The recruiter reaches out, we have a chat, and if things align well enough, they put me in the pipeline for a phone screen. If the recruiter has you filling ou

The recruiter reaches out, we have a chat, and if things align well enough, they put me in the pipeline for a phone screen. If the recruiter has you filling out the formal application, then that’s probably them soft-rejecting you and your application will join the majority of the hundreds or thousands of other cold-appliers in the ether of digital oblivion. Having said that, every job I’ve gotten in my career has been through a recruiter reaching out first. Any attempt to cold apply via online application has been met with automated rejection or ghosting. Any attempt to reach out to a recruiter first has them directing me to the online application form that leads straight to oblivion. There are people out there that can leverage their networks to easily land jobs. However the catch here seems to be that you can’t be picky about where you end up. Unless you’re lucky enough that most of your friends and ex-colleagues are in influential positions at highly desirable organizations. Heck, I could probably leverage my network to land a job pretty quickly. It’s just highly unlikely it will be at a company I’d want to work for unless I’m desperate.