I’ve explored more of Huntr‘s backend and added it to my huntr-cli! Now I can pull metrics and play with them, let Claude narrate and chart the fateful eviction. Some good quotes:

80 applications are sitting unanswered. They will almost certainly resolve into ghosts, not responses. 3 interviews came out of 107 tries.

The structural problem is the ratio. In December, you got 0 interviews from 13 applications. In January, 2 from 56. In February, 3.

Job Search Report

Matthew McKnight · Generated 2026-03-07

The State of Things

220 applications. 5 interviews currently in progress. 56 rejections (15 after interviewing). 137 still waiting.

The market isn’t slow — it’s silent. What used to be a 46% rejection rate in December
(meaning companies at least responded) has collapsed to single digits in March. They’re not rejecting you. They’re just not saying anything.

Outcomes by Month

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Dec 2025   13 |░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒|
  Jan 2026   56 |░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓██████████|
  Feb 2026  107 |░░░░░░░░░▓██████████████████████████████|
  Mar 2026*  44 |░░██████████████████████████████████████|
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ░ rejected   ▒ ghosted†   ▓ interview   █ waiting

* March is in progress
† Ghosted = manually declared after 30–60 days of silence, not a system flag

The Story

December was a small sample — 13 applications, fully resolved. Nearly half got a rejection(a courtesy that’s now rare), half were ghosted. No interviews broke through.

January was the first real surge: 56 applications, same rejection rate as December (43%), but ghosts dropped and 2 interviews emerged. The pipeline was working, just at low yield. 15 are still technically waiting, but at 60+ days old, they’re ghosts that haven’t been filed yet.

February is where the volume and the silence collided. 107 applications — nearly double January — but the rejection rate was halved to 22%. That’s not improvement. That’s companies stopping the courtesy of rejection emails as inbound volume overwhelms their process. 80 applications are sitting unanswered. They will almost certainly resolve into ghosts, not responses. 3 interviews came out of 107 tries.

March is too early to read, but the pattern is already there: 44 applications, 2 fast
rejections (automated screeners), 42 silence.

What the Numbers Say

The structural problem is the ratio. In December you got 0 interviews from 13 applications. In January, 2 from 56. In February, 3 from 107. The interview yield per application isn’t improving as volume increases — it’s flat at best, and the cost (time, energy, hope) per application is the same.

Of the 56 total rejections, 15 came after reaching the interview stage — meaning you got in the room, just didn’t get the offer. Several went multiple rounds deep: one went 4 rounds, two went 3 rounds. That’s not a resume problem or an interview problem. That’s a hiring market where companies are running extended processes and still not pulling the trigger.

You are not doing anything wrong. The ghost rate isn’t a signal about your applications. It’s a signal about the market. Companies have more applicants than they can process, ATS systems are pre-filtering aggressively, and the social contract of sending a rejection email has quietly dissolved.

5 open interview processes from 220 applications is a 2.3% conversion rate. In this economy, that’s not a failure. That’s what the funnel looks like right now.

Post Interview Rejections

These 14 roles made it to the interview stage and were subsequently rejected:

Stats Command

huntr jobs stats 68bf9e33f871e5004a5eb58e --format table --since 2025-12-01
┌─────────┬───────────┬─────────┬──────────┬─────────────┐
│ (index) │ Month     │ Applied │ Rejected │ No Response │
├─────────┼───────────┼─────────┼──────────┼─────────────┤
│ 0       │ '2025-12' │ 13      │ 6        │ 7           │
│ 1       │ '2026-01' │ 56      │ 24       │ 32          │
│ 2       │ '2026-02' │ 107     │ 24       │ 83          │
│ 3       │ '2026-03' │ 44      │ 2        │ 42          │
│ 4       │ 'TOTAL'   │ 220     │ 56       │ 164         │
└─────────┴───────────┴─────────┴──────────┴─────────────┘