Abstract An abstract linking result for Cerami sequences is proved without the Cerami condition. It is applied directly in order to prove the existence of critical points for a class of indefinite problems in infinite-dimensional Hilbert Spaces. The applications are given to Schrödinger equations. Here spectral properties inherited by the potential features are exploited in order to establish a linking structure, and hence hypotheses of monotonicity on the nonlinearities are discarded.