The experience of looking for work today is so soul-crushing that even the experts feel for job seekers.
“Applying online, if I’m being really honest, has to be one of the most degrading and depressing things people do,” recruiting expert J.T. O’Donnell tells CNBC Make It. She says she’s “never seen it this bad” in her 30 years in the hiring space.
Not only have employers pulled back on hiring and muddied the landscape with ghost jobs, but the positions they do advertise receive hundreds of applicants within hours thanks to AI-generated submissions and auto-apply options.
Given all that, O’Donnell says the old ways of looking for jobs on the internet aren’t going to cut it. “If I was looking for a job in 2026 I would honestly stop applying online,” she says.
Instead, she says the best way to get a job in 2026 will be to get recruited into one. That means thoughtfully boosting your online presence and making strategic connections to get on recruiters’ radars.
How to get recruited to your dream company
O’Donnell says her job-application strategy would go something like this: First, create a list and follow the 20 or 40 companies you want to work for on social channels like Glassdoor and LinkedIn, she says.
Pay attention to what they’re posting about, and begin commenting on those topics thoughtfully. As O’Donnell sees it, “all of these recruiters that are on those platforms, the way you’re going to show up in the recruiting results is by engaging with their company’s content.”
New research backs O’Donnell’s thinking: The share of people being recruited into roles is climbing, with the proportion of recruiter-sourced candidates increasing 72% since 2023 to nearly 15% last year, per Glassdoor data.
How to land job leads through ‘the documentation streak’
Another way to get on recruiters’ radars is to create your own posts on platforms like LinkedIn and connect with people at your dream companies and engage thoughtfully with their posts.
“What’s working right now on social is having dialogs about your work, the industry, the skill sets,” O’Donnell says, “and that’s building a connection that then can lead to you messaging them and saying, ‘I’ve really liked what you’re saying on social. We seem to have similar views. Can we connect?'”
He did this every day. On the 17th day, a recruiter from one of the companies on his bucket list called him with a job that was not publicly posted.
“This is the new networking,” she says.
O’Donnell says she’s seen this work firsthand.
She says she worked with one client, a project manager, to create a bucket list of companies he wanted to work for and began what they called “the documentation streak.”
Every day, he’d check LinkedIn to see if any of the companies had a new post where he could add his perspective based on his experience, skillsets and industry knowledge. Then, he’d write a post on his LinkedIn profile, tag the company where appropriate and reach out to other company employees to connect where it made sense.
“He did this every day,” O’Donnell says. “On the 17th day, a recruiter from one of the companies on his bucket list called him with a job that was not publicly posted.”
O’Donnell says she’s found that five types of content formats do well on LinkedIn in particular:
- Industry observations: What’s going on in the news of your field?
- Hot takes: Do you have a contrarian view of what’s happening in your industry?
- Then vs. now: How has your work changed over time, say, in the last five years?
- Listicles: Can you break down your thoughts, your process or your learnings on a subject in few key takeaways?
- Storytelling: Talk a bit about yourself as an employee. For example, can you answer a behavioral question often asked in job interviews, like how you problem-solved a difficult situation at work?
“You are literally creating a space where recruiters can find you and contact you, and that’s how you start getting interviews in this market,” O’Donnell says. “This will be the new way you get jobs.”
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