I can only offer my own perspective, but as a reasonably senior person, my job hunting experience prior to COVID and the "great transition" to remote work was t

I can only offer my own perspective, but as a reasonably senior person, my job hunting experience prior to COVID and the "great transition" to remote work was typically: * Scour job listings for something that looked like a very good fit w/skillset * Apply * Have a phone screen * Interview * Get offer For the first step, there were generally only a handful of openings that fit that criteria, and my success in the process was very high with about 25% average success rate from application to offer. Depending on the role, there were sometimes two screens: recruiter & hiring manager. The interview itself was typically one and done, and knowing the answer in a week. In the process, I'd probably be one of a dozen or fewer candidates. In my most recent search, the number of available roles was astounding. So many felt like a good fit, but each also had 50+ applicants, even for very senior roles. I applied to about 70 total jobs over a couple months, with about 30 resulting in Zoom calls, 3 going the full distance, and with 1 offer (2 companies responded to my application with interview requests a full 2 months after I applied). "Going the full distance" meant 6-8 interviews spread out over a couple weeks, which was far more mentally draining than doing everything in one go. Complicating things further was the fact that over 50% of companies never let you know that they're not moving forward. For 6 or 7 of the ones that did (all larger companies), I had several screens with each as the recruiters for specific roles either ghosted me until another one picked me up, or the recruiters were fired as part of layoffs. The result was that I ended up spending 2-3 hours a day in the process, which doesn't seem like much, but it did really serve to wear me down mentally to deal with so many spread out meetings, sift through 50+ job postings every day (more if I failed to check in a day), customize resumes, customize cover letters (anything to try to shift the odds), etc.