A little over two weeks ago, I started seriously looking for a job in tech again.
Not bookmarking jobs.
Not tweaking my LinkedIn headline for the fifteenth time.
Actually applying.
Software engineer. Technical writer. Support engineer. Implementation engineer. Developer relations. Full stack. Frontend. Python. Anything that seemed reasonably connected to the strange collection of skills I've built over the last few years.
After enough applications, something started happening to my perception of the search.
I would apply to five jobs and feel like I'd applied to fifty.
A rejection would show up and somehow feel more important than the ten applications still sitting unanswered.
A few quiet days would turn into:
Nobody is going to give me a chance.
So I decided to stop judging the job search by how it felt.
I went through my emails, LinkedIn notifications, ZipRecruiter messages, and applications that had gone to another email account.
Then I started counting.
Applications submitted during the first two weeks: 58 of the 59 have a verified submission date (Sept 17-30).
59 applications in 14 days
My current job hunt really started on September 17.
Between September 17 and September 30, I can verify 59 separate job applications.
I deduplicated them. If LinkedIn sent me an application confirmation and the company's ATS sent another one five minutes later, that's still one application.
As of October 1, the traditional application funnel looks like this:
| Outcome | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Applications | 59 | 100% |
| Confirmed rejections | 6 | ~10% |
| Technical screenings | 1 | ~2% |
| Interviews | 1 | ~2% |
| No substantive response yet | 51 | ~86% |
There is another important number:
1 paid technical writing gig with Sinch.
I'm not counting Sinch as an application, interview, or offer in those 59.
It came through a different path.
Honestly, that might be the most interesting part of this entire experiment.
Most applications have done absolutely nothing
If you look only at the traditional application funnel, the biggest category isn't rejection.
It's silence.
As of October 1, 51 of my 59 applications had not produced a substantive response.
That's about 86%.
But that number needs context.
23 applications were submitted on September 29 or September 30, right at the end of this two-week window.
All 23 were still waiting for a substantive response when I took this snapshot.
Calling those applications "ghosted" would make for a more dramatic article, but it wouldn't be accurate.
Some of them were barely 24 hours old.
The more interesting number is on the other end of the timeline.
Of the 51 applications still waiting for a real response, 20 had already been sitting for at least a week.
So both things are true.
A large chunk of the silence is simply too fresh to judge.
But a meaningful chunk isn't.
That's one of the first things the data corrected for me.
When you're applying every day, all unanswered applications start feeling the same.
They aren't.
An application from yesterday and an application from twelve days ago may both say "pending," but emotionally and statistically they're very different things.
Six applications ended in rejection
So far, I've received six confirmed rejections.
One was for a Developer Relations position.
Some companies responded remarkably quickly. One rejected me the same day I applied. Another viewed my application first and rejected me several days later.
A few applications also generated "your application was viewed" notifications without progressing any further.
And weirdly, I don't mind the rejections nearly as much as I expected.
A rejection contains information.
They received the application.
Something happened.
The answer was no.
That sucks, but at least the loop closes.
The silence is stranger.
One application turned into an interview
On September 24, I applied for a Technical Writer position.
A few hours later, I received an email asking me to schedule an interview.
Four days later, I interviewed.
That was my first actual interview from this batch, and it came from one of the smaller categories in my search.
Most of my applications haven't been for technical writing.
They've been for software engineering.
Out of the 59:
| Role type | Applications |
|---|---|
| Software engineering/development | 42 |
| Technical writing/content | 8 |
| Support, implementation, or solutions | 7 |
| Other adjacent roles | 2 |
So more than 70% of my applications have been for software-development jobs.
My first interview came from one of the eight writing-oriented applications.
I'm not ready to turn that into a career conclusion.
Eight applications and one interview make for an absurdly small sample size.
But it is a signal I'm going to keep watching.
One application produced a technical screening
One company sent me a technical screening for a Python/JavaScript full-stack position.
I don't count that as an interview, but I do count it as movement.
This distinction matters because I'm trying to understand where the funnel actually breaks.
If nobody opens my applications, that's one problem.
If employers open them but don't move me forward, that's another.
If I reach interviews and fail there, that's a completely different problem.
"Nobody will hire me" isn't actionable.
"Very few applications are reaching human conversations" is.
That is something I can investigate.
Then there's Sinch
This is where the spreadsheet gets more interesting.
During the same period that I was sending dozens of traditional applications into hiring systems, I also landed paid technical writing work with Sinch.
That opportunity doesn't belong in the 59-application funnel, so I'm not going to manipulate the numbers and call it a job offer.
But leaving it out of the story would also be dishonest.
Because while one part of my career strategy looked like this:
Apply → ATS → wait → maybe hear back
another part looked very different:
Build things → write about things → show people what I know → get paid to write technical content
And one of those paths has already produced paid work.
