Hit 500 job applications and realized the number wasn't the point

I keep a spreadsheet for my job hunt and it crossed 500 rows last Tuesday. When I started in January I thought 100 would be enough, but here I am in July and the real shock was seeing that 38 of those turned into actual phone screens. The number that surprised me was 12, that's how many were referrals from a Slack group I joined for laid off tech folks. If you're grinding through apps right now, how many of yours came from a real person vs just hitting submit?

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thomasshah10d ago

Wait, 500 apps since January is not a grind, that is a full time job on its own! But here is what I want to push back on: your referrals number probably looks low because of how you counted it. You said 12 came from the Slack group, but what about the recruiter who found your resume on LinkedIn and reached out? That is a real person too. And the friend who forwarded your name to their old boss? Sometimes that never shows up as a "referral" in the sheet, it just looks like a normal application. I bet your real human touch number is way higher than 12 if you go back through it.

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