Numbers game

Greg Wyatt • July 30, 2024

This article builds on a recent LinkedIn post with additional thoughts and advice.

I should point out the analysis below is necessarily generic, and every industry, location and job function has its own variables.

Original post:

When you see 400 people have already applied to a vacancy, you might think not to even bother applying.

But these numbers aren't always accurate, and never the full story - let me explain why, and how this might inform your decisions.

- There is a common reporting error, it seems when linked to an ATS, when a click that leads to an incomplete application is still counted as an application. The true number here is often lower.

- In this tough market, it's understandable that many people will apply at volume, often without reading the adverts. Tools like EasyApply allow a straightforward application, while automation like LazyApply can literally allow you to apply to 2,000 vacancies while you are sleeping.

- This leads to a high number of 'wholly unsuitable' applications. Common reasons can be no work permit or experience that has no relation to the vacancy.

- As well as a high number of applications that appear suitable yet are non-viable. This might be down to a too high salary requirement; one reason to list salary and help people make informed decisions. Even then many will still apply. Or they may have missed simple points like a location too far to commute to. These applications are fairly straightforward to rule out, yet at scale are time consuming.

These three points together mean that anything from 80% to 99% of applications aren't suitable, if they even exist.

So when you read 400, there may be only 4 suitable candidates - if you are a strongly suitable candidate, it's well worth considering. And maybe follow up directly with the hiring manager, where it's possible.

If you want a real-life example of what might go on behind the scenes with an advert, check out the screenshot below. I'll link to the original post in comments.

It doesn't help that many adverts don't list salary, misrepresent working conditions, or are so vague you can't assess if you even are suitable. By all means apply, but treat these as low stakes.

It also doesn't help that employers make arbitrary decisions. Such as a post I read recently which took down an advert after 24 hours, having received a huge response - then expressed surprise none were suitable. 🤷‍♂️

While at the same time these high numbers of non-viable applications take oxygen away from people who apply with care and specificity.

There aren't any easy answers to this situation, which is driven by poor market conditions, application processes that work against the applicant and, let's face it, a bunch of cynical behaviour from many hiring organisations.

Some added thoughts:

We are where we are with the jobs market = a high volume of jobseekers, a difficult market to navigate, few vacancies and many poor experiences.

Much of this is defined by the state of the market and wider economy. In the UK this does look to be getting better, and will lead to a shift for job seekers = more vacancies, less competition from qualified candidates, more urgency from employers to deal well with people in a competitive landscape.

It may be that if you’ve struggled through this market for the past few months, things improve - it’s what I’ve been hearing from job seekers and candidates I’m in touch with.

For candidates who take care in their applications, it’s been the single thing holding them back.

But market conditions are out of our control, whereas how you respond to individual situations is in your control.

When you see an advert such as we’ve just picked through, it’s certainly worth considering applying to, if you can show you are a suitable candidate.

If you can’t, and it’s a common skills role, I’d make the choice to step away. Concentrate, instead, on roles you are a 60-80% fit for (lower if it’s a niche role).

If you do decide to apply, don’t just rely on the transactional process:

  • find out who the hiring manager is and contact them directly, check if they are still reviewing applications, and make a case for yourself

  • if you can’t establish the hiring manager, who can you find that’s related to gain more information? Use the LinkedIn search bar to find peers in the same department, or people handling their recruitment, such as a Talent Acquisition Manager

  • find constructive reasons to keep in touch, especially if you are declined later in process.

If you see an interesting role that has closed, get in touch directly, it might be that scenario at the top where they have many applicants, but no one suitable.

It’s a careful balance. You want to find ways to cut through the transactional process, without being a pain (which may be behaviour that a hiring process uses to decline you) or being seen to cheat.

Listen to anything you get back from a process, and use that to inform your approach. This might be anything from specific instructions to follow in an application (in which case do so but think about what you can additionally do to stand out), through to individual feedback on your application.

Get ahead of the game, if a company advertises widely on LinkedIn, create a job alert on their company page (click on their company name, go to jobs and you’ll see the option).

The flip side of this advert scenario is that numbers can and will work against a careful application, such as if an advert is removed before you can tailor your CV.

Or worse, if an advert remains live, but no applications are reviewed after the first 100.

It’s an argument for having a single ‘good enough’ CV so you can move quickly, rather than spending hours on a single application.

Above all, think what you can do differently from what may be a high volume of people only applying through a transactional process. You can see how to do that by reading through other posts on the archive.

I hope this article has given you a little more insight into what goes on behind the scenes.

It won’t solve the problems inherent in our advertising industry, yet at least it may explain some of your experiences.

As well as what changes to your approach you might make to improve your return in what is a numbers game for many.

Thanks for reading.

