A developer argues employers should ditch digital job portals and require postmarked physical letters instead. As LLM-powered job applications become effortless to generate, the flood of low-effort submissions could make hiring even more broken.

Requiring postage and handwritten cover letters would raise the cost and effort of applying, naturally filtering out bot-spam. Employers gain a cheap, analog signal of candidate interest without adopting expensive 'AI-protected' systems that offer false promises.

While the proposal is impractical at scale, it spotlights a real issue: AI is already saturating job boards. Without better filtering mechanisms, hiring managers face an avalanche of indistinguishable applications. The postmark idea is extreme—but the underlying problem is not.

Expect more candidates to automate every step of job hunting, and more employers to double down on flawed AI screening tools. Something will eventually have to give in this race to the bottom.