How are students applying to 500+ jobs? Where do they find them all?

[u/OkRecording2267]

I've been seeing a lot of posts from students and new grads saying things like:

• Applied to 400–500+ jobs
• Got 300 rejections
• Had 20 interviews
• Finally landed 1 offer

My genuine question is: where are people even finding 400–500 relevant job openings?

I'm currently searching for jobs and after checking LinkedIn, company career pages, and a few job boards, I feel like I run out of openings pretty quickly.

A few things I'm curious about:

1. What websites, job boards, communities, or resources are you using to find so many openings?
2. How do you discover jobs as soon as they are posted?
3. Do you set up alerts somewhere, and if so, where?
4. Are people applying across multiple cities/countries, or are there really that many openings available?
5. How do you keep track of hundreds of applications?

I'd appreciate hearing about your process, especially if you've gone through a large-volume job search recently.

Thanks!

[u/The_Other_David]

The secret is they aren't finding "relevant" job openings. They're just spamming all jobs, regardless of country, experience, work eligibility, language, tech stack, everything.

I'm not a new grad, but my last search took 99 applications. And I definitely didn't apply to them all in the same day.

[u/holy_handgrenade → u/The_Other_David]

Also not a new grad. My most recent job search I didnt even search; they started to recruit me about a month before my contract was up and I had the offer 2 weeks after the contract was up. However there was a delay in getting a start date so I've been passively applying and interviewing to get income coming in before savings went down too far and still got around there...roughly 75-100 applications over 4 months. Market being what it is though, kept getting interviews but ghosted various stages in the process.

[u/d-j-9898 → u/The_Other_David]

That's what I've been suspecting about a lot of these types of posts. A local HR rep has told me they've had big trouble with Indian applicants applying even if they're local, in office roles. It seems like there's not a lot of care from the applicant end to make sure they're actually eligible for the job in the first place.

[u/Cedar_Wood_State → u/The_Other_David]

Assuming you are something like a web developer, on React/.Net/Java/Node stack (the most popular, you can probably find at least a hundred jobs straight away you can apply to (at least in London)

[u/Platn → u/The_Other_David]

Yeah and there-in lies the problem you're not a new grad. So you don't understand that new grads probably don't have "relevant" job openings. They're doing their best to survive and find ANY relevant fit. They don't have the experience to be relevant.

[u/The_Other_David → u/Platn]

If you're a new grad and you're applying to jobs that require 6 YOE and a language you don't speak... it's just spam.

[u/Platn → u/The_Other_David]

You're the one bringing up being a new grad and its relevancy. Your original point is that you're applying to jobs that are relevant to your experience. Your point of only needing to apply to 99 applications only works because once again, you have relevancy. New grads do not. They will need to do multiple applications because they don't have and will never have relevancy until they get the job.

[u/charlottespider → u/Platn]

Spamming jobs you’re not remotely qualified for hurts everyone. If you tell me you’re doing that, I know you’re not the smartest kid.

[u/anemisto]

They don't. They're spam applying and then wondering why their applications are going straight in the bin.

[u/OhioDude → u/anemisto]

What I've observed when I've had open head count is that a majority of the applicants didn't read the entire job req and/or don't meet any of the requirements. It a p.i.t.a.,for sure, filtering out all the b.s. to find the diamond in the rough.

[u/anemisto → u/OhioDude]

Yep. Though it's been this way for a long time, at least for DS and ML. No, the Kaggle Titanic tutorial does not count as a "project".

[u/holy_handgrenade]

In most cases this is over time, not just like sitting down and applying to 500 positions.

Often when you get to that number of applications, you're broadening your scope a bit too much and not filtering for relevance and quality postings. But in this field, it's easy to see at least 100 new postings per week, sometimes more. If you apply to say 5-10 per day for the average job hunt of 3 months, you're looking at about 375 applications on the low end. If you're more selective that may be a little lower, less selective can be way higher. If you're taking your time and tailoring your cv to the job though it's kinda difficult to hit 5-10 applications per day consistently.

Some of it is just technique. If all you're doing is spamming your CV out in a more or less automated way, your callback rate is going to be low. You'll need to tailor your CV to each job description to increase those odds. And by tailor, I mean adjust the wording so that your experience is hitting the keywords in the job posting, not lying to meet requirements you dont have.

But with longer job searches and a consistent application it's easy to get over 500 applications out before you land something if it's taking you 5-6 months to find something.

As for finding new postings...whatever job board you go to, there's filters that can check only postings in the last 24 hours. Job searching is work and it should take some time out of your day until you find work.

[u/OutrageousMenu1746 → u/holy_handgrenade]

Everyone mentions tailoring your resume but I have some confusion. If you only apply to jobs for which you match the requirements, why would you need to tailor at all? Shouldn't you already have most if not all the keywords in your resume?

[u/holy_handgrenade → u/OutrageousMenu1746]

There's a myriad of things but specific projects may cover a bunch of different aspects of a particular tech stack that may be called out specifically in some job descriptions. You may have specific skills from roles where you may have needed to wear multiple hats that your general resume wont really account for. And then there's business terminology which can vary from time to time. You may have a skillset and suddenly see a requirement that is foreign to you but you look it up and learn that there's just a new industry term for it that you now need to adjust your resume to match the position.

If you're doing the job right, there's no way you can cover 100% of the skillsets in a universally recognized language (read: will get recognized by the ATS) that will justify just spamming your resume unchanged to 100 different positions. You need to tailor the resume. Keyword spamming is flagged for these days and may do more harm than good.

