SEEK shows vague labels on job listings (“Low”, “Medium”, “High” applicant volume). I wanted to know what they *actually* mean, so I pulled the real numbers from 500 software-related jobs in Sydney on SEEK.

Important context:

* This dataset is only software/tech roles on SEEK.
* External application portals aren’t tracked by SEEK, so those jobs don’t show applicant numbers at all.

Here’s what the labels actually map to.

# Applicant volume labels

* Low: < 20 applicants
* Medium: 20 – 149
* High: 150+

I figured this out by collecting the raw applicant counts alongside SEEK’s labels. Jobs flipped to “Medium” at 20 applicants and “High” at 150 applicants.

# Dataset

* Total jobs analysed: 500
* Jobs with applicant data: 345
* External application portals: 155 (SEEK doesn’t track applicant counts for these)

# Distribution

* Low (<20): 87 jobs
* Medium (20–149): 185 jobs
* High (150+): 73 jobs

# Overall stats

* Median applicants per job: 50
* Average: 116
* Lowest: 1
* Highest: 1,800

Breakdowns:

* ≤5 applicants: 25 jobs
* 100+ applicants: 103 jobs
* 200+ applicants: 54 jobs
* 500+ applicants: 16 jobs

One job had 1,800 applicants. Another got 272 applicants in a single day.

# The snowball effect (applications vs job age)

|Job Age|Jobs|Median Applicants|Max|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|< 1 day|52|10|86|
|1–3 days|60|40|304|
|3–7 days|43|47|389|
|1–2 weeks|73|54|823|
|2–4 weeks|97|93|1,212|
|4+ weeks|20|131|1,800|

On average, jobs gained \~8–9 applicants per day.

* Within 24 hours the median is already 10.
* By day 3 it's 40.
* By week 4 the median is 93 (with extremes over 1,200).

# Takeaways for job seekers

* “High” applicant volume isn’t 50 people — it’s 150+, and can be in the hundreds or thousands.
* “Medium” goes up to 149 applicants, which is still a lot of competition.
* Timing matters. The median jumps from 10 → 40 applicants between day 1 and day 3.
* 31% of software jobs used external portals, and SEEK does not track applicant counts for those, so the real competition could be even higher.
* The 25 jobs with ≤5 applicants were mostly niche contract roles (Appian, ServiceNow, Odoo) or extremely new listings.

# TL;DR

For software roles on SEEK, you’re often competing with 50–150+ applicants within days, sometimes hundreds or thousands. Applying early and targeting niche skills dramatically improves your odds.

Seek: What “Low / Medium / High” applicant volume actually means