If you’re applying to hundreds of jobs and hearing nothing back, it probably isn’t you. The way the funnel is set up works against you.
Big companies dominate job boards like LinkedIn partly because they pay for placement. A single listing at a well-known corporation can pull over a thousand applications, and a lot of them get auto-filtered before a person ever looks. Even a strong resume struggles to surface in that volume, especially for roles that often get filled internally or through referrals before the public pile is touched.
Postings That Aren’t Really Hiring
A lot of large companies sit under hiring freezes while leaving their postings live. Part of that is optics: pulling hundreds of listings at once tells competitors and investors something is wrong, so it’s easier to leave them up. The effect on you is that the role you’re applying to may have no budget and no manager allowed to fill it.
I’ve seen these “ghost” postings even send out automated coding assessments and personality tests, which makes it feel like you’re advancing when there’s nothing to advance toward. The listing is open because no one turned it off, not because anyone is hiring for it.
Where the Real Jobs Are
Companies that recently closed a Series B or Series C round tend to be hiring for real. They’ve raised money specifically to grow their teams, so the postings reflect actual headcount they need to fill rather than appearances they need to keep up.
The applicant pool at these startups is also much smaller than at the big names. They’ve usually proven product-market fit by Series A and are now in scaling mode, lean enough that a single posting is a genuine need. Your application has a real chance of being read by the person who has to fill the seat.
A Different Approach
Filter your search for companies that announced a Series B or C round in the last few months, and apply through their own sites rather than only through LinkedIn. If you know anyone connected to them, use it. A referral at a 100-person startup carries far more weight than the same referral at a 10,000-person company.
“Apply everywhere” mostly burns time. I’d rather send ten applications to companies with money to spend and seats to fill than a hundred into the void.