With the proliferation of ChatGPT, every smart job seeker is now using it to rewrite their resume and cover letter for each role they apply to, optimizing for keywords and mirroring company language.

Combine this with services that auto-apply candidates to hundreds of jobs for a few hundred dollars, and you get a denial-of-service attack on applicant tracking systems.

A remote tech job that used to get 50 applications now gets 1200+ in 48 hours. LinkedIn is processing 11,000 applications per minute, up 45% in just the past year. Talent teams and hiring managers can’t keep up.

So what are companies doing when they have thousands of applicants that look the same? They’re turning to AI tools to screen resumes (AI screening AI-written applications 🫠), or falling back on the only signals they have left: job titles, school names, company brands.

Nobody wins. Applicants have to use these tools to have any chance at all. Employers make decisions with less signal than ever—and revert to the exact proxies that the market was working to move past. The system is breaking in real time.