What happened
Job seekers are using AI tools (costing around $20) to auto-apply to thousands of roles on Greenhouse's platform, overwhelming recruiters. Greenhouse hosts 175,000 live jobs and receives an average of 254 applications per job posting, pushing applications per recruiter up by 412%. CEO Daniel Chait says both job seekers and employers are now miserable: candidates get no response despite thousands of applications, while recruiters drown in AI-generated résumés that all look identical.
Why it matters
The flood of AI-spam applications makes it nearly impossible for either side to function. More than 1.2 million applications were submitted in the U.K. alone last year for fewer than 17,000 graduate roles; one candidate with a master's degree applied to thousands of positions over six months without a single callback. For employers like Glean's founder Arvind Jain, spotting strong candidates feels impossible—the best people get hired before he can even review a fifth of incoming applications. The system is broken for everyone.
What to watch
Greenhouse has launched two fixes. "My Dream Job" lets applicants flag one priority role per month across the platform; those candidates have been hired at roughly five times the rate of everyone else, with nearly half a million dream-job applications submitted since launch. The company also acquired Ezra AI Labs, an AI voice-interviewing platform that gives every applicant an interview (not just a shortlist), aiming to eliminate the spam incentive. Separately, experts say networking in person 2 to 3 times a week and building insider relationships—since some jobs are never published—remains the most reliable path.
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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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