TheCareerGrid

SEEK is not a think tank. It is the platform that measures EVERY application submitted in Australia.

Their March 2026 data showed that applications per job ad rose 72.6% year-on-year. For Tech roles, up 11% in a single month!

The queue is getting longer. A LOT longer.

Why this is happening?

Part of it is panic. When you lose your job and you need income, you do the thing that you’ve been taught and lets be real, the thing that feels like action.

You stay up late on SEEK or other platforms, you submit twenty applications, then apply for more, and more, and then, well, you wait.

When you have bills to pay and no redundancy coming, strategy really does feel like a luxury. I get it, that is totally understandable.

On top of it, AI is making it worse. It has dropped the barrier to applying to almost nothing. Applications go out, faster, from more people who have spent less time on each one. The market is totally LOCO!

AND (as if we needed more), hiring managers are also drowning. Which means even though you’re applying more, so is everybody else, and hiring managers, recruiters, are just not equipped to filter through that many applications in any meaningful way. So even if you have a really strong application, it’s likely to be missed because there’s too much going on for the whole ecosystem.

Candidates talk about application fatigue but there’s also recruiter and manager fatigue. It works the same way, guys.

What most job seekers are doing wrong

Most of the applications in that 72.6% surge are not strong, they are FAST. They are not tailored, and mostly just generic, written to tick boxes, not to tell a story. Taking up even more space and time for everybody.

The candidates sending them are getting nothing back and wondering what they are doing wrong.

What they are doing wrong is using the job board as their primary channel. In a market where that channel is getting more crowded every single week, this is not a strong move.

What happens next

Here is my prediction. If application volumes keep rising, employers are going to stop advertising roles on traditional job boards. Some are already moving that way and others will find their way there.

And when it does, the candidates whose entire search strategy is “apply on SEEK and wait” are going to say there are no jobs.

But, there will be jobs. They just will not be where those candidates are looking.

What the strategy actually looks like

The professionals who will land well and relatively quickly will not be the ones applying for the most roles. They are the ones who are:

• Building their network BEFORE they need it
• Making themselves VISIBLE to the right people before a role is posted
• POSITIONING themselves so that when a hiring manager thinks “I need someone who does X,” a name comes to mind
• Talking to people, not just submitting forms

Yes, you can of course still find jobs on a job board. But we are talking about how hard that is becoming and why. Expand your horizons! Make it easier on yourself.

A job search strategy is not optional. It is the difference between being in the 72% surge and being in the referral channel that produces most hires.

The queue is way longer. The answer is not to get in it faster.

Have a workplace or talent related question for the team at TheCareerGrid? We would LOVE to hear from you! Contact us at info@thecareergrid.com

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