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I applied to 250 jobs and timed how long each one took
Hey HN - I timed how long it took me to go through the application process of 250 jobs. Some of my key findings:
- On average, it took a bit over two and a half minutes (162 seconds) to apply to a job.
- If company size doubles, the application time increases by 5%. If company size increases by a factor of 10, then the app time increases by 20%.
- Being a government company is the single largest determinant of a long application, followed closely by aerospace and consulting firms.
- The longest application time went to the United States Postal Service (10 minutes and 12 seconds).
- On the other hand, It took me just 17 seconds to apply to Renaissance Technologies.
- Older ATS like Workday and Taleo make job applications as much as 128% longer.
- billy99k 3y agoI have found that tailoring my resume to a specific job listing increased my response time significantly. I've seen so many articles about people answering 50+ job ads and getting no response.
- dwaltrip 3y agoWhat kind of tailoring do you do?
- fckgw 3y agoNot the OP but generally you want to re-write your prior job history or anything in your resume to align with and highlight anything in their job description. Match the keywords to make it clear you're the perfect candidate.
- billy99k 3y agoI re-write all of my job descriptions. Usually because I touch so many different technologies, libraries, etc in each job, I can't put them all there. I try to tailor it toward the job description.
- m1117 3y agoThat is job stacking fo' real!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ambicapter 3y agoTwo and a half minutes to apply to a job doesn't seem like a lot of time at all. Do people really think that's too much time?
- yamazakiwi 3y agoIf a person only spends that much time applying, it's likely those applications are going in the trash, unless they have highly relevant signals. I change my resume for every company I apply, which is likely not happening.
- miscaccount 3y agoyou generally apply to several jobs across several companies even with referral. based on my experience its > 5 mins most of the time.
- timmaxw 3y agoThat still doesn't seem like very much time to me. Job hunting involves hours and hours of interviews; five minutes of paperwork is negligible by comparison, right? Are people mass-spamming applications or something?
- pizzaknife 3y ago"Are people mass-spamming applications or something?" since the dawn of time (1970, jan1)
- tuatoru 3y agoWell, in 1970 you could only do about 10 a day, because you needed to type a cover letter with the hiring manager's name in it. Job search (newspaper "help wanted" ads), envelope stuffing, trips to the post office and so on took time too. Photocopies were low quality and looked obvious and got you into the trash straight away. So mass, but compared to population not very mass. The real start date was Eternal September.
- 3y ago
- hcks 3y agoProbs took less than 17 seconds to be rejected by rentech too lol
- PaulHoule 3y agoRentech wouldn't be fulfilling their brand promise if they didn't have an SLA to reject 90% of job seekers in less than 17 milliseconds. There was that time I was at a conference put on by Sun Microsystems in NYC and asked a question about main memory databases which got me jumped on by somebody from rentech. If I knew to the extent which hell was about to break loose at that job I was working at then, I should have applied for a job at rentech.
- thdc 3y agoWill you follow up with stats and analysis on response rate and further steps in the application/evaluation process? I'd be interested in that.
- PascLeRasc 3y agoVery likely going to be zero. The only way I can get a chance at a phone screen is to spend at least an hour crafting my resume and cover letter for each position.
- jborden13 3y agoMaybe my side project will be accreditive to your process, apologies for the clunky UI - working on it: https://www.kindbuds.ai/ght/spence https://www.kindbuds.ai/ght/spence
- 0xffff2 3y agoCan you describe in more detail what this actually means? I can't imagine what I would spend an hour doing to my resume that would somehow make it more attractive to a specific employer without outright lying.
- jason-phillips 3y agoIt's the thought that counts...
- notsurenymore 3y agoI’m not sure how accurate it is, but I started to play with jobscan to test my resume against ATS scanning. It was getting knocked for not having uselessly vague keywords like “business solutions” in the resume when they were in the job app, or not listing every single data format I’ve worked with. So now, I’ve just started keyword dumping my resume with everything in a job listing even though it feels stupid. I doubt it matters much though. Even when I get passed the initial resume screen these days, it’s usually followed up with a “we’ve decided to pursue someone else” from the recruiter/hiring manager/etc. before I can even get to an interview. And that’s for jobs where my resume seems a perfect fit.
