Context: Searching for a new senior level software development job over a 9 week period in summer 2025.
- Focused mostly on data engineering and backend roles that are in-person or hybrid in the SF Bay Area.
- Leads from recruiters on LinkedIn were much more likely to lead to interviews+offers.
- The winning offer came through my personal network.
- I mostly used Hiring.cafe for prospecting. They're a scraper with an interface I didn't hate.
I'm pretty sure some places would just skip over your application (with some probability) because the sheer amount of applications they receive
Oh yes.
As the old joke goes:
"Well, we don't want our future employee to be unlucky... *grabs half of the printed applications and tosses them in the trash*"
My friend who works in marketing usually try to find out the hiring manager and also emailed them directly while also providing something similar to the commenter above (3-month marketing and content plan instead of a sample project) and it's basically 100% success rate for getting a response for him.