Daniel Chait recently chatted with a friend who was in the throes of job hunting. This person had applied to two companies: Netflix and Facebook.
"They're two of the most sought-after employers in the whole country," Chait remembered telling his friend. "What do you think the chances are that you're going to get a job offer from both of those companies? Do you think this is setting you up for success? Let's do the math."
Chait is the CEO of Greenhouse, a recruiting-software company whose clients include Slack, Airbnb, Venmo, Pinterest, and HubSpot. He said that when one of these companies posts a job opening, it's typically flooded with hundreds or even thousands of applications.
Chait's advice to job seekers isn't to not apply to selective employers, but to be more thoughtful about their search. If you know you want to land two job offers, the next step is to work backward and figure out how many interviews you'll have to go through and how many applications you'll realistically have to submit.
In the case of Chait's friend, he realized that instead of applying to two roles, he'd need to apply to 50.
Make an effort to distinguish each application you submit
Recent data shows that the pandemic has greatly altered hiring trends in the US, impacting everything from job applications to networking. On average, 118 people apply for a single job, but only 20% get an interview. The more popular a company is, the harder it is to land an interview, especially since remote jobs mean that people can apply for roles outside of the states they live in. CNBC reported that flexible jobs are attracting 7 times more applicants than in-person roles.
For recent college graduates, landing a job is especially difficult, Insider reported. In December 2021, 41.3% of graduates were employed at a job that didn't require a college degree.
These pandemic-related challenges mean that job seekers need to be more intentional about which roles they're applying for and tailor each of them, Chait said. According to him, the "spray and pray" strategy — sending the same application to dozens of employers — typically doesn't work. You'll be more successful if you specialize your search, Chait said.
For example, if you're applying to a creative role and a project-manager role, you might submit two different versions of your résumé.
Other experts recommend going even further to distinguish your application at the companies you really want to work for.
Ramit Sethi, a personal-finance expert, previously shared a tip he learned from BJ Fogg, a psychologist and the director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford: "Find the one person who does what you want to do there. Every week send them some kind of report or analysis and just say, 'Look, I thought you might find this interesting. I'll write you back next Wednesday with the next analysis.'"
Sethi remembered Fogg saying, "How long can they ignore you?"
As for that friend who initially planned to apply to just Netflix and Facebook, "he's a smart guy," Chait said. "But he hadn't thought about the funnel."
This story was originally published in February 2019.
