been applying for jobs for, what, 3-4 years now, both when I was in Uni and after. I don't even know how many job applications I've submitted but I think I've gotten maybe 10-15 interviews at most? I have of course gotten the typical advice: "Build your network", "Submit a cover letter", blah blah blah, but the first bit is completely useless to me (I don't have the finances to go to conferences for example) and I've tried the second bit and haven't gotten anywhere. I've been told to tailor my resume but... Yeah, I'm not doing that when I'm supposed to be submitting hundreds of applications per day or something. Honestly it's hard to muster up the motivation now to apply for jobs instead of working on open-source projects and (maybe) posting something freelance-ish on fiver or something because at least with open-source projects I'll get somewhere and it's something I enjoy; with job hunting and all the automation at play, and with even more things getting automated, it's a lot harder to answer the question of "why should I even bother" when companies are slashing headcount like crazy and aren't fined heavily by these platforms for posting ghost jobs and wasting my time (or some equally as harsh punishment that makes them actually pay attention). I still apply occasionally, but given how horrible the market is I know my job application count has significantly fallen. I just hope the market turns around and we see some huge crackdowns on all this automation because it's massively disincentivizing applicants (after all, why apply when you can only submit an application every 10-30 seconds while a bunch of people can submit 10000 applications per minute?).
Most of my projects on my GH are me contributing to other OSS projects, or me just experimenting (there are a couple exceptions). One of them is one I've thought about posting about on here, actually, since it's in it's pre-release stage and is quite stable. I've never had my own blog for professional purposes, so talk about new territory for me... Lol
If you're submitting a hundred applications a day, you're doing it wrong. You should get better results aiming for just a few a day, but each tailored. (Though obviously it's just not a great time right now, I'd argue not being bot-fodder and obvious chaff is extra worth it if any human ever does actually look.)
Your the first person who's told me the opposite of the advice that I've been told. It's hard to figure out which advice I should actually consider and what should be thrown out.
I'm honestly unsure how tailoring would change my resume all that much. I'm a new college grad (graduated about 2 years ago, will be 3 in May) so... Shrug. Honestly I'm wondering if I should just keep doing what I'm doing, maybe? Idk nowadays, and I doubt the automation problem is going to go away.
I mean I just don't think spamming applications pays dividends so much as exhibiting alignment with positions you actually have got a match for. That said, if you've never swung a first position post degree it's probably only going to get harder.
Especially now if you don't have real experience or interesting public facing content or code or contributions... I definitely think spamming applications is only going to help if the positions you're hitting have few applications.
I'm obviously low sample size, though. But I've mostly found roles without using my network or applying for more than a few places a day for a few weeks. But right out of college the two things that saved me were applying for positions that more experienced folks would have seen red flags (got me in the door of the field) and having experience in pertinent stuff during college.