- newfonewhodis 3y ago> - The longest application time went to the United States Postal Service (10 minutes and 12 seconds). My spouse is not in tech but in comms. The quickest I know she's done an application has been O(hours) primarily due to writing cover letters, personalizing resume and often sending in clips. Having seen that, I find it amusing that we techies (yes me too) get annoyed when we have to provide our Linkedin AND all the information on that page.
- goodcanadian 3y agoYes . . . I don't think I have spent less than 1 hour on any serious job application I have done. It usually takes multiple hours. My spouse is in Academia, and her job applications take days!
- rconti 3y agoEverything about the Workday UX is an absolute freaking dumpster fire. Just as an example, but one that trips me up a lot, every action seems to be controlled by an orange button (Submit?) way down in the lower right corner of your browser, even if the information you're working on is way up in the upper right corner.
- cushychicken 3y agoOh goodness, someone else who shares my irrational antipathy for Workday! Workday is such junk from a user facing perspective. It’s a huge pain to index content from. I have to omit a bunch of big semiconductor companies from my job site because it’s fucking impossible to get job data out of Workday. If you work in talent at either NXP or Qualcomm, please God read this essay. You are actively harming your own recruiting prospects by using Workday! I don’t have this problem at all with the more modern ATS’es - Lever, Greenhouse, and Workable all provide nice, easy to consume APIs for this.
- callalex 3y agoRunning a scraping aggregator and being an end user are not the same thing.
- pineconewarrior 3y agoWorkday is not great for applicants either. Maybe the back-end is nice?
- cushychicken 3y agoMaybe the back-end is nice? Lol I’m definitely swiping this next time I throw shade on a website XD
- aaronbrethorst 3y agoWorkday is awful from every angle.
- dmoy 3y agoYea, but companies will keep using it because offloading all HRMS to workday (or similar competitors) is cheaper than doing it all in house. (For companies of a sufficient size. Small enough and it's probably not worth it)
- artiscode 3y ago
- alpb 3y agoWould you consider opening the spreadsheet to anyone without requiring them to sign up to your mailing list?
- benterix 3y agoWhy would they make the trouble of doing this experiment and posting it to HN then?
- suriyaG 3y agoIt'll be much more interesting to know how long the "behavior assessment" that you get sent immediately after applying. Having just attended one mind numbing assessment from Citibank, which took more than an hour
- shsachdev 3y agomy next article is likely about that :)
- stanford_labrat 3y agoI remember doing these at Blackrock and JP Morgan. Talk about tedious...
- xnorswap 3y agoThe tldr seems to be that it's exceptionally quick and easy to apply for jobs, perhaps too quick and too easy, there's essentially no barrier to applying to any and every job advert seen given it apparently takes less than 10 minutes in the "worst" case.
- benmo_atx 3y agoWhich makes the overall experience worse for hiring managers and qualified applicants.
- bluGill 3y agoAnd in turn we turn more to automated tools to filter even though we know they are rejecting good people who just didn't write some keyword. In turn applicants are writing worse resumes just to ensure they have the right keywords even if they honestly barely have it (NEVER say you have a keyword you don't have, but if you just barely have it put it on and prepare to explain how little you know if that really is important)
- MikeTheRocker 3y agoI love seeing this kind of detailed analysis of everyday things like this. It always seems to reveal intriguing correlations and insights.
- jddj 3y agoI overheard a guy at the gym a couple of weeks back saying that he's automated (gpt4) the keyword-optimised CV/cover letter process to the point where he was able to apply to - I'm a bit suspect on this bit, but the generation at least is believable - 75 jobs in an hour and a half. We've raised the noise floor significantly. Ps. If you're here mate I hope it worked out for you.
- kiltedpanda 3y agoWe hire on Freelancer sites quite a bit and have noticed that about 50%-80% of applicants now very obviously use ChatGPT or equivalent to apply. Now suddenly every person magically has 8 years experience in a weird esoteric requirement that we're looking for. They are currently very easy to spot and the applications go directly into the trash, so the freelancers aren't doing themselves any favors using them. It is increasing the noise floor a lot though.
