... btw. are you sure that only 7 people applied for that job? Because there are a lot of job announcements on LinkedIn which just won't show the number of applicants correctly in case there's an application link outside of LinkedIn for applying, meaning the application doesn't take place within LinkedIn. In that case, you'll get the question by LinkedIn if you have applied for the job, which most people just won't click. I'm seeing this all the time.

But still good point that there might be promoted jobs and non-promoted ones, maybe it's worth creating an own job scraper.