[u/Alainx277 → u/OutrageousMenu1746]

You won't fit everything you've done at work onto a CV. So you need to narrow down all your projects and tasks down to the relevant ones. Then you move the most fitting ones to the top, because a HM or HR will stop reading if your CV does not seem to fit the role well from the start.

[u/Moose_not_mouse]

Someone else did mention it, but spam and AI tool scrapping anything and everything. My job search in 2025: 80 applications, 2 interviews and one offer. My search in 2024: 130 apps, 10+ interviews, 5 finals, 1 offer.

Now as an hiring manager, I get spammed to oblivion by unqualified, out of state candidates for an on site job. Had one position open for about 6 months: 580 candidates, 490 out of state. Ended up hiring a specialized head hunter because the role was too niche and we were getting utter crap.

My most recent opening for a Azure admin, 20 organic candidates in 3 weeks, only 3 were locals. I hate indeed....

[u/zninjamonkey → u/Moose_not_mouse]

Out of state applicants would move though.

This is a terrible highlight

[u/Sil369 → u/Moose_not_mouse]

Did the out of state ones want to work remote or say they want to relocate?

[u/ChyMae1994 → u/[deleted]]

That kinda blows. I live in buttfuck nowhere trying to relocate to the north east.

[u/anemisto → u/[deleted]]

That's shooting yourself in the foot. If you can't offer relocation, you can't offer relocation, but at least some of those applicants were in the process of moving. Now granted, maybe you'd still be wasting your time talking to them, given that someone else will offer them relocation. But it seems silly to dismiss out-of-state people out of hand when you're not getting enough local applicants.

[u/fsk]

If you apply for 5-10 jobs a day, it only takes 2-3 months to get to 500.

[u/macoafi]

where are people even finding 400–500 relevant job openings?

Who said they were relevant? Relevance is not part of "spray and pray."

Also, they haven't done any specializing yet. I doubt there are ever more than 20 openings in the entire US in my preferred tech stack.

[u/SwitchOrganic]

My genuine question is: where are people even finding 400–500 relevant job openings? ... What websites, job boards, communities, or resources are you using to find so many openings?

Online. Google the list of F500 companies and go to each of their career pages. You can probably find 0-3 roles per site. Assume an average of 1.5 applications, that's 750 applications. Now repeat that with start ups in <domain>, unicorns, ycombinator companies, etc.

How do you discover jobs as soon as they are posted? Do you set up alerts somewhere, and if so, where?

I look every day when job hunting and set up email notifications on the company websites. I also use aggregators like Linkedin.

Are people applying across multiple cities/countries, or are there really that many openings available?

I'm only applying to my area but I live in the largest tech hub in the world so it's a lot easier to stay local.

How do you keep track of hundreds of applications?

Google Sheets and assuming every role is a reject unless I hear otherwise.

[u/GtrPlayingMan-254]

Schools have private job boards for students. A perk of continuing education!

[u/Titoswap]

I think you can answer your question by critically thinking about it

[u/Aggravating-Bath777]

A lot of it is volume over time rather than finding 500 relevant openings at once. I've been tracking LinkedIn dev job postings daily for a few months now, and the numbers are actually there - roughly 500-900 new direct employer posts per day in the US alone, depending on the day of week.

The trick is most people aren't seeing the full picture because: 1. LinkedIn's algorithm shows you maybe 10-20% of what's actually posted 2. Staffing agencies flood the results (easily 40-50% of listings) 3. People don't filter by "past 24 hours" consistently

For new grads specifically, the challenge isn't finding openings - it's that you're competing with everyone else for the same entry-level roles. The 500+ application people are usually casting a wide net geographically and not being too picky about tech stack fit.

If you want to be strategic rather than just volume-heavy, focus on:

• Company career pages directly (bypass the algorithm)
• Filtering out staffing agencies (they rarely hire new grads directly)
• Setting up alerts for "past 24 hours" and checking daily

Quality of application matters way more than quantity once you get past the initial screening.

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[u/Chili-Lime-Chihuahua]

They are applying to anything and everything, including roles they are extremely unqualified for. I don't mean to make any blanket statements (but I just did!). I'm sure there are some who are being a little more mindful where they are applying. I'm sure there are some applying even for more senior roles. Similarly, there are people who are not authorized to work applying for roles, or people who only want remote roles applying for hybrid/on-site roles.

The job application process is very messed up, but there's blame all over the place for it.

[u/Casper-_-00B]

You can create an ai bot that goes through the job description and modify your resume and send it out.

[u/lhorie]

It's a tactic called spray-and-pray. Basically apply to any job you see on job boards regardless of whether it's relevant for your skillset. It typically has low ROI.

[u/PatrickBatemansEgo]

They’re wasting time replying to job postings online. Thousands of people are replying to these same job postings automatically and instantly.

You have to get around this challenge. Network.

[u/NewChameleon]

when I was a student, I had like 15+ cities on my radar, SF Bay Area and Seattle were the top 2 and each of those has like 10k+ job postings, plus there's new jobs posted everyday so your concern that

I feel like I run out of openings pretty quickly.

practically never ever happened

[u/bestjared]

LinkedIn premium, filter for Quick Apply only, put whatever other filters you want, and go page by page clicking apply. Quick Apply makes it pretty much one-click. This is how I got my past 2 jobs.