- tarek_computer 3y agoWhat are the most common freelancing sites you use for job postings?
- kiltedpanda 3y agoFreelancer.com and Upwork. Although after the torrent of AI powered garbage we received after our latest posting on Freelancer, I'm not sure we will use that again.
- tarek_computer 3y agoThank you. I have side question for you. Sorry, all this thread coincides with another thread about LinkedIn and me getting banned without knowing why (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748263). As a job recruiter looking for freelancers, do you expect to find the person on LinkedIn as part of the fact checking process? Would you seriously consider alternating sites such as a person’s website or GitHub and would you find the person a suspect if their LinkedIn profile does not exist ?
- mongol 3y agoThe worst is is you have to enter all your skills in some CV-builder, and select your choices in tons of select boxes.
- minitoar 3y agoI just never do this and it’s never been a problem.
- marssaxman 3y agoI skip all those - any company willing to begin a relationship with potential future coworkers by putting them through such a tedious, time-wasting exercise is not a place I would want to work.
- transcriptase 3y agoApply to Procter & Gamble, and as part of the application itself enjoy being put through 1-2 hours of ambiguous personality/morality testing and Mensa-style math, memorization, and logic puzzles! With adaptive difficulty! It's the most surreal and absurd experience. There are actually prep courses you can pay for just to improve your odds on the P&G testing process just to get someone to actually see your resume. Be warned though: if you don't score sufficiently high for the position you've applied to, you're banned from applying for any job at the company for a year!
- rgblambda 3y agoIs P&G a particularly great employer that justifies such a bizarre job application?
- lazide 3y agoThe worse the job, usually the worse the application process. In my experience anyway.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HWR_14 3y agoIf you want to work in advertising and marketing, yes. If I recall correctly it's reputation in those circles is equivalent to FAANG in tech.
- itronitron 3y agoI recall seeing a presentation in school by a young brand manager at P&G where they were talking about their excitement of being in charge of sales and marketing of a particular body wash in the southwest region.
- bythreads 3y agoWhat?, no - not really. Perhaps in fmcg specialty shops you'd get some creds - but as in tech you're primariæy judged on past projects not past x
- polalavik 3y agogreat now time how many hours HR phone screening, hiring manager phone screening, take home tests, (multiple) all day onsite interviews take if you want to follow through on like 3 employers.
- pestatije 3y agocool...now time how long it takes for a signed contract offer
- super256 3y agoI only apply to companies I really, really want to work for. Might sound a bit kitsch, but I work a lot on my cover letter to show how eager I am to work with them. Of course it could be luck, but so far I wrote only two applications in my life and got both got accepted + for job offer from both (after interviewing). When I tell people about my cover letters some say that HR don’t even read cover letters, but I want to believe otherwise :D
- postcynical 3y agoI do read them. It’s the easiest way to stand out for candidates. A paragraph about what interests u in this role usually is enough.
- remus 3y agoSame here. In my experience a cover letter is the fastest way to tell if someone actually cares about the role enough to do a little research and understand what is involved.
- kevmarsden 3y agoMost job application flows are suboptimal, but job seekers need to stop maximizing the number of applications they submit and instead create a few really great applications. I typically spend two or three hours writing a cover letter and customizing my resume for each job application.
- dvngnt_ 3y agodepends on your career level.
- gear54rus 3y agoMy god.. 3 hours for a cover letter, mind sharing an example of one?
- bluGill 3y agoCover letter and resume. Which is more reasonable. You should be reading the job ad closely to make sure you match that. Then do some research on the company to make sure you understand what they do - often you can think of some other relevant experience that isn't in the ad. Don't forget that this isn't a hackernews comment. You should take an hour (day is better!) break and then reread and revise everything. Don't send the rough draft or even the second draft in - follow the whole writing process they told you in school. Some people will spot a spelling error at the bottom of the page in one second and reject you, so make sure everything is perfect.
