I realized I was wasting hours applying to “dead” LinkedIn jobs — so I built a tiny fix

For weeks I thought I was just bad at job searching.

I was applying to tons of roles on LinkedIn every day and getting… nothing.
Sometimes I’d get rejected within hours. Other times I’d hear nothing at all.

Eventually I started noticing patterns:

• The same jobs kept showing up again and again
• Roles I’d already applied to were still in my feed
• “Urgent hiring” posts already had hundreds or thousands of applicants
• Promoted listings dominated everything

It started to feel less like job searching and more like fighting the interface.

The moment it clicked

A recruiter friend said something simple that stuck with me:

A lot of LinkedIn jobs are reposted endlessly, promoted for visibility, or already flooded with applicants. You’re not competing — you’re just burning energy.

That changed my approach.

Instead of trying to apply to more jobs, I started trying to remove the noise.

At first I did it manually:

• skipping promoted listings
• ignoring jobs I’d already applied to
• avoiding listings I’d already opened
• skipping posts with massive applicant counts

It helped.
But doing this manually every day was still exhausting.

So I built a tiny Chrome extension for myself

This wasn’t meant to be a startup.
It was just me scratching my own itch.

I built a small Chrome extension that simply:

• hides promoted jobs
• hides jobs I already applied to
• hides Easy Apply spam
• hides jobs I’ve already viewed

makes it easier to focus on newer, less crowded roles

No automation.
No scraping.
No AI magic.
Just filtering what’s already on the page.

I called it LinkedIn JobLens.

The surprising part

I shared it with a few friends.
They shared it with others.
Then people I didn’t know started asking for it.

It didn’t magically fix the job market.
It didn’t suddenly get me interviews.

But it did:

• save me hours every week
• reduce burnout
• make the process feel less hopeless
• help me focus on higher-signal opportunities

And honestly, that mattered more than I expected.

If anyone’s curious, this is the extension I built:
👉 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/linkedin-joblens-%E2%80%94-smart/ffkelfoaaejkhdldmlbnglhpgpobiigp