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I was laid off and looking for a new job. On sites like LinkedIn they show the number of people who have already applied. Usually there are over 100 applicants per day. Is it still worth applying? A lot of the jobs are "repostings". What exactly does this mean? I don't see the point of reposting when 100s of people have already applied.

Someone was mentioning it's about luck when applying for jobs. If they get 500 applicants, chances are a good chunk are qualified. Even with automated screening, they probably will end up with more than they can interview. So probably they would take the first 10 that appear to be a perfect fit and interview them. Is this view correct? Does this mean it's better to apply to new job postings and not ones more than a couple days old?

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  • @JoeStrazzere $0 but my point was the time and energy could be better spent on another posting. I was thinking this because I've been getting almost 0 interviews.
    – Pelgriminal
    Commented Jul 17 at 22:01
  • @JoeStrazzere I agree "something is wrong" but I'm not sure what. I've shown my resume to a couple people and they said it looks good, though I'm not sure how carefully they red it as I still found a couple typos. I'm considering asking a friend to sit down beside me and watch as I apply for a job to see if there's something I'm doing wrong.
    – Pelgriminal
    Commented Jul 17 at 23:45
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    You really don't know, and you don't know how qualified other people are. The company I work at advertised a position for experienced IT support and had quite probably over a hundred applicants - including some whose only previous job had been cleaning, were overseas, and expected us to sponsor a visa for them.
    – user25730
    Commented Jul 18 at 1:06
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    @JoeStrazzere maybe I shouldn't do this but every job I apply for I use a targeted resume and cover letter. Of course I don't rewrite them from scratch, but each time I make changes has the potential introduce new typos. Typos on the level of one bullet point has a period at the end and the rest don't. How much time should I spend proof reading? How often should I get other people to proof read my resume and cover letter? I want to avoid being a perfectionist and not applying enough.
    – Pelgriminal
    Commented Jul 18 at 9:16
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    First, you should spend more time to apply for jobs that you think you will have good chances of getting hired. Then, after that, spend some time to apply for jobs that you have low chances of getting hired such as the jobs with 250+ applicants.
    – Job_September_2020
    Commented Jul 18 at 13:03

10 Answers 10

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As cliché as it sounds - you miss 100% of the shots you never take.

There are no negative consequences to taking a punt on a job that you are interested in.

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    In addition, the company now has your resume to review in the future.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jul 17 at 22:23
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    You do indeed lose your time crafting a well-written cover letter, so it's not true that applying is always better than skipping, especially when you see some indications that your application is likely to be rejected. Approach "let me try everything I see around" inevitably makes you reuse cover letters or write generic stuff without basic research and trying to produce something focused on the specific position. So you need some sort of quick filter anyway - there are much more jobs available than you have time to analyze manually with sufficient depth.
    – SUTerliakov
    Commented Jul 18 at 17:59
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    @SUTerliakov, does anyone even write cover letters anymore? The time it takes to write one cover letter, you could apply for 100 jobs! Any employer requiring a customised letter at first instance these days is just closing themselves off to most of the market. I wonder whether the reason why so many employers now rely on paying external recruiters to find candidates, is that the recruiters just cut through all this nonsense and trawl the full market for CVs.
    – Steve
    Commented Jul 19 at 9:37
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    @Steve as a hiring manager, although I don't ask for cover letters, I do appreciate them when they explain why the candidate would be a particularly good fit for the position. You often can't get that across from a résumé alone.
    – terdon
    Commented Jul 19 at 14:44
  • @Steve that is exactly the point is it tough. It's better to apply to the top jobs that you believe are the best fit for you then to apply to hundreds of jobs half heatedly.
    – seg
    Commented Jul 21 at 13:55
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Every company is different, but in my experience:

