Coming out of grad school in 2024, I had to submit ~300 applications to get 4 interviews and 2 offers for engineering roles. From what I hear, it's gotten even worse since then- companies are posting fake positions to look busy even in the middle of hiring freezes and ai bullshit has infected the recruiting process too.

Edit: reading this back, I feel like it reads as if I'm trying to one-up your job search struggle, which was not my intent. I was just confirming that it has continued to get worse