Why Job Searching in Tech is Broken
And how Applica can help you
The tech job market has changed dramatically. After years of growth, the era of mass layoffs is here and the job market has grown increasingly competitive.
The Pain of the Job Hunt: through dozens of conversations with tech job seekers, we heard the same stories over and over again:
1. Fatigue Starts on Day 1
Before even applying, seekers spend 40–60 hours just preparing resumes and portfolios. They tweak resumes for each role, rewrite cover letters, polish LinkedIn, and pull together work samples. The prep work alone is so draining that motivation to actually apply drops fast. Many job seekers stall out here, burned out before they’ve even hit “submit.” What should feel like momentum instead feels like a grind, leaving applicants exhausted, second-guessing themselves, and wondering if it’s even worth sending in another application.
2. Tailoring Resumes Hurts More Than It Helps 💔
At least that’s how it feels. When candidates invest hours tailoring their resume to match a job description—rewording bullet points, reshaping their LinkedIn profile, even tweaking their portfolio—they’re not just submitting a document, they’re putting a piece of themselves forward. That effort creates an emotional attachment to the role. It feels like more than just a job; it feels like a potential lifeline, a validation of skills, or even a new identity to step into.
So when rejection arrives—not in the form of thoughtful feedback, but as a generic auto-generated email—it cuts deeper than a simple “no.” The emotional math doesn’t add up: hours of work, personal hope, professional vulnerability… all reduced to a one-line template. It feels dismissive, impersonal, and sometimes even dehumanizing.
And the sting lingers. Candidates begin to doubt whether the effort of tailoring was worth it at all. They may start questioning their own value, wondering: If I’m not even worth a personalized rejection, am I worth hiring at all? This is the silent weight of the modern job search—the collision between deep personal investment and shallow, automated responses.
3. Terrible Job Application UX
Workday. The name alone can make job seekers groan. For many, the experience of applying through Workday (and similar systems) is a gauntlet of inefficiency:
Endless long forms that force you to retype information already on your résumé.
Broken upload fields that strip out formatting or reject perfectly good files.
Multi-factor hoops that slow down every login, turning a quick apply into a half-hour ordeal.
Nonsense qualifying questions (“Do you have 10 years of Kubernetes experience?” for an entry-level role) that make applicants feel set up to fail.
It’s no wonder so many seekers abandon applications halfway through. These systems don’t just screen out “unqualified” candidates, they actively wear people down until they quit.
And here’s the kicker: most of this friction doesn’t even help employers. A candidate dropping off mid-application isn’t a sign of poor fit, it’s a sign of poor UX. Companies are literally losing talent because the software meant to “streamline” hiring is so demoralizing.
The person who designed the Workday applicant experience should be fired. From humanity. Hyperbolic? Maybe. But ask any job seeker who’s had to create another workday account just to fight with a broken resume parser at midnight, and they’ll tell you it feels fair.
At scale, this isn’t just bad design, it’s a mental health tax on people who are already vulnerable. Job seekers deserve better than broken systems, endless redundancies, and robotic hoops to jump through.
4. Self-Disqualification
Job postings today are notorious for their inflated requirements. A single listing might ask for 10+ years of experience in a technology that’s only been around for five, multiple leadership roles, an MBA, and a laundry list of “nice-to-haves” that collectively describe a unicorn candidate who probably doesn’t exist.
The impact is subtle but devastating: many highly qualified candidates take themselves out of the running before they even apply. They see a list that feels unattainable and assume they aren’t good enough, even when they meet most of the core requirements. Instead of recognizing the wishlist nature of postings, they interpret them as hard cut-offs.
This tendency isn’t distributed evenly. Research shows that women are especially likely to self-disqualify if they don’t meet all the listed qualifications. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to apply even if they meet only some of the criteria. The result? Many talented, capable women never even get to the interview stage not because they couldn’t do the job, but because the posting itself pushed them away.
And it’s not just women. Career changers, early-career professionals, and those who’ve taken nontraditional paths (like caregiving or military service) often see these inflated checklists as a closed door. The irony is that employers often end up hiring people who meet far fewer of the “requirements” than advertised, proving that most postings are more of a dream list than a real standard.
The tragedy is that inflated requirements create a talent filter before the first application is even sent and it’s the candidates employers should want most (self-aware, thoughtful, humble) who disproportionately filter themselves out.
5. The ChatGPT Trap
ChatGPT and other AI writing tools have quickly become a go-to assistant for job seekers. They’re great at resume clean-up helping to fix grammar, tighten bullet points, and even helping with phrasing to highlight achievements. For candidates who struggle with self-promotion, AI can be a lifesaver.
But like any shortcut, overuse comes at a cost. Too many job seekers are now pasting entire resumes into AI and taking the output wholesale. The result? Generic documents that all sound the same. Recruiters can spot them instantly, polished but soulless, overstuffed with buzzwords, sometimes even hilariously matched to the role. What was meant to give candidates an edge often ends up working against them.
Meanwhile, recruiters and employers are also leaning heavily on AI automated parsing systems, resume screeners, even AI-driven interview bots. That creates a peculiar, almost dystopian loop: AI-generated resumes being evaluated by AI-powered filters. Human connection, once the “H” in HR, gets lost in the shuffle. Candidates wonder if anyone ever actually reads their materials, and recruiters are drowning in sameness.
