No Stupid Questions

Yeah. I applied for about 20 jobs per day my last few months before graduating Uni.

Got an amazing job and didn't even know I applied for it

This is the way

Make use of your university's career services department/center whatever its called. There are resources. Inside tracks on internships Help on resumes. Etc...

In my career, I've had the most luck finding jobs through networking. If you have the ability to (and I will fully acknowledge not everyone has the ability), networking can help you get your foot in the door.

Aside from that, yeah, spam your resume.

Spam away. The jobs you want may not be hiring, so send out applications for the jobs you need. You can keep spamming until you make your way to where you want to be.

Take the time to tailor your resume and cover letter for the jobs you want.

Then spam away at everything else.

Save your energy for the good ones.

Spam away. I've been on hiring committees, and sometimes we have tons of qualified applicants and a hard choice, sometimes we have none. If you spam you'll have a better chance of hitting a company when there's fewer people in their list. As long as you're somewhat qualified, at least; no reason to spam for jobs that are vastly outside of what you can do.

Far and away the best way to get a job is through someone you know.

Otherwise, I have a friend that worked for a sort of agency that hires a bunch of juniors, does some light training, then contracts them out to other companies. You do that for 6 - 12 months then convert into a full-time position directly with the company you were contracting for. Not glamorous, but it's an option and can lead to good outcomes. It worked out well for my friend.

Send as many applications as you can, yes, but ensure you're spreading them out across companies. Also, if you have a social network, leverage it as much as possible. Or, speak with recruiters in your field.

I have decade+ experience in my field and only got ~5% response rate over a year. In fact, my now boss bypassed their HR to hire me because they couldn't manage thousands of applications.

The job market fucking sucks right now.

I aim for 20 applications a day when looking for a job. Usually takes me about a week to find work and I realistically get only a handful of calls from the 100 or so applications I send out.

I have a very specific skill set so my experience may not apply, but I've had the best results going through technical head hunters.

Tempt to perm positions lasting six months to a year, then they decide if they want to hire you.

Yes spam away, it's not like your credit score is getting dinged each time you send one.

My only caution to this approach is that you want to be sure to research the company before any interview, don't show up and be like "Well, ya'll were the only one of the 500 I sent out to reply, what do you do?"

Go to your neighborhood bar, make friends, and when you land something through a relationship, respect it at least until they moved on.

Focus your spamming on jobs that you have a reasonable shot of getting should they read the resume. Even 10 minutes of research on a company can often figure out something you can put on a resume and cover letter that would greatly help your chances.

Have you thought about civil service jobs?

I work for a big city government. Nice pension, great union, reasonable benefits.

Much less BS than private sector.

If your uni has career fairs, attend them. Look for the booths without long lines that might be hiring for your major. They tend to ask about projects, but you can use class assignments or projects as examples. They're looking for your understanding of the project and how well you can communicate that. Another trick is to use your "major GPA" (ommitting general education courses) on your resume if it makes the number higher.

I recommend trying to get as many internships as you can while in school, all at different places. It gets your foot in the door at more companies and gives you a better idea of what you like in a working environment.

I don't know if it'll help, but there was this reddit post [sorry for the hellsite link] last year that listed a bunch of smaller, more specific/niche job search boards.

I graduated last year and have been applying to jobs manually. I did very well academically and have done multiple projects to put on my resume. Still getting nothing. Nothing seems to actually matter anymore. I had a discussion with a friend of a friend who is a manager in a different industry. She says she doesn't even see actual applications anymore, she just receives garbage AI summaries, and most people who apply just get filtered out immediately. So honestly, yeah, just go blast companies with spam applications, and hope their AI randomly decides that your resume is good. Or try your luck doing it manually and hope the company doesn't have a shitty AI filter.

I've had people cold DM me on LinkedIn for an internship. For all of them, it was pretty useless since it was obvious that I had nothing to do with the department they wanted an internship in.

That said, if someone was interested in an internship in my department, I probably would have chatted with them and set up an interview.

Keep spamming. I doubt it'll lessen your chances.

When I was looking for a job an awful long time ago I was sending 8 a day and that seems small time compared to what you’d need to do now. Most of these places will have AI doing first soft on the applications anyway so don’t feel like you’ll be annoying anyone.

Yes. The time to find that job that you really want is when you have the job you can get. Also everyone is applying for every position that even remotely touches their skillset whether they have the experience or not. This is just how it works these days.

Bottom line 18-30% of job postings are "ghost jobs" so obviously putting in work for the wrong job is bad. Then yeah as you mentioned, most applications are going to be reviewed by some form of robot... then if you are lucky then an HR person who knows nothing about the actual work in the environment will look over it, check boxes to see if the right key words they are supposed to look for are there. Bottom line it's like dating and most other parts of life. No matter what you'll miss every job you don't apply for, and 99.99% of the ones you do.

If you have a resumé/CV you can add that you were also working? If you were, and supporting your family?

I believe you have the current meta understood, yes.

I know that most people actually get places by having stuff to show off e.g projects, clubs and GOOD GRADES

From what I've seen with how my company handles intern applicants, there are at least two different tracks: the first track is indeed people that have GPAs and coursework that is immediately impressive to any recruiter working on commissions. But the second track is where applicants make an impression to our engineers staffing the company's booth when on-site for career fairs.

My take is that engineers have a better gauge for aptitude and generally fitting-in with the company culture, miles above what an external recruiter or a company HR person could ever assess. This makes for higher quality interns, whom could later be offered a full position. And fortunately at my company, the process for assessing applicants from either track still ends up before an interview panel of technical people.

My advice then is that in tandem with a mass approach to resume distribution, also seek out in-person career fair opportunities. These opportunities won't exist after you've left uni, and it's a good way to both understand a prospective employer and also make a good, in-person impression. And if you do this, do brush up on exactly what those prospective companies work in, and put your most appealing strengths forward first. Even just asking them questions but using correct industry vocab is a differentiator.

Turbo spam with AI if you really want a job. Won't be a good one, but it will be a job.