LinkedIn Easy Apply was supposed to make job searching more efficient. One click, instant application, move on with your life. Simple.

What LinkedIn didn't anticipate was people building bots that would click "Easy Apply" thousands of times overnight while they sleep, applying to literally every job that vaguely matches their skills—including jobs at their current employer, jobs they're wildly overqualified for, and at least one "LinkedIn Influencer" position that may or may not be a pyramid scheme.

Meet David Park, a software engineer who decided to automate his job search and ended up applying to 2,000 jobs in 8 hours, including his own company's summer intern program.

The Bot That Wouldn't Stop

David Park is a senior software engineer at a fintech company in San Francisco. In late November 2025, he decided it was time to explore new opportunities. Like many tech workers in 2025, he wasn't urgently trying to leave—just casually open to better offers.

The problem: job searching is tedious. Filling out application forms, uploading resumes, writing cover letters, customizing each application—nobody has time for that.

David's solution: build a Python bot that automatically clicks "Easy Apply" on every LinkedIn job matching his search criteria. Set it to run overnight while he sleeps, wake up to a pipeline full of opportunities.

He configured the bot with parameters:

• Job titles: Software Engineer, Senior Engineer, Tech Lead, Engineering Manager
• Location: Remote or San Francisco Bay Area
• Experience level: Mid-level to Senior
• Posted within: Last 7 days

He set it to run at 11 PM on a Sunday night, figuring it would apply to maybe 50-100 jobs by morning.

David woke up Monday morning to 2,047 job applications submitted on his behalf.

The Chaos Unfolds

Monday, 7:30 AM. David checked his phone. His email inbox had 412 unread messages. His LinkedIn had 89 notifications. His Slack showed 6 DMs from coworkers.

The emails were a mix of:

• Auto-reply confirmations from companies ("Thank you for applying...")
• Interview scheduling requests ("We'd love to talk about the Junior Developer role...")
• Confused recruiters ("Your profile says 8 years experience but you applied for our entry-level position?")
• Rejection emails from companies with instant AI screening ("Unfortunately, you're not a fit for this VP Engineering role")

The LinkedIn notifications were recruiters messaging him about roles. The Slack DMs were from his coworkers and, unfortunately, his manager.

Manager: "Hey David, I see you applied for our summer intern position last night at 2 AM? Is there something we need to talk about?"

David checked his application history. His bot had indeed applied to his current company's internship program. It had also applied to:

• A Senior Director role at his company (3 levels above his current position)
• A Junior Engineer role at his company (2 levels below his current position)
• A "Freelance LinkedIn Content Creator" position (not remotely related to engineering)

His bot didn't discriminate. If it said "Remote" and mentioned "Engineer" anywhere in the description, the bot applied.

The Scope of the Disaster

According to David's Medium post about the experience (because of course he wrote about it), here's what his bot applied to:

2,047 total applications submitted

Breakdown:

• 842 Software Engineer roles (intended target)
• 318 Senior Engineer roles (intended target)
• 156 Engineering Manager roles (stretch roles, fine)
• 89 VP/Director of Engineering roles (wildly overqualified him, but okay)
• 127 Junior/Entry-level Engineer roles (underqualified)
• 94 Intern positions (way underqualified)
• 203 Non-engineering roles that mentioned "engineer" (Sales Engineer, Customer Success Engineer, Solutions Engineer)
• 78 Roles at his current company (awkward)
• 47 Roles at direct competitors (potentially violating his employment agreement)
• 31 Recruiting roles (the bot apparently applied to be a technical recruiter)
• 12 "LinkedIn Influencer" / "LinkedIn Growth Hacker" roles (definitely scams)
• 50 Completely unrelated roles the bot somehow matched (including a marine biologist position that mentioned "engineering solutions for ocean conservation")

The Consequences Start Rolling In

Within 24 hours:

47 recruiters reached out to schedule interviews. Most were for legitimate roles. Several were confused about why someone with 8 years of experience applied for internships.

His current company's HR department sent a meeting request. Subject line: "Application Activity Clarification." David had some explaining to do.

6 companies auto-rejected him for being overqualified. Their AI screening tools flagged his applications to junior roles as mistakes.

18 companies auto-rejected him for being underqualified. Turns out applying to VP roles when you're a senior IC doesn't work well.

His LinkedIn profile views spiked to 1,200+ in one day. Recruiters were clicking through to see who this person was who applied to everything.

3 recruiters recognized his name from previous conversations and messaged: "Didn't we talk last month? I thought you weren't looking? You applied to 4 of our open roles overnight."

One recruiter sent a meme with the caption: "When you're not desperate but your application volume says otherwise."

The Conversation With His Boss

According to David's Twitter thread about the incident, his conversation with his manager went like this:

Manager: "So... I saw you applied to three roles at our company last night. Including the intern program."

