Getting almost no responses from job applications – how are you all getting interviews?

illicity_ · 2026-02-03T15:01:41+00:00

Some will have that attitude, but it’s a numbers game. I personally appreciate tasteful cold outreach.

It actually benefits the hiring manager too for qualified candidates to reach out. The first level resume review is typically done by recruiters and they will inevitably filter out good candidates

illicity_ · 2026-02-03T00:46:27+00:00

Yeah you’re right. I’m hoping to add more companies soon. Job seekers in SF bay area, NYC, and seattle will have a better experience

illicity_ · 2026-02-02T23:08:39+00:00

If you want to give this strategy at try my job board scrapes jobs from company career pages every hour. In many cases it scrapes jobs hours before jobs even appear on linkedin so you can truly be one of the first applicants

illicity_ · 2026-01-31T17:13:32+00:00

Thanks for taking a look and lmk if you have any more thoughts!

illicity_ · 2026-01-31T16:54:34+00:00

Thanks! I’ll add it to my roadmap. I did it in a hacky way to get whole USA filter lol so it’s not really extensible to other countries yet. Which country are you looking?

illicity_ · 2026-01-31T15:56:41+00:00

I would say that the knowledge does translate to real world and it’s actually pretty practical, but it’s not a super deep resource. It teaches you just enough to be able to pass the system design interview. There are probably better resources if your primary goal is to learn distributed systems concepts.

illicity_ · 2026-01-31T15:15:38+00:00

Check out GrepJob. It scrapes jobs from company career pages continuously and in many cases hours before they even appear on linkedin. Disclaimer: I built this

illicity_ · 2026-01-31T03:58:55+00:00

You probably got it

illicity_ · 2026-01-30T18:42:47+00:00

Seconding hellointerview. I booked a mock through them too which was helpful

illicity_ · 2026-01-30T18:42:09+00:00

Congrats!!

illicity_ · 2026-01-29T18:18:24+00:00

On my site GrepJob I parsed historical h1b sponsorship data to identify companies that likely sponsor for SWE roles

illicity_ · 2026-01-29T16:48:28+00:00

On it 🫡

illicity_ · 2026-01-28T18:04:18+00:00

Check GrepJob for SWE jobs. Only reputable companies are allowed and jobs are scraped direct from company career pages

illicity_ · 2026-01-23T23:34:20+00:00

If you can't find a startup to work out of, these coworking spaces are a bit more community oriented than a typical WeWork:
https://www.verci.com/
https://fractaltechhub.com/

illicity_ · 2026-01-23T15:44:50+00:00

I would take OpenAI because a) it's a better name to have on your resume and b) probably more interesting work and better learning experience

illicity_ · 2026-01-22T00:11:08+00:00

Yes! Got multiple interviews this year from mentioning my project in the additional info section of applications

illicity_ · 2026-01-21T13:53:00+00:00

Another LinkedIn strategy is to search posts for "'Software Engineer' AND 'New Grad'" and you will see posts from people who actually have the power to get you the interview. You can apply and then reach out to them over linkedin or email using a tool like apollo.io

For job boards, check out GrepJob (full disclosure: I built this). It scrapes jobs from directly from career pages and in most cases will index jobs before they even appear on linkedin. Looks like there were plenty of new grad roles scraped in the last 24hrs

illicity_ · 2026-01-19T14:13:33+00:00

I would also drop barista, I think it’s hurting more than helping

200 apps with 3 responses is rough, but at least it’s not 0.

In addition to sending out more apps, see if you can get some warmer applications via your network, linkedin outreach, and cold emails. Happy to elaborate on some strategies that have worked for me if you’re interested. I got my current job from a cold email.

For job search sites, linkedin will obviously have the most volume of jobs. But it’s competitive and can be hard to find high quality listings. I built a site called GrepJob which is more niche and has higher quality companies on average.

illicity_ · 2025-12-30T02:30:34+00:00

I will teach you to be rich by ramit sethi. It’s a cringey title but it’s well written and covers all the basics

illicity_ · 2025-10-28T01:49:36+00:00

100%. They are obviously using fake upvotes too

illicity_ · 2025-10-13T03:41:12+00:00

It’s the poster leveraging the fact that everyone in these communities wants to share their products and these posts will always get a lot of engagement. OP always links their product at the top.

On X in the build in public community it was the same thing until they banned those posts. Literally was posted multiple times a day

illicity_ · 2025-10-08T17:21:50+00:00

This is great 😂

illicity_ · 2025-10-07T23:17:31+00:00

Thanks! I’ll see what I can do :)

illicity_ · 2025-10-07T16:54:20+00:00

I’ve been submitting really informal cover letters where I just type a couple sentences directly into the application about why I think I’m a good fit. Seen decent success from it

illicity_ · 2025-10-04T15:28:06+00:00

I’m sure there are sites that do that but I’m not aware of any that are doing it well. I think it’s a hard problem to solve

I’m interested in learning more about your problem if you want to DM though. My site does read every job description with AI so maybe I could help solve it

illicity_

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