I’ve been trying to find a different job for a year and a half now, and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that online job applications are a waste of time.
Because I am still employed, my new job search was a part-time effort at best, and predominantly consisted of online job applications. I extensively utilized many online job search engines such as ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and CareerBuilder. And I also paid for the Premium LinkedIn package where you are visible to recruiters and you can see the salaries of the posted jobs.
I also stalked the Career pages of the companies I was interested in working for, and applied directly there whenever I saw a good fit for me.
So in about 18 months, I applied for 172 jobs online. Only received 4 interviews. From the 4 interviews, I received 2 offers but they were too low and I could not accept. And I received 2 rejections.
This is a horrible track record. And I can’t blame it on the pandemic economy because I started this effort almost a year prior to covid closing everything down.
This is also an incredible amount of time invested. Because it’s not as easy as just uploading your resume whenever you apply online. You have to create an account with the company, and re-format your resume to fit their specific formatting which isn’t standardized, and also include a customized cover letter for their specific position and company. I would estimate I spent approximately 30min to an hour on each online job application.
And it was ultimately a huge waste of time for me.
See, I have a former coworker that started his new job search in early December. We have very similar work experiences and histories. His first day at his new job is today.
I asked him about his track record. He said he received 4 job OFFERS within the first couple of weeks of his job search. He applied for ZERO jobs online.
I asked him what he did, and he said he just reached out to all his contacts, basically told them that he was looking for something else, and his contacts brought potential opportunities to him. He only networked. That was it.
Holy cow, I feel so stupid in comparison. Like, has anyone found any success with these online job applications? Or is it all a scam? I mean, alot of these job search sites ask for money for better services and visibility, and I fell for it with LinkedIn. And I got no results from it. I kinda feel like a fool and I want all my time back. 🙁