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You applied to 200 jobs and heard nothing
Almost always one of five things, and they are not equally likely. Work down this list in order rather than sending another hundred.
Two hundred applications and silence feels like a verdict on you. It is usually a verdict on the applications. Here are the five causes in the order we see them, with the check for each.
1. A large share of them were already closed
This is the most common and the least suspected. Job postings stay visible long after hiring stops. Only 5.7% of Indian postings carry a closing date at all — a job is open until it silently disappears, and aggregator sites keep showing it for weeks afterwards.
Applying into a closed posting produces exactly the silence you are seeing, and no feedback that anything was wrong.
The check: take ten applications you sent more than a fortnight ago and look for the posting on the employer’s own careers page, not the aggregator. If several are gone, freshness is your problem, not your CV. The fix: filter hard on posting date. It is present on 99.5% of postings, which makes it the one filter that can be trusted. 26,700 of the 60,975 jobs currently open were posted within seven days — there is no shortage of fresh ones.
2. The same CV went to all two hundred
A single CV is written for the average of every job you want, which means it is aimed at none of them. The first pass on an application — whether a parser or a person — is looking for the words in the posting. A CV that uses your words rather than theirs reads as a near miss.
This does not mean lying, and it does not mean a fresh CV from scratch each time. It means the same experience described in the vocabulary of the role in front of you.
The check: put your CV and one posting you were rejected for side by side. Underline every skill and responsibility in the posting, then find each one in your CV. If you are hunting, so was the recruiter, and they stopped sooner.
3. The roles did not actually fit
Applying to everything with a familiar job title produces a pile of applications for roles wanting five years when you have one, or a specialisation you do not have. Volume tools make this worse, because their matching is usually title-and-keyword based.
The hard part is that 19.3% of postings state years of experience and 18.3% list skills in any structured way, so you often cannot filter for fit — you have to read the description, which is present on 96.7% of postings and is where the real requirements live.
4. The file could not be read
Less common than the internet suggests, but real. A CV laid out in columns, or with the contact details in a header, or exported as an image, can arrive at the other end scrambled or half-empty. You will never be told.
The ATS formatting guide covers what actually breaks. The short version: single column, real text, ordinary section headings, PDF exported from a text document.
5. Everything went to the three most crowded places
Most people apply where applying is easiest, which is where every other applicant already is. Of the 60,975 jobs ApplySarthi currently tracks, company career boards hold the largest share — Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday and the large in-house boards together outweigh any single job board. Those applications go directly into the employer’s own system, usually with far fewer applicants per posting.
| Source | Open jobs |
|---|---|
| Indeed | 12,708 |
| Greenhouse | 9,796 |
| 8,110 | |
| Naukri | 6,293 |
| Lever | 4,837 |
| Shine | 3,452 |
| Ashby | 3,053 |
| Workday | 2,871 |
Snapshot 18 September 2026. Full breakdown on the open-jobs dataset page.
What to do this week
- Stop sending. Nothing improves while the current approach continues.
- Filter to postings from the last seven days only.
- Pick twenty that genuinely fit, judged from the description rather than the title.
- Rewrite your CV for each one — same facts, their vocabulary.
- Send those twenty. Compare the reply rate against your last two hundred.
Twenty aimed applications beating two hundred generic ones is the ordinary result, not the optimistic one.
When the calls start. Use the job description and your CV for an AI mock interview with Prep Sarthi. Practise weak answers before the real round. For assistance during a call where it is permitted, Live Sarthi shows CV-based answer suggestions. The apps use your Gemini key; Google’s usage limits apply.
Questions people ask
Why am I not getting interview calls after applying to many jobs?
The most common cause is applying into postings that had already closed — only 5.7% of Indian job postings carry a closing date, so listings stay visible long after hiring stops. After that, in order: one generic CV sent everywhere, roles that did not genuinely fit, a CV file the employer’s system could not parse, and applying only through the most crowded channels.
How many job applications is normal before getting an interview?
There is no dependable published figure, and any specific ratio you see quoted is usually someone’s sample presented as a law. What is measurable is the direction: applications aimed at roles that fit, with a CV using the posting’s own vocabulary, are answered at a far higher rate than generic ones. Twenty aimed applications commonly outperform two hundred identical ones.
Should I apply on the job board or the company website?
The company’s own careers page, where you have the choice. It goes straight into the employer’s applicant tracking system, and those postings typically attract fewer applicants than the same role on a large aggregator. In the current ApplySarthi snapshot, company career boards collectively hold more open roles than any single job board.
Does rewriting my CV for each job really matter?
Yes, and it is the highest-value change after filtering for freshness. The first pass on an application looks for the language of the posting. Describing the same real experience in the role’s own vocabulary is the difference between a near miss and a match — which is rewording, not inventing, and the distinction matters at interview.
Aim the next twenty instead of sending another two hundred
ApplySarthi ranks 60,975 open jobs against your actual CV and rewrites it for the ones that fit. 26,700 of them were posted this week.
An interview call coming? Practise it first with a mock interview from your own CV, free to try, then keep Live Sarthi open on the real call.