Over the last few weeks, my inbox has started looking different.
Multiple emails like this now land quite regularly:
The emails are not bad. There is personlization and has all the profile details.
Of course, these are AI generated
Cold emailing a hiring manager was always possible. It was just hard.
Find the right person. Guess the email ID. Write something that doesn’t sound desperate. Do it 50 times.
Most people didn’t bother. That’s exactly why it worked for the few who did.
Now AI does all three in 30 seconds.
Find the name. Find the email. Write a “personalised” note. Send to 200.
And voila. Your inbox becomes the new job portal. Without the filters.
Same opening line. “I came across your company and was really impressed by…”. Same three bullet points. Same “would love to connect for any suitable opportunity.”
Sent to me. And probably to 200 other founders the same morning.
I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think it’s the next phase of the hiring funnel.
Candidates are not to blame here
They have fewer options.
Indeed’s CEO said last month that applications per job went up 111% between 2022 and 2025. In the same period, the number of recruiters went down 56%.
More applications. Fewer people to read them.
Greenhouse’s numbers say the same thing differently. Around 28 applications per job in 2021. Around 95 in 2025.
So what does a candidate see?
Apply on a portal. Silence.
Easy Apply. Silence.
Follow up. Silence.
Portal = black hole. Easy Apply = lottery ticket.
And candidates are impatient. Rightly so. When roles get filled in a couple of weeks, waiting three weeks for a reply is the same as a rejection.
So they look for a side door. And AI has given it to them.
So, how will this play out?
I used to read these cold emails earlier.
But now, I mostly ignore them.
We’ve seen this movie before. With cold calls.
Cold calls worked. Then everyone did cold calls. Then nobody picked up unknown numbers. Now there’s an app to label them spam.
Cold emails for jobs will likely go the same way.
More people doing it means lower reply rates for everyone. Recruiters are already tired of it. In a recent survey of 900+ US HR professionals, 53% said they are frustrated by AI-written outreach that feels robotic.
But it won’t die. It will split. The ones that get ignored:
Sent to 500 people.
Sent “in case you have something.”
A summary of the CV in paragraph form.
The ones that still get a reply:
Niche. Sent to the 3–5 people who actually hire for this role.
Timely. In the week the role opened, not six months later.
Specific. One real proof of work. A repo, a product, a number.
Volume gets you ignored. Relevance gets you a reply.
Same lesson as the portal. Just a new channel.
The interesting question - will your email need to become the new ATS?
If the real applications start moving from portals to email…
Will the battle shift from job portals and ATS to the inbox?
Will Gmail become the new application tool? And the new ATS?