Directly applying for DS roles has only hurt my chances

I made this post a while back where I talked about recruiters reaching out about roles I already applied to. This problem has only gotten worse. It has now happened multiple times and I’m thinking of just not applying at all unless I know someone at the company.

I have submitted ~100 applications over the past year and got only rejections or was ghosted. I reach out directly to recruiters and people at companies, ghosted every time.

Despite this I have been able to get multiple interviews from recruiters reaching out to me. Sadly, I apply to a lot of the good roles in my area already so the recruiters refuse to represent me for these after finding out. One even refused because I had applied for a different role at the company months prior.

After my previous post I brushed it off and kept applying. Now I don’t think I’m going to apply to a single company unless I know someone connected to the hiring manager.

Is anyone actually having success with direct applications? What’s your secret?