  • The whole "reposting" thing should not be a deterrent. Maybe they had it posted, went through interviews, their favorite candidate fell through last minute and now they're back to the drawing board. Maybe they're hiring for a second employee in the same role and just using the same posting. Who knows.
  • The "first ten" perfect applicants is - no offense - silly. A company is not going to care if someone applies 3 hours or 3 days after the posting, they wouldn't rank or filter candidates by application date/time.
  • The only thing that really plays is your last point, new vs old postings. For example lets say a company makes a posting, and 3 days later they meet to sort the candidates and decide who to move forward with. A day after that, you apply. In this case sure, they're not even going to consider you. But this still shouldn't be a factor for you - you don't know when the cutoff is for a posting so it's pointless to try and assume it. And if there's an old posting maybe that means the company hasn't had anyone who fits apply yet, so you still should - this means that if you're a good candidate there will be very little competition!
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  • I've heard stories about companies that do rank or filter candidates by application time (aside from posted cutoff dates), so I absolutely believe that it happens. But I don't think you can tell which companies those are from the outside, and based on the stories they tend not to be the best companies to work for anyway.
    – David Z
    Commented Jul 18 at 23:23
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Usually there are over 100 applicants per day. Is it still worth applying?

Why not?

A lot of the jobs are "repostings". What exactly does this mean?

Probably the recruiter is seeking more applications.

So probably they would take the first 10 that appear to be a perfect fit and interview them. Is this view correct?

Nobody except the poster can tell what criterion they use for filtering candidates.

Does this mean it's better to apply to new job postings and not ones more than a couple days old?

I don't think there's any harm in applying to both.

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  • "Why not?" - in the sense my time would be better spent applying to a newer posting.
    – Pelgriminal
    Commented Jul 17 at 21:58
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    @Pelegriminal Then apply only if you feel you don't have other application with higher priorities and better "perceived chance" of getting.
    – Pac0
    Commented Jul 28 at 21:42
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I think there's a common opinion here answered already: if you don't apply then your chances are 0%. When you apply, it'll be greater than 0%. Someone will get the job. And you don't know if someone is more or less qualified than you. Just because there's 500 applicants, doesn't mean they do a full review for all of them.

I'll give you an example of when I applied to a position with many applicants.

My first job out of college, I threw my hat into the ring. I wasn't a particularly good student and my GPA was less than ideal. I applied to a large tech company and I made it to the final round of interviews. They revealed that 600 applicants applied, 20 were interviewed, 9 made it to the final round, and only 3 would be selected. So there was a less than 1% chance that we got the job.

I was hesitant about applying because of my sub-par GPA. But if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't be where I am now with my current job 7 years later.

As far as why companies repost the same job, it's possible that the company needs more suitable candidates in their pool of applicants. It doesn't necessarily mean they've turned down anyone after any interviews. With some companies it takes weeks, sometimes months, before they begin the interviews.

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At the risk of providing yet another answer:

One hundred applicants is nothing.

Because it is extremely easy to apply for a job online, many people take a scattershot approach to applying for jobs. They apply for literally anything vaguely in their area of work, whether they are qualified or not, and whether they fit the requirements or not. Most of those applicants will be discarded by the company and their automatic (or human) filtering systems.

So go ahead and apply.

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Go for it.

I've posted a job advert on LinkedIn before. From experience, you can probably rule out at least 20-30% of the people who have applied as they're not eligible. It takes a few clicks to apply for a job, people will apply even if they're not not a good match on the off-chance they get lucky.

For example, the advert I posted required the applicant to confirm they were UK-based, eligible to work in the UK and understand that we could not offer a visa. Despite this, 20-30% of the applicants were based in India and did not have a work visa but still applied. If you're a good match, you're going to be considered.

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Here's an anecdote from the other side: One of the companies I worked at had a posting open for 9 months. We've regularly re-posted the job. The manager reviewed the applications, rejected like 90% of them because from the CV alone it was clear they were not a fit. He then called the remaining 10% and rejected like 70% of them. A handful made it to technical interview stage, where they were rejected. And another round.

It's really hard to find a good employee, when you know who are you looking for.

Sometimes even a successful process has to go back to square one. When the finalist bails out the last minute. Or worse, they turn out to be completely incompatible with the company and let go within first 2 weeks. "Old" CVs are pulled out of the bin.

