Why isn't there a job search website that forces you to adopt this targeted bet strategy? The game theory of job-hunting incentivizes both submitters and receivers to adopt inefficient practices. Why not limit applications to one per day to signal genuine interest? Then you can demonstrate skill at an in-person interview, or at your local legally-bound interview center? (my very boring sci-fi prediction)
I tried to build this back around 2020. I think my concept was trying to be too cute in several places. But this was the basic idea.
I found that neither side of the market wanted to rethink the market, they just wanted something that worked well for them. Even today, job seekers may be reaching for something like this but employers have no interest; there is a glut in the market.
I’m sure I never quite got the messaging correct. However, I distinctly recall that triplebyte attempted a pivot in this same vein and also failed bad.
He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable.
If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to compete against the tailors in your neighborhood, and you can easily find a neighborhood that doesn't have a tailor. If you're building a scalable product, you'll always be competing against the best, most well funded, smartest people in the room.
Everyone here has grown up in the birth of the internet -- a once in ever event -- where building something scalable was just there for the taking. That's never going to exist again basically.