Job search diagnostic
Are you applying too broadly?
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 too many different kinds of jobs?
Applying broadly feels like increasing your chances and frequently does the opposite, because every additional kind of role you chase divides the same finite preparation across more targets and makes each application weaker. The test is not how many titles you apply for but whether one version of your resume can credibly serve them. If your targets need materially different documents to be persuasive, you are running several job searches at once with the resources for one. Breadth is not automatically wrong — it is wrong when it forces every application to be generic.
- The test is document coherence
- If one resume can credibly address all your targets, the range is coherent. If it cannot, the range is too wide for the effort available.
- Breadth dilutes preparation
- Each distinct target needs its own vocabulary, examples and story. Spreading across many means each application gets a fraction of the attention.
- Adjacent is not the same as scattered
- Several titles that describe the same work is coherent breadth. Several fields that share only your presence is not.
- What this page will not do
- It will not give you a maximum number of target roles. That number depends on your time and how adjacent the targets are.
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 your applications or your resume.
- It reasons from what you report about your own targeting.
- There is no universally correct level of breadth, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
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.
The range is wider than one application strategy can serve
Pick the two titles your last three responses clustered around and drop the rest for a month. Narrowing is the change; the documents follow from it.
The market has already told you where you fit
Move most of your applications to the cluster that responds. Keep a small allocation elsewhere if you want the option, but stop treating them equally.
Your range is coherent, so breadth is not the problem
Check the match on a specific recent application rather than adjusting your targeting further. Narrowing a search that is already narrow costs opportunities.
You may be running two searches at once
Decide which direction you are actually pursuing. If the change is the goal, the target is worth choosing on evidence of overlap rather than on interest.
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.