David: "I can explain."

Manager: "Please do."

David: "I built a bot to automate job applications and it got a little... enthusiastic."

Manager: "A bot. You built a bot. To apply for jobs. At 2 AM. Including jobs here."

David: "Yes."

Manager: "Are you trying to leave? Because if you are, we should talk about that. If you're trying to become an intern, we should also talk about that, but different conversation."

David: "I'm not trying to leave. I was just casually exploring. The bot was supposed to apply to 50-100 jobs. It applied to 2,000."

Manager: "David. You're a senior engineer. Why did you apply for an internship?"

David: "The bot doesn't understand organizational hierarchy. It just saw 'software engineering intern' and clicked apply."

Manager: "Okay. Let's make a deal. You shut down the bot, I'll pretend this didn't happen, and we'll never speak of the intern application again."

David: "Deal."

Manager: "Also, maybe we should talk about projects that challenge you more so you're not tempted to automate your way out of here."

Plot twist: David's manager is actually a good manager.

The Recruiter Perspective

Recruiters on LinkedIn had strong opinions about this:

@TalentAcquisition: "This is why we can't have nice things. Easy Apply was supposed to reduce friction for candidates. Now people are building bots to spam thousands of applications and recruiters spend 90% of their time filtering garbage."

@RecruiterLife: "If you're applying to 2,000 jobs, you're not actually interested in any of them. You're playing a numbers game and hoping something sticks. That's not job searching, that's spam."

@TechRecruiter: "Counterpoint: if companies are using AI to auto-reject candidates, why can't candidates use AI to auto-apply? Fair is fair."

@HRProfessional: "Because two wrongs don't make a right? We're creating a system where AI applies to jobs and AI rejects applications and humans are completely removed from the process. This is dystopian."

@RealisticRecruiter: "Honestly, I don't even blame candidates for doing this. We make them jump through 47 hoops to apply, then ghost them. If they want to automate applying to jobs they'll never hear back from, I get it."

The debate got heated.

The Unintended Positive Outcome

Here's the weird part: David actually got 3 excellent job offers from his bot-pocalypse.

Two of the roles were positions he never would have found manually—they were at smaller companies with limited LinkedIn visibility. The bot applied, recruiters reviewed his profile, realized he was actually qualified despite the spray-and-pray approach, and reached out.

The third offer came from a company that specifically liked that he built the bot. Their recruiter messaged: "Anyone who can automate LinkedIn Easy Apply is exactly the kind of engineer we want. Want to talk?"

David ended up taking that offer. They gave him a 30% raise and a role building automation tools. His job application bot became his portfolio piece.

Sometimes chaos works out.

What LinkedIn Did (Nothing)

LinkedIn's Terms of Service technically prohibit automated scraping and interaction, but they don't actively enforce it for Easy Apply bots. Thousands of people use similar automation tools, and LinkedIn mostly looks the other way.

Why? Because application volume drives engagement metrics. More applications = more active users = better data for LinkedIn. They're not incentivized to stop this.

Some recruiters have called for LinkedIn to add CAPTCHA or rate limiting to Easy Apply, but so far, nothing has changed.

The Lesson for Job Seekers

Using a bot to apply to 2,000 jobs is:

• Legal (probably)
• Effective at generating volume (yes)
• Likely to get you interviews (surprisingly, yes)
• A good use of your time (debatable)
• Respectful to recruiters (absolutely not)
• Going to result in relevant opportunities (mostly no)

The better approach: target 20-30 companies you actually want to work for, customize your applications, build relationships with recruiters, and apply strategically.

But if you're going to build a bot anyway, at least exclude your current employer from the search parameters. Applying to your own company's intern program at 2 AM is not a great look.

The Lesson for Recruiters

If candidates can spam applications this easily, your hiring process has a filtering problem.

Options:

1. Disable Easy Apply and require actual applications (kills candidate volume)
2. Use AI screening to filter bot-generated applications (arms race begins)
3. Accept that volume is part of the game now and build systems to handle it
4. Focus on outbound recruiting instead of inbound applications

There's no perfect answer, but pretending automation isn't happening won't make it go away.

The Aftermath

David shut down his bot, accepted his new job offer, and wrote a Medium post titled "How I Got a 30% Raise by Accidentally Applying to 2,000 Jobs." It went viral.

His former company's HR team implemented a new policy requiring manual review for internal applications after the "intern incident."

And somewhere out there, 2,000 recruiters have David Park's resume in their ATS, wondering if he's still looking.

He's not. The bot worked. Kind of.

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Disclaimer: Don't build job application bots. Or if you do, at least test them on a small scale first. And definitely exclude your current employer.

Update: David's new company asked him to build an internal tool that does the opposite—a bot that screens out bot-generated applications. The ouroboros continues.