Job search diagnostic
Are you applying to the wrong jobs?
The answer above holds regardless of your situation. The questions below narrow it to the one cause your own answers point at, which is a different and more useful thing than a list of possible reasons.
Am I applying to the wrong jobs?
Almost all job-search advice addresses how you apply and almost none addresses what you apply to, which is why selection is the most commonly broken part of a search and the least often examined. The signal that targeting rather than execution is the problem is a specific one: your applications are well made, your documents are fine, and the responses are absent or scattered without any pattern. When targeting is right and execution is wrong, responses cluster. When targeting is wrong, they do not cluster anywhere, because there is no group of roles you are actually strong for.
- Clustering is the diagnostic
- Responses concentrated in one type of role mean your targeting has found something. Responses scattered thinly across everything mean it has not.
- Selection is rarely examined
- Most effort goes into resumes and interviews. Which roles were worth applying to at all is the step people skip, and it is upstream of both.
- Wanting a role is not fit
- Interest and fit are different, and a target set chosen on interest alone tends to produce applications where the evidence is thin.
- What this page will not claim
- It will not tell you which jobs are right for you. It distinguishes a targeting problem from an execution problem, which is the step before that.
Source and method
RoleSprint, from the structure of the job-search process rather than from a dataset. Verified 2026-08-30. This page carries no third-party statistics, because the honest ones for this question do not exist in a citable form. What it holds is a decision tree over facts you report about your own search, and the reasoning behind each branch is stated on the page so you can disagree with it. Nothing you select is transmitted anywhere.
Narrow it down
3 questions you can answer without looking anything up. Nothing you select leaves your browser.
What this page will not claim
Stated here rather than in a footer, because the value of a diagnostic is entirely in knowing what it cannot see.
- This page cannot see the roles you applied to.
- It reasons from the pattern you report, not from your applications.
- A small number of applications cannot show a pattern either way.
Every outcome this page can reach
Published in full so the tool cannot be a black box. If none of these describes your situation, the page is the wrong one and says so rather than forcing a fit.
There is not enough to see a pattern yet
Keep the approach steady and record what each application was and what came back. The pattern is the data you need and you do not have it yet.
Targeting is working; execution is where to look
Apply more heavily inside the cluster and improve the applications there. Do not widen the target set in response to a signal that narrowing worked.
The roles were chosen on appeal or availability rather than fit
For the next twenty, check each posting against your evidence before applying. Applications you would not have sent after checking are the ones costing you the most.
You are choosing on fit and still getting nothing
Check one well-matched application end to end: what the role asked for, what your resume evidences, and whether the document arrives readable.
What to do next
This page narrows one symptom. The full diagnostic looks at the whole search at once, which matters when more than one thing is wrong.