It's really easy to just click "apply" on 100 offers a day.

Some of the people that got to the phone call stage didn't even know what offer were they applying to, what is the salary and what are the remote work conditions. They've applied to, let's say a 70k job when they knew their minimum was 100k, and to a fully on-site job despite not willing to visit the office.

So probably they would take the first 10 that appear to be a perfect fit and interview them. Is this view correct?

No, usually they keep interviewing until an actual perfect fit is found. It's impossible to tell from a CV alone.

Does this mean it's better to apply to new job postings and not ones more than a couple days old?

It is. If the requirements are low and unspecific, usually the first round finds a candidate that's good enough.

Is it worth it to apply to jobs that have over 100 applicants or have been posted for few days?

Depends. If you see that the job description sounds like a perfect fit to your experience and expectations - it's always worth applying with maximum effort. "100 applicants" means only that 100 people clicked the button. Not necessarily 100 right people. Also, "few days" is usually not long enough to interview many people.

On the other hand, if your skills are generic and the job offer is generic and the money is OK - you can evaluate their chances in filling that position as high and save yourself the effort. OR - just limit your effort to clicking "apply".

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Yes and No

There has been a trend of late where some business intentionally leave/have job postings open for positions that do not actually exist or are not ready to fill:

False Hope to Current Employees

A bad manager can create a job posting and then point the currently understaffed team to the job opening as proof they are trying to staff up, and they, the team, just need to keep putting in that extra effort for just one more month and then things will get better. However, said manager has no intention of ever filling that position and is instead intentionally trying to keep labor costs down by overworking an understaffed team.

Building a Portfolio

Some HR departments use job postings as a way to collect information on the current supply/quality of people just in case an employee quits/resigns/retires or is fired. That way they already have a stack of resumes ready to go and can more quickly fill a sudden opening.

Fishing for Gems

Lastly, some businesses will leave a few generic postings always open. The goal is not to fill them quickly, but to have some open avenue to get resumes they can review. Then when someone with a rare skill set, experience, or background comes along they can pounce upon it, since people like this do not stay looking for a job for very long. When someone like this comes along they will create a position specifically for them on the team that will benefit from their presence.

Conclusion

So, yes it can still be worth applying to reposts where hundreds or even thousands are applying, but understand that a percentage of those positions might not be real or have an opening for you (yet).

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Applying for a job should be an exhaustive careful process tailoring your CV to show how you meet the requirements. Many of these 100+ applications may be "scattershot" so IF it's a really good fit I would still go ahead and put the work in to apply. If it's marginal I tend to let these ones go and focus on others that are more closely matched to my skills.

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Finding a job is a matter of probability and statistics. Any posting you don't apply to reduces the probability of success.

There are techniques you can employ to improve your odds:

  1. Networking
  2. Writing your CV and cover letter to address their needs. Answer their question, "why should we hire you" Also answer the question by citing your skills and experience (where you used the skills).
  3. Find out what they need and tailor your replies, CV and cover letter to address their issues. DO NOT USE GENERIC CV OR COVER LETTER. Do research.
  4. Uniqueness. Emphasize how you are different from the common folk. Many people I have interviewed, "just want a job". The people I recommend have a personality and are different.
  5. Lower your demands/get your foot in the door. Usually once you get in to the company, you can transfer to a position that you like better or is a better fit. Keep an eye on the internal job postings. Companies tend to favor internal transfers before going outside. Again, tailor your CV and Cover letter to guide them away from being overqualified (if possible).
  6. Create a web page. Design your web page to brag about your skills, companies where you used the skills and how your skills helped the company.

Searching for a job or career is a game of probabilities. The more positions you seriously apply to (see above cheats), the better your odds of succeeding. You could tailor your CV for CV Scanner bots and HR scanners. Have a section listing the keywords that are in the Job Announcement. Hey, bring more than one tailored CV. I've made CVs tailored to passing the bots and HR; and bring other CVs for the hiring manager and the future team members. Apply carefully to everything that's related, the more that you apply to the better.

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