“Have you tried applying on LinkedIn? Messaging recruiters or hiring managers on LinkedIn?”
“Oh no don’t use LinkedIn, everyone ignores those because of bots, apply directly”
“Put keywords from the job listing in your resume so the algorithm will rank you hire”
“Oh no don’t use words from the listing in your resume or you’ll be flagged as a bot”
“Hire a headhunter to apply to many positions for you”
“Avoid headhunters because when they spam your resume, you’ll get flagged as a bot”
“Complete a tedious and time consuming project for the company and post it on your personal site so they see you’re not a bot already qualified”
“Oh they didn’t even open the link to look at it? Well do one for the next company and the next and the next…”
Looking for a white collar job today is basically an arms race with the net result recruiters spend the bulk of their time weeding out bots, and applicants spend the bulk of their time trying to not look like bots. It’s ridiculous and I kind of wish places just accepted in person applications again.