Found out the average job posting gets 250 resumes, and I stopped feeling bad about my 40 applications
I was reading a hiring report from a recruiter in Chicago last week and she said the average job posting pulls in around 250 resumes. That number hit me hard because I had been beating myself up over sending 40 applications and only hearing back from 3 places. Those 40 felt like a lot until I did the math, which means I was basically one voice in a crowd of hundreds for every single role. She also said most of those get skimmed in under 10 seconds, so the thing I spent hours tweaking in my cover letter barely matters. It made me feel way less like a failure and more like I was just playing a numbers game I did not understand before. Anyway, I started applying to fewer jobs but reaching out to one actual person at each company, and I already got 2 replies this week. Has anyone else tried the direct message route instead of just firing off applications?