Why Do You Send Hundreds of Resumes for No Response?

If there is one topic that the business world cannot get enough of is the modern hiring process and online job boards. These are vital to the job finding process but also the bane of every staffing and recruiting agency’s existence. Most articles look at the HR representatives and the process of whittling down the hundreds of applications that come in for one job posting but ignore the mindset that motivates job seekers to send out their resume to a multitude of positions. Why would one person want to apply to 50 different jobs in one day? Is that not the definition of insanity?

To expand on my former statement, Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. When people go on ZipRecruiter, Monster, Glassdoor, or any other number of job application websites, they scan through, and I kid you not, hundreds upon hundreds of openings deciding which ones to send in their resume. Most people who use these sites create a generic resume that can apply to any number of jobs and, with the help of recent technology, they can simply upload them onto their profile and the website will send it on to any position they star, favorite, or like. The whole application process has been boiled down to a five to ten-minute procedure and the majority of that time is waiting for the page to load.

As exciting as that sounds, now that you can simultaneously apply while watching Netflix and playing a rousing game of solitaire, the likelihood of hearing back on any of those submissions is abysmal. Why? These websites generally receive the posting after it has gone from HR to internal workers, on their company page, to recruiters, and then finally to the job board. The amount of people who have beat you to the punch is increasing every minute you spend scanning the boards, yet we still keep applying. Insanity! What result can we possibly expect? The applicants are frustrated with lack of response, the HR teams are overwhelmed with the massive amounts of applications, and the cycle continues.

Now, here comes the next question: how do we fix this? Job boards are still a useful tool because they show you what companies are looking to grow, who has the most turnover, and what jobs seem to be in the highest demand. Next time you click on the website and start scanning take out a piece of paper and write down the name of the company, job title, general description, and any contact information. You should go ahead and send in your resume through the web page, but then do a little follow up on your own. Send in an email, see if any headhunters are staffing that company, or any research that puts you in the position to push your resume off of the internet and onto their desk in the stack that will be seen by an actual human eye.