Greenhouse CEO: job seekers paying $20 to spam thousands of applications, creating 'AI doom loop'

Job seekers face a grinding paradox: sending applications feels pointless because silence and rejection are the norm, yet not applying feels worse. To break the cycle, many have turned to AI-powered application tools that cost around $20 and automate the entire process—searching for open roles and submitting applications en masse. Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait confirmed the practice exists and explained how it works: someone purchases one of these tools, searches Google for AI application services, buys access, and then can "shoot out job applications willy-nilly to as many jobs as they want." The result is overwhelming. Greenhouse's platform hosts 175,000 live jobs and sees an average of 254 applications per job posting, pushing applications per recruiter up by 412%. Recruiters report receiving hundreds or thousands of applications within a day or two. The problem is compounded by the uniformity of AI-generated submissions: because so many are automated, they "all start to look the same," making it impossible for recruiters to signal who is genuinely interested versus someone who auto-applied to a thousand jobs overnight. Chait calls this cycle the "AI doom loop"—everyone uses their own AI to solve their own problem, but it makes the whole system worse. The scale of the crisis extends beyond Greenhouse's platform. In the U.K. alone, more than 1.2 million applications were submitted last year for fewer than 17,000 graduate roles. One young person with a master's degree applied to thousands of positions over six months without receiving a single callback. Arvind Jain, ex-Google engineer and CEO of the $7.2 billion（約1.2兆円） AI startup Glean, told Fortune that his company receives thousands of job applications every single day, yet he still cannot find the people he needs—the best candidates are hired so quickly that he cannot sift through even a fifth of incoming applications in time. Even public figures have encountered the problem: actress Anne Hathaway revealed she received spam ChatGPT-written thank you notes after a recent hire and warned that automated deception can expose itself. Greenhouse has introduced two solutions. First, the company launched "My Dream Job," a feature that lets a job seeker flag just one role per month across every company on Greenhouse's platform as their top priority. Chait argues that scarcity forces real intent, and that intent becomes a signal employers can trust. The feature has been powerful: nearly half a million dream-job applications have been submitted since launch, and candidates using it get hired at roughly five times the rate of everyone else. Second, Greenhouse acquired Ezra AI Labs, an AI voice-interviewing company, to eliminate the spam incentive entirely. Instead of reviewing résumés, every applicant—not just shortlisted candidates—gets an automated interview. As Chait reasoned: "Why would I send out automatic thousands of job applications if every single one of them I have to take an interview for?" The move also removes the résumé-screening stage, which Chait says is riddled with bias and adds roughly six days to the hiring process for little real benefit. For job seekers willing to take action themselves, some old-fashioned tactics still work. A Gen Z hiring manager noted that handwritten thank-you notes are rare and can stand out. More broadly, Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri told Fortune that the most reliable way to land a job is to skip applications entirely and build relationships with people already inside the company—because many of the best jobs are "never published" at all. His advice: young, hungry, and child-free job seekers should network in person at least 2 to 3 times a week. "Who you know, how you get to know them, and building your network will pay off over time," he said.

The hiring market has fractured into a self-reinforcing doom loop driven by AI tools. On one side, job seekers exhausted by silence and rejection have embraced low-cost AI applications ($20 tools) that blast their résumé to hundreds of roles in minutes. On the other, recruiters at companies like Greenhouse are buried under an avalanche of applications—175,000 live jobs receiving an average of 254 applications each—making it mathematically impossible to give serious candidates real attention. The volume is so extreme that applications per recruiter have surged 412%, and because AI-generated submissions tend to look identical, recruiters cannot distinguish genuine interest from spam. This forces employers to turn to their own AI just to survive the flood, which in turn validates the job seeker's rationale to apply even more widely. The data underscores the desperation: more than 1.2 million applications were submitted in the U.K. alone last year for fewer than 17,000 graduate roles. Even well-resourced startups like Glean (valued at $7.2 billion（約1.2兆円）) struggle to hire because top candidates are hired so quickly that hiring managers cannot review enough of the incoming applications to find them. The system no longer works for either party.

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