Item — HN Reader

Still waiting for a response to the 300 resumés you sent out last month?

Sending out 300 resumés in a month is the wrong strategy, as it shows you don't care about the posting. If you are willing to invest that little effort, you are basically playing a lottery against all the other people doing the same thing. You are far better off being selective and persistant. If instead of sending out 75 resumes a week, you spend a concerted effort on applying to a couple postings - and doing more than just sending your resume, I'm sure you'll have better results.

2 comments

This is probably true. But then again, if you know that most of your resumes are thrown out at random, you know you need to send out a large population of them in order to have a just few of them end up being read.

> Sending out 300 resumés in a month is the wrong strategy, as it shows you don't care about the posting

That's not always true. It depends on what your skills are and what the position requires. More applications means more people looking at your resume. Getting past HR is basically a gamble anyway, and I can't begin to tell you how many times I never heard back on jobs I'm exactly qualified for, while getting excited responses from teams in wholly different areas of software development.

One of my principles used to be to only apply to jobs for which I was very qualified. Now, I could care less. Next time I'm seeking work, I'm going to spam the hell out of every position I'm even remotely qualified for. Why? Because I need a job, and I care less about stressing HR than I do about paying for food.