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
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.
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*”