Why Your Applications Are Getting Ignored (and what to do about it) & 30+ Remote Jobs Inside

Have you been clicking the "Easy Apply" button on job listings?

You might as well be setting your application on fire.

That button does NOTHING.

As a matter of fact, how and where you're applying greatly impacts your odds of whether or not you hear back on your application.

Most people are using job boards to track down and apply for job opportunities because it's fast and easy (50%-60% of ALL applications companies process come from job boards).

Unfortunately for you, only about 30%-37% of all hires come from job boards.

Tons of applications, few actual hires. It's the worst conversion rate of any source.

Solution:

On the flip side, only about 12% of applications come in directly from company careers pages, but amount to nearly 1/4 of all company hires!

It's a way better bang for your buck.

But referrals will ALWAYS have the highest hit rate.

Trusted referrals save hiring managers a TON of time by entrusting their colleague's opinion of the candidate. It's a pre-screening process that gets you 90% of the way to getting an interview.

And of course getting a referral is the most difficult thing to do when you don't know anyone at the company!

But, it's doable!

Listen to this podcast for some tips

Tl;Dr,

Essentially, you should be chasing companies, not job listings.

You want to find a company you want to work with BEFORE you apply for a job with them. You should use that time to interact with people who work at that company, engage with their content, and establish weak ties with 2nd degree connections.

By the time the ideal job listing goes up, you won't be a stranger, you'll be a familiar, known quantity.

If the company you're applying to is using an applicant tracking system (ATS), it will automatically trash your application if your resume doesn't have the right content.

ATS systems can be used to customize a company's experience/skill requirements for each job listing. In other words, the ATS will look for specific words in your resume, and if they aren't there, you're cooked.

How often is this happening? A ton...

• Fortune 500 companies: Almost 99% of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS
• Large companies: 70% of large companies use an ATS
• Small and mid-sized businesses: 20% of small and mid-sized businesses use an ATS

Solution:

That means you need to customize your resume for EACH job listing in order to pass the initial AI screening.

Look for specific words in the application that you can use in your resume. Tools, skills, and experience requirements are almost always listed in job listings - use them in your resume.

This might come as a shock, but about 60% of job listings you see on job boards are fake.

You read that correctly - the jobs you are applying for don't exist.

Recruiters and HR use "Ghost listings" to harvest information, keep their pipeline rich, and test the waters for demand.

Whatever their reason may be, the majority of jobs you're applying for probably don't exist.

Solution:

Most of these ghost listings are being posted on job boards. Again, follow companies' careers pages instead.

Tl;Dr,

With all of this work, you're only going to be able to apply for 10-20% of the jobs you were applying to previously. It FEELS less productive, which may seem counterintuitive. But in reality, what you're doing is upping your conversion rate.

Quality > Quantity