10-15 job applications per week according to Google. Open-and-shut case. Thank you for coming.
10-15 may be appropriate for some people, however, we should be always wary of any one-size-fits-all answer…
My personal experience is that 10-15 is too high and would have actually hurt my chances of landing a job.
There are two main reasons why less may be more for you:
Reason #1: too many interviews can result in poor interview performance and general burnout
It takes time to prepare for an interview. You should have a general understanding of what the company does, how you could add value, why you want to work there, and some probing questions to determine if you really want to work there (as well as some general questions to make your interviewer feel like their opinion is important).
In addition to time, it takes a certain…je ne sais quoi to fine-tune and sometimes even change your identity to suit the role you’re applying for (fake it ’till you make it baby!).
Perhaps it’s not an issue for you, but I found it exhausting to pretend like every role is my divine calling, especially when the role is for something mundane or potentially even harmful.
This is especially true if you already have a job and/or your interview requires a time-consuming ‘take home assessment’ (some great thoughts on take-home assessments here)
Reason #2: too many applications can result in interviews with companies you do not want to work for
If you cannot get even a little excited about an opportunity, don’t force it. Not only is it likely a waste of your time, it’s also a waste of your interviewer’s time, which is rude. Don’t be rude.
However, if you are on the fence about an opportunity, then apply! There’s only so much you can glean from a job posting and a short call with a recruiter should help clarify your feelings.
A flexible rule of thumb
How many applications you submit should be based on how many interviews you want and how successful your applications are. It sounds elementary, but I have not seen any ‘expert’ advice take this into account.
Whatever your individual goals are, you can use this table to determine how many applications you should submit each week:
If you don’t know what your ‘application success rate’ is, then use 20% as a conservative benchmark until you have a better estimate.
More accuracy (more work)
While this rule of thumb is a helpful simplification, it also has some shortcomings that will almost certainly result in you having more or less interviews than desired for three major reasons:
- Your applications success rate will vary
- The time it takes to hear back will vary
- The length of the interview process will vary
If you ignore these factors and submit a set number of applications each week, you may find yourself in a similar position to myself where I had 7 interviews in one week and did not do as well as could have because I was overwhelmed.
The good news is it’s possible to incorporate these factors to more accurately determine how many applications you should submit.
The bad news is that this requires one to systematically track their efforts and a model that forecasts future events. No such tool exists.
Until I built it…
It’s not perfect, but it was good enough for my job search. Very curious to hear if it useful for anyone else AND even more curious to see if anyone can improve it 😉
Conclusion
If you want to get a job, don’t blindly submit an arbitrarily # of job applications. Decide how many interviews you can crush per week and determine how many applications to submit based off that.
If you want to hear more about my job search, including thoughts on visualization, random insights, and a few words on the emotional toll, click here!