- lbarrow 3y agoI appreciate this guy taking the time to test this stuff out, but... 2.5 minutes per application seems really reasonable and short? Even the Post Office application that took 10 minutes seems fine. I get that you might have to apply to a lot of different jobs, but at that rate in 2-3 hours of focused work, you could apply to nearly a hundred different jobs. The fact that it's that easy to apply belies the tone the article takes, which generally bemoans how hard job applications are. But they didn't demonstrate that it's hard at all! Moreover, the author even says in the beginning that they didn't use any of the products that help you, like LinkedIn Easy Apply. Anyway seems interesting but this mostly just confirmed my perception that applying to jobs is pretty easy. Interviews, on the other hand...
- whatamidoingyo 3y ago> 2.5 minutes per application seems really reasonable and short? That's what I thought as well. I suppose 2.5 minutes feels incredibly long if you're spending your day watching 10 second reels on TikTok and Instagram.
- arccy 3y agoit's long if you don't have the connections to get a job through your network and need to sort of spray and pray to even get to a recruiter screen
- 1323portloo 3y agoSomething you don't want to learn post-graduation: if you don't have the connections to get a job, you simply don't have a prayer.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoi've been hired through online applications. current gig, actually. but of all of my jobs, to include bartending and FedGov, that's the only one. the rest came through personal contacts. i guess the military applies, but that's not really the same thing.
- amDonezo 3y agoYeh; am done with “professional careers”. De-urbanizing and moving to a more rural location. Will get a job at a grocery store to avoid all the future dead people in office jobs whose toxic positivity psychosis is leading them to believe they’re leaving behind the most important outputs for the future. Such jobs are not meaningful. They’re just a form of social organization, like religion before us. Signal attenuation due to generational churn comes with loss of experience and an obligation on the future to re-discover and encode that knowledge. We only propagate the species, social norms are not fractal and immutable; nothing we’re doing is preserved. We’re just jumping through elites hoops for bigger paychecks. Been there, done that. It gets just as banal and repetitive as everything else. It’s drug addiction, chasing dopamine highs. Physics will end the species and all this effort will be for naught. Given that there’s little point to being a court jester and dancing for the high court.
- CapstanRoller 3y agoMust be nice to have enough money to simply buy a house.
- sambazi 3y agotbf the dynamic range here is pretty big. there are usually old/unmaintained houses on the edge of nowhere to buy for less than a years rent of a flat in downtown.
- CapstanRoller 3y agoIn what country? Here in Washington State USA any place that's remotely habitable is either very expensive or gets snatched up immediately.
- sambazi 3y agoin the countryside. an hours drive away from the "big city" with 100k population should be good. you probably have to adjust your sense of "habitable" as well and put in some work. not saying it's easy or nice
- Inviz 3y agoI always tell my friends that i apply to 100 jobs, go through interviews with 15 companies, get 5 offers. In my experience as a generalist it's possible to find _something_ interesting about the position once you get an interview, there's no reason to pre-filter self to a very specific tech stack. As long as they pay!
- mr_o47 3y agoI remember applying to RenTech and getting a rejection email in 3 hours and let me tell you it was quick. Most companies I have applied to would probably take a week or more than a week
- brightball 3y agoThe only time I reject an application that quickly is if it was completely outside the realm of the job. At least for programmers, I always cast a wide net unless there is some very specific item that has a very steep learning curve.
- ipaddr 3y agoThey are quick. From applying to getting an offer to getting laid off 1.5 seconds. The lawsuit is taking years
- notsurenymore 3y agoSome years ago I remember applying to a job at a well known US bank. It got to a series of checklist questions, one of which asked if I had a degree, I checked no, and it kicked me out before I could even finish the application. Honestly, I wish more applications were like that. Just let me know sooner rather than later what your filters are.
- lelandfe 3y agoDisney’s rejection for a front end position came a full year after I applied
- mr_o47 3y agothat's insane I remember applying for a position getting a phone call and then getting rejected afterwards but the funny thing was I got another email from the same company asking about my availability for the interview and I was like Woahh, are you sure you sent the email to the right person because I remember you already rejected me
- 3y ago
- jldugger 3y agoI assume career page quality is related to how important immigrant visas are to staffing, where "unable to find qualified local labor" is a criteria. No idea how to quantify that though.
