The Weirdest Job Search

2 Months In: A Job Search Update

LinkedIn never forgets. The listings I created in their recruiting portal circa 2017-2019 for Lawn Love, connected to my personal LinkedIn account, still show up in their hybrid job search, recruiting/ATS software portal. LinkedIn is keenly interested for me to reopen those roles“Are you still hiring?” prompts appear about every two weeks, both on the home page and when trawling listings. It offers to immediately re-post the 6-year-old listings. and still has the statistics associated with them, which gave me a chuckle this morning.

For hiring full-stack PHP developers willing to work in, or relocate to, San Diego, I spent $350 on one LinkedIn listing to get 43 applications in ~3 weeks in 2017–a poor ROI compared to using AngelListRecently spun off from the venture capitalist arm and rebranded “WellFound Jobs.” I wonder which group will ultimately be more successful, in our post-Silicon Valley Bank world…. At the time, this felt like an acceptable volume of applications. I could easily personally review each one, and it dwarfed StackOverflow’s whopping 0 applications in ~3 months.

Today, most engineering leadership listings, of all levels, appear to average 100 applications the day the listing goes live, ~250 applications by day two, and then stabilizing between 280-350 hopefuls as future applicants are put off by the sheer volume HR departments and hiring managers have to sift through at that scale. The record is currently a pediatric telehealth group with 45 full-time employees, a high bar listed for their VP of Engineering role (albeit with no cited salary range to indicate just how much raw experience they’re seeking) with, ahem, 876 applicants in 24 hours. 876!

I’ve been careful to only apply to positions that sound like a potential great fit between my working style, the company’s current needs, and the business model/industry. But, like last week’s Silicon Valley Bank run, there’s always the temptation to join the crowd and start shotgunning my resume to every electronic inbox under the sun. 60 days of unemployment hasn’t changed my view that clicking apply on every position you see is a foolish strategy. Will I feel the same on day 600?

Who knows? Maybe the 128,202 138,302 laid off tech workers from 482 companiesToday’s numbers courtesy of layoffs.fyi’s tracker. Naturally, this was posted 16 hours before Facebook laid off 10,000 more people. in the first 72 days of 2023 is only the beginning. Maybe I’ll look back in six years and laugh at how remote job listings in tech used to only receive 900 applications in a week… Maybe the shotgunners will ultimately rise to the top in a new, J.P. Morgan Chase-eat-dog world, while I split my time between freelancing for the big tech monopolies’ contractors’ subcontractors and pulling $5 espressos for JPMC SVPs in downtown Boise.

In Snow Crash we trust. Come on corporate city-state burbclaves and FOQNEs!