You’re not imagining it. Getting a job right now really is harder than it used to be. That’s because Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait has crunched the numbers on the job market, and they’re brutal: for every 10 open roles on his hiring platform alone, there are 2,539 applicants fighting over them.
His advice for standing a chance? Stop applying to the companies everyone’s heard of.
“Don’t just apply to, you know, OpenAI, because they’re in the news every day,” Chait exclusively told Fortune. “Think of the job you want and apply to less-known companies who do that type of work—you’ll find a lot more success.”
The numbers back him up. There are currently 175,000 live jobs on Greenhouse’s platform—and on average, for every job ad posted, around 254 job seekers are applying, pushing applications per recruiter up by 412%—and that’s before accounting for the handful of household names soaking up a disproportionate share of that flood.
Essentially, it’s not you—it’s who you’re applying to that’s the problem.