Again, I'm not claiming I've discovered the secret to getting hired.
I haven't.
But this is exactly why I wanted to start tracking the search instead of just counting the resumes I sent.
The goal isn't applications.
The goal is opportunities.
My job search is actually two experiments
I didn't realize this when I started, but I'm running two career experiments at the same time.
The first is the traditional one.
Can I take my experience, projects, freelance development work, open-source work, and self-taught background and turn it into a full-time software or technical-writing job through normal applications?
That's the 59-application experiment.
The second is different.
Can building things publicly and writing about what I learn create enough evidence of what I can do that opportunities start finding me another way?
Sinch belongs to that experiment.
So does my technical writing.
So do my open-source projects.
So does every article where I explain something I actually built instead of trying to convince somebody I'm passionate about technology in a cover letter.
I don't know which path ultimately gets me where I'm trying to go.
Maybe both will.
The hardest part has been separating data from emotion
I'm self-taught.
I don't have a computer science degree.
My career history isn't clean.
I worked retail for years. I became a manager. I became a caregiver. I stepped away from a traditional career path. I taught myself development. I started building open-source software. I started writing.
There is no obvious checkbox for that person.
So when rejection emails start arriving, it's incredibly easy to interpret them as answers to much bigger questions.
Maybe employers don't take self-taught developers seriously anymore.
Maybe I'm too late.
Maybe my projects aren't good enough.
Maybe I don't belong here.
But that's not what the data says.
The data says:
- I submitted 59 applications.
- Six rejected me.
- One sent me a technical screening.
- One interviewed me.
- 51 haven't given me a substantive answer yet.
- 20 of those unanswered applications had already been waiting at least a week.
- Outside that funnel, I landed paid technical writing work.
That's all I actually know.
Everything else is interpretation.
I'm changing how I think about the next two weeks
I don't want the next checkpoint to simply say:
I applied to 150 jobs.
Volume matters, especially when response rates are low.
But I want to get smarter about the volume.
I want to see whether technical-writing roles continue producing stronger responses.
I want to look at whether locally relevant roles behave differently from huge remote applicant pools.
I want to track where employers actually view my application.
I want to keep improving the software-engineering side instead of abandoning it because one technical-writing application happened to convert.
And I want to keep building and publishing things.
Because one of the clearest signals from the first two weeks isn't coming from the application spreadsheet at all.
It's that showing my work can create opportunities too.
This isn't the 30-day conclusion
It's Day 14.
There are 51 applications whose stories haven't finished yet.
Some will probably disappear forever.
Some will reject me next week.
Maybe a couple will turn into interviews.
And I'll keep applying while all of that happens.
On Day 30, I'm going back through the entire dataset.
Same applications.
Same methodology.
Then we'll see what the funnel actually looks like once it's had enough time to breathe.
For now:
59 applications.
6 rejections.
1 screening.
1 interview.
1 paid writing opportunity outside the application funnel.
And I'm still going.
If you've been through a job search, what did your funnel look like? I'd like to compare notes before Day 30.
Top comments (4)
I noticed a pattern last time I was applying places. I was logging applications in notepad. For roughly every 15 applications I would get some type of response 😂
So i realized it is actually a numbers game. 5 real applications catered to a specific job definitely feels like 50. But I get higher responses when I trailer them.
59 applications in two weeks is honestly a lot of data to work with. What I found most interesting is how much the response rate can tell you about the strategy itself – whether the problem is the CV, the targeting, or simply the market. Tracking applications this way seems much more useful than just applying endlessly and hoping something sticks.
This is a really interesting way to look at a job search because you’re treating it as a system instead of just an emotional experience.
The part that stood out to me is the distinction between “application volume” and “opportunity generation.” 59 applications sounds like the main metric, but once you separate rejection, screening, interview, silence, and opportunities coming from outside the funnel, the picture becomes much more useful.
I’d actually take this one step further and track the funnel like a product funnel:
Application → Viewed → Response → Screening → Interview → Offer
Then add the source and role type to each step.
For example, if 40 software-engineering applications produce almost no human interaction while 8 technical-writing applications produce an interview, that doesn’t automatically mean “become a technical writer.” It tells you where to investigate: positioning, targeting, portfolio evidence, market, or simply sample size.
And the Sinch example makes the whole experiment more interesting. A traditional application funnel can be performing poorly while a “build → publish → demonstrate → opportunity” funnel is already producing something tangible.
That’s probably the biggest takeaway for me: don’t optimize for the number of applications. Optimize the system that turns your skills and evidence into opportunities.
That's a lot, I've been applying relentlessly too. I'm trying for a different company but I didn't actually keep track of my applications, leaving the site that I applied in keep track. I'll make a point to keep track.