- Ilasky 3y agoThese are some really interesting results that I have felt empirically, but is great to put some data to. One thing this doesn’t take into account is the best practice of tailoring resumes to job descriptions. This is a time-intensive task that does actually improve call back rates. A bit of a self-plug, but I’ve made Resgen[0] to help do this for you. [0] https://resgen.app https://resgen.app
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI guess this is interesting research, but for me not personally useful. I've had a lot of jobs in my long career, and I have spent a considerable amount of time researching and applying for the few ones I am interested in. I have a pretty good hit rate. Do people really apply for hundreds of jobs?
- notsurenymore 3y ago> Do people really apply for hundreds of jobs? I’ve done it twice. The first time was when I was 18 or 19 trying to get my first job in the industry. I put in a ton of applications, and while it felt tedious, it only took around three months at the end of the day. The second time was this time. I’ve probably put at least 100 applications in over the past year, and it’s been very hit or miss on whether I get interviews. I don’t bother researching and applying for the few jobs in interested in, because I’m usually not qualified for them. Most of my recent job applications have been exclusively ones that looks like they’re relevant compared to my resume, and some that are different from the work I’ve done in the past, but utilize tangential skills.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoYes, I can see that working early in a career. Now that I think of it, my best friend did exactly that too when he was 19, and he managed to get his foot in the door. For what it's worth I think your current strategy of applying for relevant jobs is the right one, particularly if it's a difficult market where you are. Tangential skills are also good possibilities. I hope you find something that works for you.
- bluGill 3y agoWhen you are fresh out of college you don't stand out. A few months ago we had 100 applicants for an entry level programming position. Every applicant was finishing their bachelors (a couple in CS, the rest in computer engineering) in June. They all had done some internship (in a not very relevant area but that is expected) and a class project. Almost all of them were Eagle scouts (until recently scouts only allowed boys so this is indirectly an assessment of boy/girl ratio of applicants and thus illegal for me to care about). It was really hard to filter down who to interview because they all look the same and we only had one position. As such spaming your resume is the best bet when fresh from school. When you have been our of school for a while we get a few resumes with interesting experience that can make a few people stand out. Most probably have standout experience, but it doesn't come out in the resume.
- tennisflyi 3y agoOk. Update us on the average time to get a reply from ghosting to months.
- blitzar 3y agoAverage time to get a reply = infinity.
- generic92034 3y agoI am looking forward for the days when my AI is negotiating with several corporate HR AI wherever I will finally end up. ;)
- kraftman 3y agoIs how long it takes to submit your generic CV a valuable statistic? Is there a benefit for companies to make it easy for you to apply to them? I don't think anyone is sitting around going 'We just have no good candidates, if only people could apply in 71 seconds instead of 160, then we'd finally see the applicant quality increase'
- Peroni 3y ago>Is how long it takes to submit your generic CV a valuable statistic? Not at all. If anything, you want people to take their time when applying. In almost every A/B test I've ever run, the more questions I introduce into the application process, the quality of applications increases exponentially, the time to filter applications decreases, and the decrease in the total number of applications was barely noticeable.
- wierd-eye-loser 3y ago[dead]
- willsmith72 3y agoIt would be nice to see the expected salary for each role vs application time too.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoSeems like even though multiple industries were tried these are all for tech positions, right? I wonder how long it would take for non-tech positions. I remember applying online for a minimum wage job at Burger King around 2010 and the application took about 45 minutes. Not only did you need to upload your resume, you need to enter every detail again in a long web form, and then there was a "personality test". Funny sidenote, my manager told me I was the first application he received that got a perfect score on the personality test. The next best applicant in the queue at the time was 85%. The questions were all things like "If a customer is complaining do you: Smile and listen to their complaint? Or Tell them it's fast food and to deal with it?" or "A customer accidentally included an extra 5 dollar bill when giving you their payment. You could keep this $5 without anyone knowing, do you keep it?" Just all very obvious answers and I don't understand why you wouldn't at least lie.
