How I built a Chrome extension that auto-applies to 100 LinkedIn Easy Apply jobs per day

The Easy Apply flow, step by step

When the user clicks "Auto-apply" in the extension popup, the content script:

1. 
   Reads the visible job cards from the .jobs-search-results-list sidebar


2. For each card, clicks it to open the detail pane (this is a soft nav — no full page load)


3. 
   Verifies it's Easy Apply by looking for the .jobs-apply-button with data-live-test-easy-apply attribute. If not, skips.


4. 
   Clicks Easy Apply. LinkedIn opens a modal with the multi-step form.


5. 
   Walks the form pages. Each page has different fields — name, email, phone, resume upload, custom screening questions.


6. 
   Fills known fields from the user's profile (stored in the extension's chrome.storage.local)


7. 
   Uploads resume by creating a File object from the stored blob and dispatching a change event on the <input type="file">
   


8. 
   Answers screening questions via Groq — sends the question + user's profile summary, expects a single-line answer that matches the input type (short-text, number, radio)


9. 
   Clicks Submit, waits for the "Application sent" confirmation, closes the modal


10. 
    Delays 2-5s randomized, moves to the next card

The pattern is boring on purpose. No fancy async pipelines. No parallel tabs. Just a synchronous walk down the list with realistic delays.

The three safety rules that matter

LinkedIn's ML abuse detection is not looking for "does this account use a bot." It's looking for behavioral signatures. Three rules keep AutoApplyMax users under the radar:

Rule 1 — Never faster than a fast human

Timing between "click Easy Apply" and "click Submit" for a 4-step form: humans do it in 30-90 seconds. AutoApplyMax targets 40-80 seconds. Delays between actions are randomized in a 2000 + Math.random() * 3000 ms window. Never a fixed 500ms. That's the giveaway.

Rule 2 — Daily cap at 100-150

Above 150 applications/day from one account, LinkedIn's Retryable-Errors: LIMIT_EXCEEDED starts showing up on Easy Apply modals. Above 200, temporary restrictions start. So the extension has a hard-coded cap at 150 that the user can lower but not raise. Better to spread across days than push past 150.

Rule 3 — Only automate what belongs to the user

• Easy Apply on their own account: automated


• Profile data of other users: never scraped


• Sending messages, connection requests: never touched


• Reading job listings: reads what's already visible to the user (their own logged-in search)


• Public post-view counts, follower lists: never scraped

The line is: the bot can only do things the user themselves can do inside their own logged-in tab. If it would require an unauthenticated crawler or a different account, it's out of scope.

The "form-fill" AI, in one paragraph

The interesting AI work is not "generate a CV." It's answering the ~800 different variations of screening questions LinkedIn shows. "How many years of Python?" "Are you authorized to work in Germany?" "Are you willing to relocate to Bangalore for 6 months?" "What's your notice period in weeks?"

We send the question + a compact JSON summary of the user's profile to Llama 3.3 70B (via (free). No signup needed to start. Or read the full auto-apply guide at autoapplymax.com/blog/how-to-auto-apply-on-linkedin-2026.

Happy to answer any technical questions in the comments — especially interested in stories of other people who built form-filling automations.