Old way of job hunting vs. new way: which one actually works better now?

I used to just send out 50 resumes a week to every job on Craigslist in Austin, Texas and hope something stuck. Now I spend 3 hours a day networking on LinkedIn and reaching out to people at specific companies instead. The personal connections got me 3 interviews in 2 months versus zero from the scattergun approach. Has anyone else found that switching strategies made a real difference, or am I just getting lucky?

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laura_knight542mo ago

The scattergun approach stopped working around 2018 for most industries. You're not getting lucky, you're working smarter. Cold applications have such low success rates now because companies get hundreds of them and most get filtered by software before a human ever sees them. Targeted networking gets you past that filter and into an actual conversation. Stick with what you're doing and keep track of what works so you can double down on it.

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paul_lane802mo ago

Exactly. I had way better luck once I stopped blasting out resumes and started reaching out to people already working at the companies I wanted. Got my last two jobs through someone I met at a meetup or connected with on LinkedIn first.

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