- EarthAmbassador 3y agoWhy do HR people demand the duplication of efforts including manual entry of the very same information on a resume or LinkedIn profile, two resources that many HR people request. This is abusive, lazy, and easily solvable issue. I don’t bother applying with any company that feels entitled to ware my time.
- Peroni 3y ago>This is abusive, lazy, and easily solvable issue Agree with the first two but not the last point. The types of companies you're referring to are almost always large and not particularly fast moving. Swapping out their archaic applicant tracking system is often a non-starter as it's usually embedded in their HRIS and swapping out a HRIS in a large company is a monster task.
- euroderf 3y agoA.I., anyone ?
- HWR_14 3y agoIt's not their time or their budget, so it works out to $0 cost on their spreadsheet.
- Glyptodon 3y agoNot including things like any custom cover letters, coding take-home, phone screens, resumé tweaks, etc.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoNow we just need a resource about which companies will ghost you at some point in the process. I can take being rejected. Disappearing into the night is so disrespectful.
- donretag 3y agoGreat article. Well done. Have you considered adding an RSS feed for your content?
- shsachdev 3y agothanks! I have not but will def consider it
- ddgflorida 3y agoIt's been a decade ago, but I remember the nightmare of using Taleo to apply for a job. I always thought I could write something better in about a week.
- danielovichdk 3y agoAbsolutely love this post. Thank you for your hard efforts. Great!!!
- MostlyStable 3y agoI remain confused by the absense of a sizeable reverse headhunter industry. Headhunters are trying to find a best fit for a company. Why is there no one trying to find a best fit for a candidate? The inherent problem in hiring, on both sides, is search costs. I'm probably going to be searching for a new job sometime next year. I think that, to avoid the time spent on these appliations, and to ensure a relatively good fit, I'd be willing to pay quite a bit, or to try and align incentives pay a percentage of the pay increase from my current job for a period of time or something like that. But essentially, it seems like free money on the ground to be able to pay people to solve these search frictions. I realize headhunters exist on the company side, but it really seems like A) there should be more of that and B) there should be a reciprocal industry representing the applicants.
- Spoom 3y agoCompanies are both more solvent and pay quicker than your typical job seeker (who is usually unemployed). Basically, less risk.
- willsmith72 3y agoIsn't that just a recruiter at an independent agency? Reply to LinkedIn messages and even if you don't like the role they have at that time, those people are your headhunters.
- ignite2 3y agoThere used to be many of these, but they became mostly scams that preyed on desperate job seekers. By the time I started job hunting, many years back, this industry was viewed about like nigerian princes. No sensible person would deal with them. There are career coaches to be found these days, I'm not intending to include them in this rant. I've had a few friends use them, and I've talked to one and he was reasonable. As an individual, I'd avoid anyone that wants a percentage. Specified fee for helping with resume, linkedin profile, etc., fine.
- tamimio 3y agoNice write up! If anything, this proves that the job application process is a total mess, and of course, when things are chaotic, it opens opportunities to data miners, scammers, and the likes.
- mikeyan320 3y ago2.5 minutes seems short for every application but it's literally mindlessly re-entering information that's literally already on your resume. It's definitely the frustration more than the time IMO... PSA: I built a browser extension that autofills your job application so you don't have to manually re-type your resume on every job -> https://simplify.jobs/copilot https://simplify.jobs/copilot (we're also YC backed!)
- sebbul 3y agoWhen I was involved in hiring at a major enterprise, our HR recruiting lead advised against reviewing candidates directly from the ATS. The reason? Due to our company's reputation as a top workplace, many applicants indiscriminately applied to every role available. Our HR lead essentially served as a human spam filter.
- darkclouds 3y ago[dead]
- stuckkeys 3y agoOkay and how many of them responded ? What was the success rate? If you are going to document all this work, why not include the success rate? How many called you back?
- TheRealDunkirk 3y agoNo notes. https://www.reddit.com/r/rant/comments/9o8yvc/if_you_created_workday_i_fucking_hate_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rant/comments/9o8yvc/if_you_created...