Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to auto-apply to jobs | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to auto-apply to jobs

instaapply.co

12 pointsmoniet3 comments

I was laid of from a YC company last November and during my job search I got this idea to build an extension that would help me apply to jobs a lot faster. 2 months later, InstaApply was born.

The extension really makes applying to jobs super easy. Usually, it takes applying to dozens of jobs to land something and requires filling out the same data over and over again. Which is pretty annoying.

This is where InstaApply comes in, it automates all the boring parts of applying to jobs with Ai, condensing the process to just seconds.

InstaApply will fill out all the form fields, tailor your cover letter and your resume, all in a flash.

How it works: We ask some information from users, analyze their resumes and feed this data to our Ai (along with job description) which intelligently fills out answers with accuracy. Even things like "why work for our company", "what project are you most proud of", location preferences etc.

My aim is to help job seekers focus on their skills and interviewing while we take care of the monotonous tasks.

Open articleView on HN

My advice to anyone job searching is that if you are above 3 - 5 years of experience, you shouldn't be shotgunning resumes.

The first few years is going to be shotgunning, especially your first job. Beyond that, your application count should be in the teens rather than the hundreds with the same number of responses (In your first year, it takes 200 applications to get 3 - 5 interviews. In your ~fifth year, it should only take 20 - 30).

The reason for this is that you are in higher demand and you have something to contribute to the company so you should be shopping for companies you can provide value for. If you primarily have worked in the backend on nodejs, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage by applying to frontend Ruby roles. If that's your goal, then yeah, you'll probably have to shotgun.

Reviewing resumes, it absolutely raises an eyebrow if someone has a number of years of experience but none in the stack or role they applied for (exception being someone narrowing down. For instance, a full-stack applying for a backend or frontend role). It raises more questions so your application is treated with caution, at least to me at small places.

hi there

i would partially agree with this because I feel there's a lot of nuance to job hunting.

on one side i was able to move from india-germany with only 2 years of experience as a developer and ~30 job applications. But, that's because Germany has/had a massive demand and the competition for international talent compared to a place Silicon Valley for example is a lot less competitive (at that point anyways).

once i got laid of in germany, i had sent 100s of applications but due to the market and inflation, my interview rate for every 100 applications was only 5-10% in germany vs. 50% for my previous applications.

so, i think there's a nuance to what the 'hear-back' rate from companies would be like based on what the market is like, the country, one's own skills, resume, etc.

would ofc agree moving across widely different tech-stacks would lower the chances of getting a reply.

That looks pretty cool. But as far as I know, the biggest challenge is getting through the ATS systems on the company's side. Even in the old days, every job posting used to get ridiculous hundreds and thousands of applications, most of them garbage. With modern AI tools, it will probably get even worse.

So we're getting into this weird reality where bots are applying and bots are reading. And maybe some lucky 1-5% of all applications will get a human to look at them.

Have you tested your solutions with some of the big ATS systems? I wonder how well it would do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com