· 6 min
Onboarding: the first 30 days set the tone
The first month at a new job sets a calibration that takes a year to undo. The four habits that compound positively, and the two early mistakes that don't.
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// FIELD NOTES
Writing on the applied job hunt.
Practical writing on job-search automation, ATS scoring, and the workflows that actually land interviews.
· 5 min
Reference checks: who, when, how
Reference checks are the most under-prepared step in the hiring loop, and the one most likely to surprise you. A short guide on who to pick, when to brief them, and the questions companies will actually ask.
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· 6 min
What changes when you've been laid off vs. searching while employed
The two job searches look the same on paper and feel completely different in practice. The differences in pace, framing, and follow-through are the kind of thing nobody tells you until you're in the chair.
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· 5 min
Negotiating with a written offer in hand
The negotiation step that decides 80% of the outcome happens before any haggling: getting the offer in writing. After that, four moves and one don't-ever.
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· 6 min
When to take the lower-paying offer
Career advice defaults to 'always negotiate, always take the higher offer.' Sometimes the math says otherwise. Five real situations where the lower-paying offer is the right call, and the framework to tell.
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· 6 min
The 90-minute job search: a daily template
A compressed daily session that ships 20 quality applications without burning the rest of your day. Time-boxed, ritualised, and built to survive a search that runs longer than you wanted.
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· 5 min
LinkedIn Easy Apply is mostly a trap
Easy Apply makes you feel productive. The numbers say it lands less than half the response rate of any other channel. Here's why, and when to use it anyway.
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· 5 min
Tailoring isn't lying: where the line is
LLMs will happily turn your résumé into something that's almost-true. Five rules for staying on the right side of the line, and the recruiter signals that catch the people who don't.
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· 6 min
What to do in week 8 if nothing's landed
Two months into a search, no offers, maybe a few first-rounds. The instinct is to apply harder. The right move is to stop and audit. A short triage guide for the week-eight slump.
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· 6 min
How recruiters use ATS scoring (and why it differs from yours)
The ATS gives the recruiter a match score per candidate. The recruiter overrides it about 40% of the time. What changes their mind, what doesn't, and why a 92% score isn't always better than an 80% with a good cover line.
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· 6 min
Cold outreach when the ATS is a black box
Half the time the ATS is a black hole. Cold outreach is the side door — but most people do it wrong. A short guide to the message that gets opened, the timing that works, and the targets worth your time.
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· 7 min
Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby: a filler's-eye view
Three ATSes that look similar from the outside, three different engineering shapes underneath. Notes from writing autofillers against all three on what makes them easy, hard, and intermittently broken.
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· 5 min
Reading the rejection email
Rejection emails contain more signal than people give them credit for. The phrasing tells you where in the funnel you fell out, which tells you what to fix. Five templates and what each one actually means.
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· 4 min
Open Applier vs OpenApply: two different products, two different audiences
Open Applier (openapplier.com) is a Chrome extension that auto-fills job applications. OpenApply (openapply.com) is a school admissions CRM. Same-sounding names, completely unrelated products. Here is the disambiguation.
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· 8 min
Why review-first beats auto-submit, with receipts
Auto-submit tools promise to fire 500 applications a week while you sleep. The receipts say they're firing them into the trash. Here's what we found when we audited a week of submissions from a popular auto-apply tool.
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· 14 min
How to apply to 1,000 jobs without losing your mind
A review-first workflow that beats volume-only auto-apply. Concrete signals that actually matter to ATS matching, the 5 rules of resume tailoring that isn't lying, and a 90-minute daily session that ships 20 quality applications.
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· 6 min
Salary expectations: what to write in the box you can't leave blank
The salary-expectations field is the most consequential single input on a job application. The default advice — "leave it blank" — is wrong because most modern ATSes won't let you. Here's the box-by-box decision tree.
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· 5 min
Cover letters: short, specific, or skipped
If your cover letter is three paragraphs of generic enthusiasm, it's worse than no cover letter. The data is unforgiving and the fix is simple: two sentences, one specific reason, no salutation gymnastics.
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· 7 min
The six-second résumé scan, measured
Recruiters spend six seconds on each résumé that survives the ATS. We instrumented twenty of them with a heatmap and watched. Here's what they actually look at, and what your résumé needs in those six seconds.
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· 9 min
Workday's hidden field types and how to actually fill them
Workday looks like a form. It is not a form. It's a state machine that loads field definitions per tenant, with eight quirky widget types that break naive autofillers. Notes from a year of writing the resolver.
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· 6 min
Why we capped Pro at $5 and refused to add quotas
Most job-search tools meter you. We picked a flat $5/month with no caps because the alternative — telling a job seeker they're out of credits in week three — is the worst time to charge twice.
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