I have been recruiting for years, and if you've been on this list for any amount of time, you know that giving job search advice is basically a second job for me at this point. I live in this stuff. It's what I think about on Sunday nights when I should be watching the back of my eyelids.

And right now I am working with some of the most qualified candidates I have ever had the privilege of representing. I mean truly, embarrassingly qualified people who cannot get a callback to save their lives. That part has been a little demoralizing, not going to lie.

Here's what I'll admit to you that I probably wouldn't say in a LinkedIn post: some of the advice I was confidently handing out a year ago doesn't work the same way anymore. The market shifted, the volume of applicants exploded, and a few things I thought were reliable just simply stopped being true. I kept throwing the same playbook at the wall and wondering why it wasn't sticking, which, in retrospect, is a me problem.

So this week I finally stopped and actually did the homework. Pulled the data, read the research, cross-referenced it with what I'm watching happen in real time with my own candidates. And I think I figured something out. It's not a silver bullet, nothing is, but it's actionable, it's free, and it's something almost nobody is doing consistently. Keep reading!

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I'll be honest, the "hot jobs" section of this newsletter is usually where I paste a few cool-looking remote postings and call it a day. Not this week.

In the middle of my never-ending research spiral, I came across a company called MeritFirst that just closed a seed round, and I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if I could get them as a client and ended up just genuinely impressed by what they're building. Their whole premise is that hiring should be based on what someone can actually do, not what logos are on their resume or what school they went to. Skills-based applications, skills-based interviews, the whole thing. In a world where AI has made the resume pile essentially unmanageable, I think they're onto something.

They're also hiring a Chief of Staff in Austin, which is why it's ending up here. Fair warning: the application includes a 90-minute assessment, so this is not a casual click-and-submit situation. If you're not local to Austin or don't have experience operating inside a seed to Series A stage startup, this probably isn't your moment. But if that is you, I thought it was too interesting to just scroll past.

Chief of Staff, MeritFirst - Austin - [Apply Here]

Here's something most job seekers don't know, and most recruiters aren't going out of their way to tell you either. By the time you stumble across a job posting, find the time to tailor your resume, and finally hit submit, there's a very real chance the role is already spoken for in practice, even if it's still technically open on the website.

Let me walk you through what the first 72 hours of a job opening actually look like from the inside:

When a hiring manager decides they need someone, the first thing that happens is an intake meeting with their TA or recruiting person. They define the scope of the role, figure out what they're actually looking for versus what they think they're looking for, write the job description, get approvals, and then post it. That whole process takes time, so by the time it goes live, the recruiting team is ready to move. They're not sitting around waiting. They start reviewing applications essentially the moment they come in.

On day one, a decent posting might get a hundred applications. The recruiter is going scan them and pick maybe 10 they think are worth the time to conduct a phone screen, and they'll probably submit 5 of those ten to the hiring manager. The hiring manager picks two or three to move forward. That's already happening on day one.

Day two, same thing. New batch of applicants, same funnel. But here's the part that matters: by day three, they've almost certainly already identified the candidates they're excited about. Everything after that is either a backup plan or a box they're checking to justify a decision they've already mentally made. They want to close this out (plus the 10-20 other jobs they’re simultaneously working on) and start onboarding someone. They are not hoping more applications come in.

So yes, being one of the first five to ten people to apply for a role you're genuinely qualified for will materially change your odds. I'd stake a lot on it.

The problem is that most people find out about jobs the same way, which is LinkedIn, which means they're finding out on LinkedIn's schedule, not the company's. And LinkedIn's schedule is slower than you think. Even when you have alerts set up, LinkedIn is pulling from a crawl of the company's ATS that can run anywhere from 18 to 48 hours behind the actual posting. The daily digest email goes out at the same time every morning. If a role goes live at 11am and you're waiting on an email, you're not hearing about it until the next day at the earliest, and by then you're already behind.

Here's how to actually get ahead of it.

First, set up LinkedIn job alerts if you haven't, but do it right. Go to the Jobs tab, run a search with your actual title and filters, set the alert to daily, and then immediately go into your phone's notification settings and make sure LinkedIn push notifications are turned on. The in-app push notification will fire faster than the email digest, so that's your best option within LinkedIn's ecosystem. You can also go directly to a company's LinkedIn page, click their Jobs tab, and create a company-specific alert so you're not relying on keyword matching to surface it.

Second, use LinkedIn's filters to your advantage while you're actively searching. You can filter for roles posted in the last 24 hours, which immediately cuts out anything you've already missed the window on. You can also filter for roles with under ten applicants, which is the closest thing to a real-time indicator that you're early. Both of those filters live under the "All Filters" option when you run a search. Use them every single morning as part of an actual routine, not just when you happen to feel like looking. A TalentWorks analysis of 1,610 applications found that applying between 6 AM and 10 AM makes you 5x more likely to get an interview than applying after work hours…and combining the early-days advantage with that early-morning window can increase your odds by nearly 40x!!!

Being first is not a guarantee. You still have to be qualified, your resume still has to be good, and you still have to interview well. But if you're doing everything else right and you're also one of the first people in the door, you are giving yourself an edge that is completely within your control and that most of your competition is not thinking about at all. That alone is worth the ten minutes of setup.

Stuck in your job search? Not sure how to handle a tricky interview question or navigate the hiring process? Submit your question anonymously, and I’ll answer it in an upcoming newsletter.

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