There's a counterintuitive truth about job searching: the best way to get hired isn't being the most qualified candidate. It's being one of the only candidates. When a role has 500 applicants, even a perfect resume has terrible odds. When it has 20, you're already in the conversation.
So the real question isn't "how do I make my resume better?" It's "how do I find jobs where I'm not competing with hundreds of people?"
Why Applicant Count Is the Most Important Metric
Think about it from the recruiter's side. They have a role to fill. They get 300 applications. They can realistically review maybe 30-50 resumes in detail. That means 80-90% of applicants are eliminated before anyone reads past the first line.
Now imagine the same role, but it only has 15 applicants. The recruiter reads every single one. Your resume gets real attention. Your experience gets evaluated on its merits, not on whether you happened to use the exact keyword the ATS was scanning for.
This is why applicant count matters more than almost anything else in your job search. A mediocre match at a low-competition role beats a perfect match at a high-competition one.
LinkedIn's "Under 10 Applicants" Filter (And Its Limitations)
LinkedIn does have an applicant count filter. You can filter for jobs with "under 10 applicants." It's useful, but it has problems:
- The count updates slowly and isn't always accurate
- By the time you see "under 10," it might already be at 50
- It only shows jobs posted on LinkedIn — which is a fraction of what's out there
- Everyone else using this filter is also applying to those same jobs, defeating the purpose
It's a starting point, but it's not the real goldmine.
The Real Goldmine: Direct Career Page Postings
The jobs with the lowest applicant counts are the ones that never make it to LinkedIn at all. They live on company career pages, powered by ATS platforms like Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, and Workday.
Why do these have fewer applicants? Simple: most job seekers never leave LinkedIn or Indeed. They search, filter, apply, repeat — all within the same ecosystem. The idea of going to individual company websites feels tedious and old-school. But that's exactly why it works.
Company ATS Platforms Explained
Every company that hires at scale uses an ATS. Here are the major ones and how to access their public job boards:
boards.greenhouse.io/companyname— Greenhouse. Used by thousands of tech companies from startups to public companies.jobs.lever.co/companyname— Lever. Popular with mid-stage startups and growth companies.jobs.ashbyhq.com/companyname— Ashby. Newer platform, mostly early-stage startups. Very low competition.companyname.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com— Workday. Used by enterprise companies. Huge volume of roles.
The Google Dorking Technique
You don't need to visit each company's career page individually. Google indexes all of them. Use site-specific searches to find jobs across entire ATS platforms at once:
site:boards.greenhouse.io "software engineer" "remote"site:jobs.lever.co "data scientist" "san francisco"site:jobs.ashbyhq.com "product designer"
You can get more specific by adding salary keywords, experience levels, or tech stack terms. The results are real, active job postings that most people on LinkedIn will never see.
BackdoorJobs automates this entire process — scanning 5,700+ company career pages and matching jobs to your resume. Try free →
The Timing Strategy
Even with low-competition jobs, timing matters. Here's the playbook:
- Check career pages early in the week. Most jobs are posted Monday through Wednesday.
- Apply within 48 hours of posting. Recruiters often start reviewing after the first few days.
- Set up Google Alerts for your target searches so you get notified when new roles appear.
- Don't batch your applications for the weekend. By then, the early applicants have already been contacted.
The job search game is rigged in favor of people who know where to look and move fast. You don't need a better resume. You need a better strategy. Find the roles with 20 applicants instead of 500, and your callback rate will change overnight.