Hit 1,000 applications this week, and that number is making me rethink everything

I got laid off in March from a marketing job in Columbus, so I started tracking every application in a spreadsheet on a whim. This Tuesday the count crossed 1,000, which includes 340 tailored cover letters and 12 in-person networking events, but only 3 interviews actually happened. Has anyone else hit a big number like this and realized the volume approach is the real problem, or am I just unlucky in this market?

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robinson.jake7d ago

wait, 1,000 applications and only 3 interviews? that number just hit me like a brick. I mean, I knew the market was rough but those odds are brutal, like worse than playing the lottery. and you wrote 340 cover letters by hand, that's dedication most people would quit after 50. something's off here, either your resume is getting filtered out by some robot or the jobs you're applying to aren't real openings. I'd take a hard look at what the 3 interviews had in common and pivot hard toward that, because doing the same thing 1,000 times and getting 3 calls means the volume isn't the problem, the targeting is.