Comment by Peroni

Actual recruiter here with over a decade of experience hiring engineers at every level, internally as VP Talent and externally as an independent recruiter.

All the comments about the application numbers being inflated are correct. On top of that, the quality of applicants that come via LinkedIn (particularly for engineering roles) is consistently poor. If a job post says there's been 200 applicants, I'd be surprised if there were more than a couple of legit strong applications.

If you see a job you like on LinkedIn and have no way of having a direct conversation with someone that already works there, go to their own hosted careers page and apply there instead.

>What can we do to help optimize our job applications to at least get eyes on it?

Say the obvious thing out loud. What I mean is, if the job ad is titled "Senior Python Engineer" then your resume should say "Charlie B Writes - Senior Python Engineer" in a big old sans serif header. The first (current or most recent) job on your resume should also mirror this. If your actual job title is "software engineer" and you spend most of your time writing python, it is 100% acceptable and recommended for your resume to say "Python Engineer".

Ultimately the answer to your question is to make all the headlines of your resume as blatantly relevant to the job you're applying for as possible and make it as easy as possible for someone skimming your resume to assume you're a close match for what they need.