John Huân Vũ sent more than 6,000 job applications over 16 months before a former colleague’s advocacy finally broke through, landing him a senior consultant position at Visa and ending one of the most gruelling job searches produced by the post-pandemic labour market.
Vũ had spent a decade at PayPal before being laid off in July 2024. The redundancy landed at a difficult moment for the company. In January 2024, PayPal had announced a workforce reduction affecting approximately 9% of its global staff, with then-chief executive Alex Chriss citing a need to ‘drive more focus and efficiency, deploy automation, and consolidate technology,’ according to a KFOX TV report. Vũ’s own departure came several months after that initial wave.
The Scale of the Search
After about a week to process the shock, Vũ began applying in earnest. He tracked every application in a spreadsheet: more than 6,000 job applications across over 2,000 companies, all logged across 16 months. He used job boards including LinkedIn and HiringCafe, and leaned on autofill tools to keep pace. His threshold: if he felt at least 50% qualified, he applied. On his busiest single day, 17 August 2025, he submitted 88 applications.
The market had shifted sharply since his last job search, more than a decade earlier. AI-conducted interviews had become routine. Some postings vanished within 48 hours or after the first few hundred applications, which pushed Vũ to check job boards and professional Slack communities every morning before openings disappeared.
He also overhauled his résumé, cutting it from two pages to one and optimising it for applicant tracking systems. That change improved his interview rate. Offers still did not come.
Food Pantries, SNAP, and a Near-Decision to Sell the House
As the months passed, Vũ’s financial position deteriorated. His husband runs an interior design business, but without Vũ’s salary the household came under sustained pressure. After reviewing his long-running financial tracking spreadsheet, Vũ concluded that without an offer soon, the couple would likely have to sell their home, or explore opportunities outside the United States.
They cut food costs sharply, relying on SNAP benefits, Buy Nothing groups, and coupons. They also used food pantries. Vũ described arriving two to three hours before a pantry opened to secure a place at the front of the queue, then driving home to join job interviews from his car while still waiting in line to collect the week’s food.
The household got through that period, Vũ said, because of support from his church community and from the people he encountered through Buy Nothing groups and the food pantry.
What 6,000 Job Applications Taught Him
The breakthrough did not come through a portal or an algorithm. In October 2025, fifteen months into his search, a former professional contact reached out about a senior consultant opening at Visa, which processes more than 259 billion payment transactions each year across more than 200 countries and territories. The contact and Vũ had met when both worked in payments: the contact at Visa, Vũ at PayPal. In 2022, Vũ had helped him settle into the Bay Area after a move from Brazil.
Vũ’s instinct was that he might not be fully qualified for the role, but his contact encouraged him to apply. Later, Vũ learned the contact had advocated directly with the recruiter and interviewers, drawing on his recollections of Vũ’s work ethic, communication style, and reliability.
The final interview, with a vice president, fell on Vũ’s 40th birthday in November. The offer followed shortly after, ending 16 months out of work.
Vũ now volunteers at the same food pantry that supported him during his search. His advice to other job seekers is straightforward: overhaul the résumé early (his own reduction from two pages to one proved transformative), and invest in professional relationships before you need them. In his case, a contact he had helped years earlier was the one who changed the outcome.
The broader picture at PayPal underlines why that advice matters. LayoffHedge reports that in May 2026, PayPal announced plans to eliminate approximately 4,760 positions, representing 20% of its then-23,800-person global workforce, as part of a restructuring targeting at least $1.5 billion in annualised run-rate savings. For workers still navigating the market Vũ spent 16 months inside, those numbers suggest conditions have not eased. The job postings keep disappearing, and the contact who remembers your work ethic will not wait indefinitely.