This company had 800 applications for a single role. Here’s why these 3 stood out to the CEO.

Between running her own firm and years of leadership roles in tech, Jennifer Dulski has done a lot of hiring.

In June 2024, she posted a job for a chief of staff at her company, Rising Team. The listing quickly drew over 800 applications.

Dulski and her team sifted through all of them. Three were outliers.

Each of those that popped included something extra, Dulski, Rising Team’s founder and CEO, told Business Insider. One person attached a slide deck, while another included a video with slides, she said.

For another application, a job seeker included a “user manual,” a term Dulski’s company, a team-performance platform, employs. She said that phrase made it clear the applicant had gone deep when researching her Menlo Park, California, firm.

All three got an interview.

“They just stood out so much for having done the extra research, the extra work — something creative,” Dulski said.

That bit of extra pizazz might be more important than it’s been in years in the US because, broadly, employers are posting fewer jobs and extending offers at the slowest pace in about a decade.

The cool pace of onboarding also comes as uncertainty over tariffs and interest rates has some CEOs hitting pause on big decisions, including adding to payrolls.

Going ‘above and beyond’

Dulski, whose years in tech included leadership roles at Yahoo, Google, and Facebook, said that it can make a big difference when you take the time to put together thorough and well-researched applications.

Among the finalists for the chief of staff job, several hadn’t worked in that capacity before, she said.

Yet, Dulski said, “they had just gone above and beyond and made themselves so clearly capable.”

She also saw the opposite: those who mailed it in. Dulski and her team didn’t review applications where people just applied with a few clicks through a job board because, in doing so, they couldn’t answer some questions Rising Team had asked.

Of the over 800 they went through, Dulski and the team passed on applications where a phrase like “due to my extensive experience in” made it clear that artificial intelligence did most of the work.

“They all started with essentially the same two sentences,” she said.

Making an application compelling often matters because, while overall unemployment and layoffs remain low, there are fewer job openings, Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told BI. Postings in the US have dropped by 3.5 percentage points in 2025, he said.

“It’s becoming a harder labor market for those who are out of a job,” Stahle said.

A boost if your network is small

Dulski said a top-notch application can be especially helpful if you don’t have much of a professional network to turn to during your job search. That’s important because one of the best ways to land a gig has long been to tap a connection within an organization. That’s still true, she said. While it won’t necessarily get you the job, it might lead to an interview.

Dulski, who teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and talks often with students early in their careers, still recommends that you try to connect with someone in an organization, even through cold outreach.

Yet, where that doesn’t work, Dulski said, putting added effort into an application can help compensate for the lack of an in.

“The strategy of sending something extra, making yourself stand out, is accessible to everyone,” she said.

Dulski said that’s the case regardless of your connections, any privileges you might have, or what’s on your résumé.

The basics still count

Even if you research an employer to help shape your application, you still have to nail the basics, Susan Peppercorn, an executive coach, told BI.

That means having a strong résumé and LinkedIn profile — LinkedIn is the first place a hiring manager will go to look you up, Peppercorn said. With something like your profile, you need to be clear what you want to say about yourself to stand out, she said.

“What makes you unique and compelling?” Peppercorn said.

Having a well-tailored application along with a strong résumé and dialed profile still might not guarantee you get somewhere with an employer. Yet, Dulski said, given the number of applications some postings get, job seekers often need to do something to stand apart.

Besides, she said, a well-executed application can help you show off your skills. It’s also a help, Dulski said, if you don’t have the exact experience listed in a job posting. Ultimately, the person Dulski hired hadn’t been a chief of staff before. While the hire wasn’t one of those who added something extra to their application, Dulski shared her finalists with other business leaders, which resulted in several applicants getting interviews at other companies.

“Great talent will still get jobs, even in the hardest of job markets,” she said.

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