I physically can’t submit hundreds of applications a week, my new job duped me, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I physically can’t submit hundreds of applications a week

I’m in the hellscape of the 2026 American job market and have been here for a while. I keep getting told that getting hired is a numbers game, and that to increase the chance I will get a callback I must simply apply to everything and send hundreds of applications a week.

This is literally impossible. Even if I minimize the effort I put in customizing my resume and cover letters, I can get at the most five applications a day, if I push myself. Heck, even if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be able to find that many jobs per week, let alone apply. Plus, I can’t shake the feeling that if competition is this thick, 100 low-quality applications are more likely to get thrown out than 10 high-quality ones (on the other hand, I have been incredibly unsuccessful, so it’s likely that I’m wrong).

From a hiring manager’s point of view, what’s the better way to approach this? Play the odds or actually try?

P.S. Fun fact I learned in my master’s program this semester: if you look for job hunting advice on online forums, you are more likely to encounter people who have been searching for a long time. This is because of the Inspection Paradox aka Renewal Theory. The job market is not as bleak as Reddit forums might lead you to think.

Yeah, be cautious about job hunting advice from Reddit. A ton of it comes from people who aren’t having success in their own careers and thus aren’t well-positioned to provide it.

The answer to quality vs. quantity is what your instincts are telling you: when competition is strong, low-quality applications have even lower chances of succeeding than they normally do.

That’s not to say that quantity doesn’t matter; it does. When competition is strong, by definition it will take most people more applications to find a job. But you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you send out hundreds of low-quality applications; that’s just wasted effort. You’re better off looking for ways to streamline your process without making major quality sacrifices — like having a few cover letter templates that you can quickly customize for different types of jobs (like by just changing the opening paragraph) and a long master resume that you can quickly edit down to the most relevant experience for any given job you’re applying to. Don’t spend hours agonizing over a single application — but don’t resume-bomb employers either.

Related:
job searching is so much work — here’s how to make it easier
here’s a template to make writing cover letters easier

2. Can I offer to help my boss with her personal life in a crisis?

One of the owners of the small company I work for recently had a medical emergency in her family. It sounds like it’s going to be a long, hard recovery, and she is struggling with basically everything. I can’t help her with her work for profession-related reasons, but would it be out of line for me to offer to help with personal stuff? She was there for me when my dog died (literally, she drove through a snowstorm in the dark to get to us and was the one to do the deed, and then took care of the body for me because I wasn’t able to do so), and I want to help if I can.

For what it’s worth, both she and my manager might as well have gone to the Alison Green School of Management, and the risk of me being taken advantage of in a way that is point-blank clearly inappropriate is basically zero.

The general answer to this is no; the best way to help your boss while she’s going through a tough time is with work-related things because the power dynamic makes help with non-work things too fraught (i.e., if we start considering that appropriate, there’s too much risk of people or their coworkers feeling pressured to offer, or pressured into more than they intended to offer, or worrying that if they don’t it will harm them professionally or someone else will gain professionally, and so forth).

Those things are all still in play for your situation, but the facts that (a) she did such a lovely personal favor for you, (b) you’re confident you won’t be taken advantage of, and (c) you actively want to help do change the calculus a little and I could see offering if there’s a one very specific task you want to suggest (because if you make an open-ended offer to help in general, a graduate of the AGSoM is just going to thank you but not take you up on it). At the same time, though, stay sensitive to the potential dynamic it could cause with other employees if it’s more than one very specific, time-limited activity.

And if you can, think about work-related things you might be able to take off her plate instead.

3. My new job deliberately hid the workload from me

After two years of unemployment, I just started a new job two months ago. Considering the job market and that I had been looking for about one year, I was grateful for the offer (even though I took about a $50K pay cut). Based on the job description and my interviews, I understood the scope of the role to be one thing, but more work outside of that scope is being added to my plate. Additionally, in a meeting with coworkers, I found out that they intended to add additional responsibilities but they all deliberately agreed not to tell me in my first 90 days so I wouldn’t be “overwhelmed.”

I feel like I’ve been duped to a certain extent. This is a director-level role so I do expect a significant amount of work on my plate, but I don’t like that I feel I was lied to or that additional responsibilities keep being added when I don’t have a team to help execute everything that needs to be done. It was discussed in my interview that within six months, hiring a team member would be up for discussion, but until then I’m solely responsible for it all.

