Breaking Through the Noise: Notes from My Job Search

Jul 02, 2025

Job searches are never easy. Even when you’re casually looking, they’re a cocktail of uncertainty and tedium. But lately, if LinkedIn is to be believed, it’s a bloodbath. Companies have all the power, job seeker leverage is at its lowest in a decade, and the once-promised remote revolution is being dragged back into cubicles. It’s the return of serfdom for the knowledge-working class. At least, that’s the narrative.

So when I started my own job search, I was not sure what to expect. Every job I have had in my career came through either a recruiter or knowing the hiring manager. So when I started my job search I assumed that the playbook I had always used would work again.

Instead, it turned out to be the hardest job search of my career. Not quite the hellscape some describe, but undeniably rough. While past searches were about focus and strategy this one was about grinding.

But first let’s go through the positives and negatives of the current job market:

The positives

Finding jobs has never been easier. There are job boards, aggregators, and alert systems everywhere. No role lives solely on a bad corporate careers page or a forgotten niche site. With a few clicks, you can see every publicly posted job in your field.
Applying has never been easier. Most companies now use platforms that don’t actively punish applicants. The simplest ask for your name, a few prescreen questions, a resume, and maybe a cover letter. Even the more complex ones usually parse your resume or LinkedIn profile to ease the process.
Remote work is still out there. Despite what the headlines say, remote tech jobs do still exist. Not everyone is rushing back to the office. It’s not 2021, but it also isn’t 2011. You won’t have trouble finding remote roles.
GenAI is a multiplier. I’ve rarely written cover letters before this job search. They always felt tedious, and having been on the hiring side, I questioned their value. This time, I used a custom GPT to generate tailored letters from my resume and the job description. They needed editing, but I went from sending zero cover letters to sending them with more than 90% of applications.

The negatives

Finding jobs has never been easier…for everyone. There are no “hidden” or under-served roles. Everything is visible, everywhere. Job pools aren’t regional anymore. Anyone in the world can see the same postings you do and get instant alerts when they go live.
Applying has never been easier…for everyone. Every job is flooded. It’s not uncommon to see 500 applications within 48 hours. You’re not overlooked because you’re unqualified. You’re buried under sheer volume. If you’re not a perfect match, you’re filtered out fast. Hiring teams are desperate for any way to cut down the pile.
Remote work is still out there…and everyone wants it. Compared to pre-2021, there are still plenty of remote roles. But we’re still in the long descent from the over hiring peak of 2021. The number of job seekers far exceeds the number of remote openings, and that imbalance grows with every new wave entering the market.1 And, despite the current corporate souring on remote work, every job searcher wants a remote role.
GenAI is a multiplier…for spam and noise. Startups offering “AI-powered” job applying, scammers, and opportunists are overwhelming the system. At best, hiring teams are buried in a sea of clearly unqualified applicants. At worst, they’re sorting through fake or exaggerated AI-generated resumes. Your carefully written application becomes a needle in a haystack of AI generated slop.

The astute among you will notice the two lists are the same. That’s the magic of unintended consequences.

In a market like this, the instinct is to double down on the plan: build your shortlist, work your network, connect with recruiters. That was my assumption too. But it didn’t play out that way. Not even close.

The recruiters I already knew didn’t have roles. The ones I reached out to, whether cold or in reference to specific openings, ignored me. I did plenty of outreach within my network, I even got a few to recommend me for jobs, but nothing solid came of it. The advice I did get from recruiters did not match what I was seeing in the actual market2. After all that effort, I got exactly one interview3.

So what worked? Applying. A lot.

The rational part of me looked at hundreds of resumes per job and thought it was crazy. But they I realized this job search had become a number game. Without a good way to increase my odds for any given application it was about taking an many swings as possible. I rolled up my sleeves every day and started applying. I realized this would mean a lot of rejection emails but also knew it was not a reflection on me. The focus was to get a hit and ignore all the misses.

So I threw out the old rules. I did not build a target list of companies. I did not narrow down my titles. I did not lock myself into one industry. I looked for every opportunity to widen my search surface area. By the end, I was applying to data leadership roles, manager and senior IC positions, and a range of product roles. The hit rate stayed low, but it produced more results than all the smart strategies combined.

The major unlock was focusing on local roles. Since every role required hybrid or onsite work, the applicant pool was smaller, which made it easier to stand out. That is what got me the most traction and ultimately the job. Could I have fought for the remote roles? Sure, but the local market gave me the only meaningful edge in the entire process, so I took advantage of it.

The Need to Orient

I am not providing “the system” for finding your next job. This is what worked for me, your milage may vary. I am putting it out there to talk about the need to orient. It is easy to get stuck in the cycle of acting → observing/feedback → acting again, without ever taking any time to pause and examine if your real world observations differs from the model in your head.

Why did the plan fail me?

The logic behind a focused approach is that more effort raises your odds of breaking through. Put in the time, tailor your message, stand out. But in this market, everyone is overwhelmed. Not just with applications, but with cold calls, cold emails, and cold everything. It all becomes noise. And that pushes the probabilities way down.

At some point, the extra time and effort stop being worth it. You are not improving your odds much above chance. When that happens, the smart move is not more precision, but more volume. That does not mean the usual methods never work, but right now, all the push strategies have about the same odds. Which is to say, low.

At first, it felt ridiculous to apply to so many roles. But the volume I could reach in a single day meant even a low hit rate started to add up. The returns were not amazing, but they were real4. That was enough.

So should you abandon all hope and just pray to the application slot machine? No, I don’t think so. There will always be some element of luck involved in landing a job. That does not make effort useless.

I still tried other ways to break through. I realized the real problem was standing out among hundreds of nearly identical resumes. So I experimented with higher variance tactics. These are the kinds of things that will not appeal to everyone, but if they land with the right person, the payoff is big.

I also pushed myself to go deeper into my network than I ever had before. None of it led to a job this time, but smart effort rarely goes to waste. It has a way of circling back later, often in unexpected and surprisingly lucky ways.

The big key, as I mentioned at the top of this section, is to make sure you are constantly taking the time to run your mental model against what you are actually seeing. When they no longer match up, start experimenting with changes and paying attention to the feedback you get.

This is a hard market. There is no sugarcoating that. If you need to find a job right now, it is going to be hard. But that will change. It always does. Some of the best companies and careers are built in moments like this. The real measure is not how much luck we get, but how well we turn bad luck and difficulty into opportunity.