If youâre a builder too, youâll know that taking something apart, something youâve spent real time and energy building, isnât a decision anyone makes lightly. Weâve spent many meetings, many hours of research and sleepless nights deciding whether or not job applications deserved a spot in our marketplace. So I wanted to explain how we got here. And why we decided to retire job applications.
When we released job applications on OfferZen back in 2023, we were super excited about it. It was one of the most requested features. Candidates wanted more control of their job search and a way to signal interest in roles. Hiring managers didnât have time to do outreach so applications seemed like a way to serve candidates to them directly. All the signs were pointing to âBuild it!â. More ways for companies to say yes. More ways to get matched.
We built. We shipped.
Then⊠the market turned. Teams resized. More candidates entered the job market than there were jobs for them. Competition for roles increased. Recruitment teams shrunk in size.
Almost overnight, hiring teams were flooded by applications. Not just on OfferZen. Everywhere. Weâd just built a feature that magnified what was already happening in the market on our platform.
Candidates and companies were feeling the pain. Candidates applied to jobs and never heard back. Hiring managers couldnât get through the volume. One of our customers even told us: âYou broke OfferZenâ.
And the market hasnât improved. Itâs getting weirder. AI-written applications going to AI reviewers, both sides sifting through volume neither wants to deal with. Everyone's optimising for "efficiency". Hiring processes are becoming increasingly automated, transactional and de-humanised.
Thatâs not the part we want to play.
We didnât build OfferZen to turn hiring into a numbers game. We believe hiring is one of the most important decisions a team makes. Itâs high stakes. Itâs hard. It's human. And important decisions canât be rushed. They need confidence and clarity. Not 100 applications to sift through. Not waiting for a response that never comes.
So weâre levelling up what made OfferZen great to begin with: companies come to candidates because theyâre genuinely a great fit.
Whether you're job-seeking or hiring, our goal is to give you something better than a noisy job board. That's the same thinking behind recent work on candidate profiles, like AI fluency and showcasing your projects. We're giving candidates more room to show how they actually work, not just list what they know so that we can better match them to the right opportunities.
If youâre a candidate and you were using job applications to get in front of companies during a quiet patch, we don't have a direct replacement solution for that yet but weâre working on it. In the meantime, you can check out our company directory and tell your Talent Advisor if there's a dream company you'd like to work for on there. They'll flag it with that company's Account Manager if the company is currently hiring for a role you're a fit for.
If you're hiring and relying on applications, don't worry, you won't be left in the lurch. Your Account Manager will be helping you find great candidates and even reach out on your behalf if you're needing some extra hands.
None of this means job applications had no value. A candidate telling us they want a specific role, at a specific company, not just the company in general, is one of the strongest signals in the whole matching process. We understand that need doesn't go away just because job applications do. We're currently working out how to capture it without recreating the mechanism that broke everything else. There will likely be a redemption arc some time in the future.
Key takeaways:
For job-seekers:
You can stop worrying about why you're not hearing back from your applications. It's not you :) It's just where hiring is right now. Let your Talent Advisor know what you want, let them help you get there.
For employers:
You can stop worrying about monitoring incoming job applications. If you're short on time to find and reach out to candidates, let your Account Manager handle the workload for you.