Greg

Introduction to personal branding

By Greg Wyatt • March 30, 2026
What follows is Chapter 39 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's 10 months old, so surely the algorithm has moved on right? Indeed, my own content performance has tanked if you compare 2026 to 2025. Around 12 million views of my content last year, while if I extrapolate my year to date performance, it looks like a little shy of 640,000 views. My LinkedIn feed is quieter, yet real life relevant conversations go from strength to strength, many of which stem from my content. Look, I don't love the term, but I am a fan of putting your message out there, across multiple means, so that your most relevant audience might become aware of you. And perhaps your relevant audience is an audience of one, a person who can put you nearer that job. Which is the only algorithm you need. This is a three part series, with part 2 on " Content strategy and philosophy " and part 3 on " A flair post ". Click on the links for the unedited versions on Substack. 39 - Introduction to personal branding Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a free marketing platform, where you can build a reputation through the words of your posts, comments and messages. Personal branding is a viable tactic as part of a multi-channel approach to your job search and it can bring opportunities to you. I'll start off by saying I'm not a fan of the term personal branding. It can lead to make-work which can even get in the way of what you should be doing. Writing and using content to create experiences that support a job search is a great idea and calling it personal branding - as a discrete activity - isn’t a bad thing. I expect there are many mediums through which you can build a personal brand. I'll focus on LinkedIn because of how entrenched it is in other job search activities. What a personal brand is For businesspeople the idea is that by building awareness of your personality, lifestyle and what you're promoting, you also build trust. So that when people are ready to buy, they'll buy your products. The brand might be personal. The goal is sales. When you see personal branding on LinkedIn it’s often a business that promotes their services through the account of the author. ‘Here’s my puppy, buy my stuff.’ Take note that the target audience for these advice posts is the businesspeople above. And these posts often seek to part them from their money. Your goals are similar. If there’s a commercial outcome you want, it’s likely a single job, not a throughput of leads. You’ll also see that controversial content gets huge engagement and can also repel readers. If you need a job, what’s the danger of writing overly spicy content? Could a reader make a decision against you based on your words? How much you need any job should inform the experience you want to create for your readers. How it sits in your wider job search Publishing content is about raising awareness and starting conversations with the right people. This can be your profile, written posts, newsletters, (bestselling) career breakdown kits, videos, you name it - anything you can become known for. In many ways the hierarchy of relationships your content appeals to is the same as with networking. Content can be publishing posts, commenting on the posts of others, sending direct messages. I’d argue even your applications and interviews are part of your personal brand. I think of LinkedIn posts like a plumber’s van driving around town. Most of the time you’ll disregard the van unless it cuts you up with noxious fumes. When you have a leaky pipe, you’ll surely take note of their number. It can support an application if a hiring manager decides to surreptitiously stalk your profile. And it can work against you if it suggests problem behaviour. A good balance for content is the poster in my daughters’ primary school from a few years back: THINK. Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Achieve those five points and content will rarely work against your job search. Content should be consistent with your wider activity. Which means that everything people (potential employers) experience of you is a complementary and non-contradictory message. Content that contradicts your CV or cover letter may lead to red flags, whether that’s fair or not. Content should be intentional. HOW TO GO viral, and why you shouldn’t Anyone who writes content will enjoy the sweet, sweet flow of dopamine when you see reactions and comments trickle in. Such as that first flair post announcing you are available to help your next employer with examples of your achievements and what you are looking for. Do that and you’ll get loads of engagement. Why haven’t you done it yet? Tag me in and I’ll support you. Or you can do what most people do and say, ‘I’m sorry to announce I’ve lost my job, please help’ and that will get loads too. Because it is relevant and relatable to fellow job seekers, recruiters and sympathisers. Then you feel the soul-crushing defeat of a well-thought-out post, highlighting a problem in your industry, with tumbleweed to follow. Both types of content have a place. That tumbleweed post is relevant and relatable to a niche audience. I try to take a land and expand approach to content - job seeker advice, recruitment advice and stories, ponderings and satire, which I use to tackle topics from different directions. Over the past three years I’ve had between 3m to 11m views of my posts and I’ve gained a bit of business through them too. What I don’t do is try to go viral anymore. Because when I have gone viral with a few 1m impression posts, it’s taken weeks to extricate myself from them and there hasn’t been real benefit. I find my tumbleweed posts start better conversations from lurkers - those that never engage publicly. I promised you I’d show you how to go viral. Here you go. Relevance + relatability + readability + entitlement. Maybe add a selfie. If that seems too simple, search for this sentence on LinkedIn: “An employee asked me if he can WORK from HOME permanently.” You’ll need to use the double speech mark to search on the phrase, and rank by Posts. ‘Does it really work?’ asked Charles. I told him to try it as an experiment. He rarely got more than a few hundred impressions per post. 170,000 impressions, 2,000 reactions. Pretty viral for a first timer. It is the wrong path. What do these posts actually say? Who are they aimed at? And if they don’t appeal to people who can help you reach your objective, what’s the point? 

Nothing but the truth. Innovation from Iteration, pt 4

By Greg Wyatt • March 26, 2026
I was tempted to use another Tom Cruise AI image for this article, but his hands ended up looking like feet, which wasn't a true representation of him. Probably not fair to use AI in this way either, stealing copyrighted material without permission. And so I use this AI 'stock image' instead, which is probably also highly unethical, but feels more suitable and sufficient . Anyway here's an article about why the same principles are crucial for good recruitment: ‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment. Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance. The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition. Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with. HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts. Can something be true and not fair? In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US. Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards. However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had. Poof! Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash. How about fair but not true? This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy. An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty. What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to? Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere): The job description. The job advertisement. The CV. If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer. With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, if you remember last week's edition. Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview. Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”? Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process? What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation? I think it has to cover three points. 1/ factually correct 2/ shows context suitably 3/ describes sufficiently An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case. If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context? If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role? Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited? A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”. Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for? Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire? It feels strange writing my name like this. There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so. The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live. You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis is too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy. “Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”. But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time. If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall. And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes. For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order. Get it right and everything flows from there. It’s a key reason behind my nearly 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires. These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process. If you've forgotten why suitability and sufficiency is the other pillar, here's an example that isn't suitable: Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming. See you next time. Regards, Greg p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services: - commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies) - manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. This can be a large as end-to-end delivery of a programme of vacancies, or as small as writing one job advert for a key hire- recruitment strategy setting - outplacement support