It’s a strange and sad scenario. Instead of job seekers telling their authentic stories and recruiters assessing them with empathy and nuance, both sides are outsourcing the process to algorithms. The hiring funnel becomes less about people and more about who can game the machine most effectively.
The irony? The more automation enters the system, the more authenticity becomes the differentiator. The resumes that still stand out are the ones that sound like they came from a real human being with quirks, personality, and specificity AI can’t fake.
6. Speed Is Everything
Being first matters. Major job boards now show you how many people have already applied, and it is not uncommon to see hundreds of applicants within a few hours of a posting going live. HR teams are often overwhelmed by the flood of resumes and sometimes close postings early, not because the role is filled but because the pipeline is already too large to manage.
This creates a race-to-apply culture. Candidates who spot a job early have a real advantage because their resume lands near the top of the review pile before recruiter fatigue sets in. By the time a carefully tailored application reaches the queue, the recruiter may already be exhausted after scanning 200 submissions.
Then there are the job board stats themselves. LinkedIn frequently highlights numbers like “Over 300 applicants in the first 24 hours.” How accurate are those figures? Do they count partial applications? Do they include people who clicked “Easy Apply” without uploading a resume? It is hard to believe that every counter reflects real competition. Some of these metrics may be gamified to create urgency and keep users hooked on the platform.
The result is a system that pressures job seekers into speed over substance. Instead of crafting thoughtful applications, many feel pushed to rush in just to be seen. It is a broken incentive structure that leaves candidates frantic, discouraged, and skeptical all at once.
7. Not Applying Enough
This is shocking. Despite spending more than 3 hours per day sourcing jobs, tailoring resumes, and prepping applications, the average job seeker submits fewer than 1.5 applications per day. In today’s hyper-competitive market, that is simply not enough volume to stay competitive.
Think about it: if each role attracts hundreds of applicants, then applying to only a handful of jobs per week is like tossing a bottle into the ocean and hoping it lands on the right shore. The math just does not add up. Recruiters may only glance at a fraction of the resumes in their system, and even strong candidates can get lost in the pile.
This mismatch between effort and output drains confidence. Job seekers feel like they are working a full-time job just to find a job, yet the pipeline of actual applications remains painfully small. The endless prep work such as resume tailoring, portfolio curation, and rewriting cover letters eats away at the hours that should be spent hitting “submit.”
It is no wonder so many people burn out before they ever gain traction. The modern job search has become a paradox: huge time investment and tiny application volume.
This is exactly where better systems make a difference. Automating the tedious parts of prep and tracking frees seekers to focus on what matters most. That means applying at scale while still presenting themselves authentically.
8. Interviews Are a Marathon
Once interviews begin, the job search changes completely. What used to be a steady routine of applications and research suddenly becomes an all-consuming process. Preparation time skyrockets. Candidates spend hours rehearsing answers, researching companies, and practicing mock interviews. The energy that once went into applying to new jobs now shifts almost entirely to preparing for upcoming conversations.
As a result, applications to other jobs slow down or stop altogether. Many seekers put all their energy into one pipeline of interviews, hoping that this round will finally lead to an offer. The problem is that most companies are not satisfied with one or two meetings. Candidates are often pulled into a long grind of multiple interview rounds, case studies, panel discussions, and final presentations. By the time they reach the end of the process, weeks or even months may have passed with no new applications submitted.
The sheer length of modern interview cycles leaves job seekers drained and discouraged. What used to be a straightforward hiring conversation now resembles an obstacle course designed to test endurance as much as skill. It raises a fair question: when did companies decide they had the time for such a grueling process, and how much talent are they losing along the way?
The Broken State of Tech Job Hunting
Tech job hunting today is inefficient, exhausting, and demoralizing. Candidates are forced to spend 40–60 hours just preparing resumes and portfolios, only to apply to fewer than two jobs per day on average. Job postings are filled with inflated requirements that push many talented people, especially women and career changers, to self-disqualify before they even apply.
Those who press forward are met with broken application systems like Workday that demand long forms, clunky uploads, and pointless qualifying questions. Many give up mid-application. For those who do get a shot, interviews drag on with endless rounds that drain energy and halt momentum. And all the while, inboxes flood with rejection emails or, worse, silence.
AI has only made the situation stranger. Job seekers are turning to ChatGPT to clean up resumes, which leads to documents that feel fake and generic. Recruiters, meanwhile, are using AI to screen resumes at scale. The result is a loop of algorithms talking to algorithms, where authenticity and human connection are pushed out of the hiring process entirely.
It is no wonder so many job seekers burn out. The process is stacked against them. The tools are not built with their needs in mind. And too many qualified candidates are stuck in limbo while companies lose out on great talent.
That’s Where Applica Comes In
We are building a platform designed around you, making it easier to:
Create polished online profiles and portfolios.
Track every job application and interview stage.
Apply faster, smarter, and at higher volumes.
Even let our recruiter team apply on your behalf.
Because your career deserves better than broken job boards, generic AI resumes, and endless rejections.
Applica is here to give job seekers their power back.