Sent CVs vanish without trace; platform screening breaks down

Sixteen CVs sent, more than a month's wait, and all you get back is a "viewed by employer" tag. Many jobseekers note that on mainstream recruitment platforms they fire off dozens of applications in a row with no reply at all, even wondering whether the platform has stopped working.

The reality is that a single entry-level role often draws over a hundred applications, so employers simply set multiple screening filters — years of experience, salary expectation, skills — and even use AI for an initial pass, screening out CVs before a human ever sees them. More unsettling, platforms have lately rolled out a paid feature letting applicants pay to tag themselves as a "top pick" to boost visibility, turning recruitment matching into a highest-bidder auction.

This phenomenon reflects how, with the labour market oversupplied and competition from incoming talent intensifying, recruitment platforms' intermediary role is gradually failing — local jobseekers can neither see a response nor make sense of the rules of the game.