After hundreds and hundreds of applications, I changed up my job search approach and started getting interviews, and then a job. Here's what I did.

This might not work for every industry, I’m in tech and my approach might not work as well in other sectors.

After getting laid off before Christmas, I first started applying to every job post I could find. If I could do a cover letter I would. (I used chatGPT to merge my standard letter with the JD and edited from there.)

I applied to a hundred jobs a week for 4 months. I got rejections, mostly generic, from about 30% of them, and nothing from the rest, outside of 6. These 6 were different for a reason – I knew somebody at the company, and I had reached out to them and asked them to put in my resume and/or put in a word for me. In 1 I got a personalized rejection saying they wanted domain expertise I didn’t have. Fiar. The other 5 I had a call with the recruiter, and in 4 I interviewed with the hiring manager and beyound. I didn’t get any of those jobs, but it did make me rethink my strategy.

I stopped applying to jobs unless I had or could make a personal connection. I went through my phone and texted every former coworker I had info for and asked them if their company was hiring and even if it wasn’t could I get my resume in front of the dept head. I went on slack communities for my job function, and looked to see if the hiring manager for a job I was looking at was active, and if so messaged them there. I paid for the lowest tier of LinkedIn so I could message people I didn’t know, and messaged hiring managers or people in the org related to a job posting. I tried to find the email format for the company and cold-emailed the hiring manager about the job. Only if they replied did I send an application. Sometimes they replied “please just send in an application via the website” but at least when applying I could note that I’d connected with the hiring manager and was applying at their suggested, and of course after applying I’d follow up and tell them I’d done so.

This was all v. time intensive, and I went from 100 applications a week to <10. But I ended up having calls with at least the recruiter with the majority of them. I started getting a couple of interviews a week rather than a couple of interviews a month. And in two months I had a job, which I love.

Like I said, maybe doesn’t work for everyone, but a) recruiters everywhere are flooded with resumes, and if they have a handful of referrals that all look like great candidates on paper (and you can bet the probably do) they will NEVER even look at another resume. b) outside of potentially a few kinds of jobs, I bet every employer wants hires willing to hustle, which cold outreach often imples. I don’t think hiring managers will respond to cold outreach negatively.

Best of luck to you all!

Edin.