Chris Aleman // Live data

A job search, instrumented like a production system

Most application trackers record what happened. They do not record what didn't — and in a job search, what doesn't happen is most of it. This one writes silence down as an outcome. Numbers below are live and aggregate. No company names, no roles, no compensation. Back to chrisaleman.com

The search so far

Response rate by channel

The question worth asking: does applying directly on a company's own system beat applying through a platform? Same resume, same weeks, same kinds of roles.

Response rate by seniority band

Applications at the target level compared with those deliberately made below it. Overqualified applications tend to fail quietly rather than get rejected, which is exactly the kind of thing that is invisible unless you tag it before you find out.

Method

Every status change is an append-only event with a timestamp. Nothing is edited in place, so a company that goes quiet and later comes back keeps both facts.

Silence is recorded, not dropped. An application with no reply past its stage threshold is written as ghosted, backdated to the day it actually went quiet rather than the day the job noticed, and flagged as an inference rather than an observation. Inferred outcomes never count as a company having responded.

Thresholds depend on where the silence happens, because the signal is not the same everywhere. Thirty days on a fresh application is generous; ten days after a final round is not.

StageDays before treated as a no
Applied30
Application viewed21
Recruiter screen / interview14
Final round10