Last week, I wrote about how application volume is steadily rising, with the average recruiter receiving 270% more applications than they were three years ago.

A lot of that volume is because of AI. According to the Greenhouse 2025 Workforce and Hiring Report that was released yesterday, 22% of U.S. job seekers — and 31% of Gen Z — say they’ve already used an AI agent to apply for a job.

Those numbers surprised me because agentic tools are still relatively new, but they are clearly having an impact.

Here’s just one example. AIHawk is an open-source project created by Federico Elia, a recent graduate who lives in Italy. It was capable of scanning a resume, finding matching jobs on LinkedIn, and submitting applications that were customized to each company’s culture and packed with all the right keywords.

The project went viral. At one point, according to Federico, it was getting over a million visitors per month. It currently has more than 28,000 stars on GitHub. That places it among the top 0.0002% of all repositories on the site, which hosts over 420 million such projects. It has also been forked over 4,000 times, meaning that thousands of developers have copied the code and can modify or build on it.

Last year LinkedIn took action against AIHawk, with a company representative explaining that they “don't permit the use of third-party software (e.g. bots) that automates activity on LinkedIn”. In January, Federico removed all LinkedIn-related features from the open-source project after receiving legal threats and being banned from the platform, effectively neutering it.

But the code is already out there. Federico built it in a matter of weeks, working alone and with open-source contributors, and it has now been seen and modified by thousands of others. The changes that they’ve made to the project and the ways in which it is being used now are anyone’s guess.

Federico has since launched a new startup called Laboro with co-founder Stefano Mellone. Laboro provides a service that is based on the AIHawk technology and creates AI agents that help job seekers find and apply for roles. It launched as a paid product but went free last week, with freemium features planned for the future.

Users can choose to review a list of matched jobs before applying. But according to Stefano, the average user applies to about 200 jobs (back when users were paying for packages of applications—the number will probably rise now that they are free) and half of them choose to apply to every match suggested by the AI.

And why not? Each application is personalized by the AI. The time required to apply is close to zero. The incentives for the job seeker are to apply to as many positions as possible and see who bites.

So what is a job application?

It used to be a signal of interest. Filling out a form required some effort, and applying or customizing your resume showed that you were at least somewhat serious about the role.

That’s no longer necessarily true. An application submitted by an agent takes minimal effort, and the first time a candidate sees the job description might be when the recruiter reaches out to schedule an interview.

The meaning of an application is changing fast.

— David

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