How would you go about navigating this? I do feel like it’s a bit early to push back and cause friction with my new coworkers. If the job market wasn’t so terrible, I’d look for new employment since this has left a bad taste in my month, but that doesn’t seem feasible right now.

Are you sure that your coworkers really meant that they deliberately set out to deceive you because they didn’t think you’d take the job if you knew the real scope of the work, or could they just mean they agreed they should let you get settled with ABC responsibilities before adding XYZ to your plate? The first one is awful, but the second one is a pretty normal way for jobs to go.

Unless it was very clear it was the first one (and maybe even then), the best thing to do is to handle this like any workload issue: talk to your boss about what can and can’t realistically get done and how to prioritize (and maybe point out that if it all needs to get done now, it would make sense to move up the timeline for hiring more help).

Related:
what to do when you’re overworked
I’m burned out and overworked and my bosses keep piling more work on me

4. Interviewing when my job title sounds like I have more experience than I actually have

I work for a Fortune 500 company. Let’s say my job title is teapot sculptor, but the actual bulk of what I do is overseeing our suppliers’ teapot sculptors. I review their work and point out problems based on our rules and standards, but I don’t do any sculpting myself. I test out some techniques or fixes when I have time, but largely I leave it to the suppliers. I really want to learn sculpting and actually work in it, which is part of why I’m job searching. (There are no opportunities for me to move into a sculpting role here since they outsourced all those roles to suppliers years ago.)

So my resume says I’ve got two years as a teapot sculptor, but in reality I’ve probably got 1-2 months of real experience. I put the tasks from that 1-2 months at the top of my resume without stating how infrequent it is, since I figured it would give me the best chance of getting a response, but I did not realize that a ton of people are trying to hire in this field right now and I’m getting swamped. I’m getting a ton of messages from recruiters who think I’m a knowledgeable sculptor, one of which got me all the way through the phone interview with the hiring manager without me being completely honest about what my experience is. He wants to have an in-person technical interview soon and I’m terrified and ashamed.

How should I be clear in my resume and messages to recruiters that I don’t actually have much experience without completely turning off anyone from hiring me? It seems disingenuous to change my job title. Should I state in a bullet below it what describes me better, like “Reviewer with 1-2 months sculpting experience”?

And what should I do about the one hiring manager who wants to do a technical interview? Say I got another opportunity and cancel? Call to confess my real experience and ask if they still want me? Go to the interview knowing I’m likely going to bomb the questions and explain there? I know I screwed up by not being honest when the recruiter contacted me. I wanted to hide it because I’m ashamed that I’ve worked here for two years but have almost no sculpting skills to show for it, especially while I’m reviewing the work of actual sculptors.

I absolutely realize I was wrong to not be honest about my real experience from the start and I don’t want to make this mistake again.

Yes — make it clearer on your resume what you’re actually doing, and that you’re overseeing your suppliers’ sculptors, not doing sculpting work yourself. People doing a quick skim of your resume might still assume that you wouldn’t be reviewing that work if you didn’t have sculpting experience, so you should also clarify it to recruiters when they first reach out to you by saying something like, “I want to make sure you realize, although I oversee our suppliers’ sculptors work and identify problems, I don’t have significant sculpting experience myself. I’m looking for a role where I can learn it, which is why I applied.”

With the upcoming interview, can you contact the recruiter who got you that interview, explain the situation using language like the above, and ask if it still makes sense to move forward?

5. Recruiter wants me to send LinkedIn requests to everyone I’m interviewing with

I’m at the very beginning of a job search and just started working with a recruiter whose company reached out to me. She sent my resume to a few companies and I have an “introductory interview” with one this Friday. I’m excited about this firm and want to make a good impression. The recruiter sent me an email with a list of things to prepare for the interview. One of them was to send LinkedIn requests to each of the people that I’ll be interviewing with and, if they accept my request, to send a short message saying that I look forward to meeting with them.

Is this a normal thing to do? I would never think to do that on my own as these are the partners of the (small) firm and I’m sure they have better things to do than respond to every LinkedIn request. Will it make me look bad or out of touch? Or desperate in some way? I don’t want to screw this up and am leaning towards not doing this. What do you think?

It’s a pretty normal thing to do. It’s not a necessary thing to do, but it’s not a weird or desperate-seeming thing to do; loads of candidates do it.

The partners may or may not respond to the LinkedIn request, and that’s fine.

The post I physically can’t submit hundreds of applications a week, my new job duped me, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.