My vision of a dream job has evolved a lot over the last 20 years I’ve worked in corporate America. When I was looking for my first job, I had dreams of working at a big brand name. Some company on the most admired list. I wanted to work on the future of technology and become a 20-something VP. I wanted rapid career development and pay increases every year. I know you’re laughing. A kid can dream, ok?
When I was laid off, any job was a dream job. Got a paycheck for me? Benefits? Count me in. Paying my bills without worrying sounded pretty dreamy to me. I really did apply for just about anything that was adjacent to my skills. I write. You want me to write? Great.
As I got older and supposedly wiser, my version of a dream job evolved a lot and became a lot more specific. I wanted flexibility for creativity. Impact. Pay equivalent with my experience. I didn’t care about the title as long as I was being paid.
Job Search Burnout Is Real: Let’s Do The Math
Know what hasn’t evolved much at all? How you get a job, let alone a dream job. I say this as someone who worked at Monster.com in the Super Bowl days. I’ve been in this business a long time. The way we post and apply for jobs hasn’t really changed at all since the 90s. That? Well, that’s a formula for burnout.
The statistics are scary when you consider the math of just how much effort someone has to put in before they get a job. Only about 8% of applications get an interview. The stats suggest after 20 applications you should get 1 interview, but that’s not what I’m hearing – especially from folks at the manager level and above. Instead, they are applying to at least 50 jobs before they ever get an interview.
The sheer volume of applications they tailor and submit is enough to leave anyone feeling burned out long before the search is over. Application volume is overwhelming these reduced recruiting teams. Recruiters now manage about 1/3 as many roles as in 2021 (down from 16 to 10 per recruiter), but each role attracts far more candidates – rising from an average of 28 applications per job in 2021 to 95 per job in 2025 (a 239% increase). The result? The average recruiter is handling 3x the number of applications. How are we supposed to expect any human to be great at work when they’ve had to run a marathon just to get here? It’s depressing as hell to think after 10+ years in your career the only option you have is to open another job posting on Indeed and hit apply, especially while you’re reading about scams and AI.
A Fix For The Endless Applications? Dream Jobs At Greenhouse
I’m not the only person thinking about this problem. A few months ago when I started planning this content series with Greenhouse, my friend Jon Stross did what he always does. He said something that made my brain think really hard for a long time. The thing he said was, “don’t you think it’s crazy that the only signal you can send to say ‘I want a job’ is to add to a pile? Shouldn’t there be a better way?”
If anyone else said something like this to me, I’d laugh and not in a nice way. I tried killing the resume in 2008 and that thing isn’t going anywhere. But Jon builds technology to fix problems that bug him. That’s how the new candidate portal called MyGreenhouse came to be. And this fix? It’s actually helping people get their dream jobs. No shit. I talked to a candidate that got their dream job.
Here’s how it works. Beyond the application in MyGreenhouse, you can pick one job as your dream job per month. For the candidate I spoke with, it was the perfect job. Fit like a glove. The dream job feature allowed him to highlight that he really believed the position fit him and his experience – letting him stand out as invested in the role from the get go.
By allowing him to self-select the role as his dream job, it helped him stand out as a candidate for the recruiter, as well. This way, recruiters get people who aren’t just good at the job but want to do it specifically at their company, too.
After two decades of watching the job market churn, I know a “dream job” isn’t just about where you work. It’s surviving the process to get there. In a world where burnout is the norm and applying feels like a second job, that’s not just innovation – it’s hope. And honestly? After all these years, hope might be the best signal this really is a dream job.
Meet My Series Sponsor
Greenhouse is the only hiring platform you’ll ever need. From sourcing to interviewing to onboarding, Greenhouse saves you money by helping you make the best hires, faster, every time. Greenhouse innovations – from AI enhanced workflows to candidate-friendly sourcing and applicant prioritization tools – save recruiters from gambling their time and money on new solutions as technology evolves. Great companies hire the best with Greenhouse, today and in the future.
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