Should I apply on LinkedIn or directly on the company's website?

From inside the recruitment process: LinkedIn Easy Apply roles attract 200-500+ applications within 24 hours of posting. Most are poorly-matched — candidates clicking apply on every relevant-looking role with their default profile. This forces internal recruiters to filter aggressively by location, current title, or years of experience just to get the volume manageable. The result: high-quality candidates often get filtered out of LinkedIn applications because of the volume noise.

Direct applications via the company's careers page typically go through different funnels. Lower volume per role, fewer aggressive auto-filters, more time spent per CV by the internal recruitment team. The candidate who applies directly is also signalling slightly more intent — they took the extra step to find the careers page, fill in the application form, and tailor the materials to that company's process.

When LinkedIn Easy Apply still works. Mid-volume roles where the company is genuinely processing applications quickly (often graduate schemes and high-velocity hiring sprees). Niche specialist roles where the LinkedIn applicant pool is small enough that volume isn't an issue. Roles where you have a connection at the company who can advocate for your application internally.

The combined approach that works best. Apply via the company's careers page directly. Then find the recruiter or hiring manager on LinkedIn (most company TA pages list them) and send a brief two-sentence message naming the role and one specific reason you're a strong fit. This 'careers page + LinkedIn nudge' combination converts roughly 3-5x better than either alone in my experience.

Different sites for different roles. For UK-specific roles, Reed and the company's own careers page often outperform LinkedIn. For tech roles, AngelList (now Wellfound), Hacker News Who's Hiring, and the company's careers page beat LinkedIn for serious candidates. For senior or executive roles, dedicated executive search firms and the candidate's own network beat both. For graduate schemes, Bright Network, Milkround, and the company's graduate careers page beat generic LinkedIn searches.

The aggregator trap. Indeed, Glassdoor, Totaljobs, CV Library — these scrape from primary sources and add a layer of staleness. The same role might appear on the company's careers page, LinkedIn, and Indeed simultaneously, but Indeed's listing might be 5 days behind. Apply via the most recent and direct source you can find. Indeed and similar are useful for discovery (finding roles you didn't know existed); they're less useful for the application itself.

Where the candidates who get hired actually came from. From the placements I've made over the last five years: roughly 35% direct application, 30% recruiter-sourced, 20% referral, 10% LinkedIn approach (recruiter to candidate), 5% other (AngelList, niche job boards, conferences, etc.). The candidates who only used LinkedIn Easy Apply were a small fraction of placements, vastly outnumbered by those who used a combination of channels.